The Historical Words Study Of Xinzhou Dialect

Xinzhou, located in the northern part of Shanxi Province, is one of the cradles of Chinese civilization, boasting a long history and profound cultural background.Its dialect is of great research value for maintaining a plethora of ancient Chinese words.However,less attention is paid to the comprehensive and in-depth studies of these words in academia for a long time so that the current research is somewhat superficial, staying in current research level.This paper has conducted a synchronic description and diachronic verification and explanation based on 155 frequently-used words from Xinzhou dialect, which will help display the diachronic appearance of its words. Standing at the cutting edge of academia, this paper is of much novelty and will add more fresh blood to the research of some weak points so that it will help promote the study of words from Xinzhou dialect as well the research of history of Chinese words and words from other dialects.This paper defines the historical words for Xinzhou dialect, which refers to ones that were used in ancient literature of Xinzhou dialect, but less used or never used in modern spoken Chinese.The historical words of Xinzhou dialect are not a equivalent of historical words, since "Ancient" in ancient literature is opposite to that of "modern", ranging from pre-Qin period to Qing dynasty.The main part of the paper is divided into two sections. In the first section,155 historical words of Xinzhou are selected as study object to be analyzed respectively. Firstly, each word is listed with its respective appellation in Xinzhou,pronunciation and usage.Then, this part has combined, by fully utilizing the available literature, the modern linguistic theory with traditional Chinese exegetic theory ranging from pre-Qin period to Qing dynasty.These words have been verified and explained to study the sources of their meanings and compare them with Chinese mandarin and other dialects, in terms of the differences and similarities of their changes over time, so that their connections can be established for the past and current historical words of Xinzhou dialect.In the second section, this paper has summarized and combed the characteristics for the historical words of Xinzhou dialect to further deepen the lexical characteristics and overall appearance of Xinzhou dialect.Meanwhile, this section combines the old readings of historical words existing still in Xinzhou dialect with the reality of colloquial readings to verify and explain the accumulations of ancient readings in several aspects,which will provide more research materials for further study of historical words in Xinzhou dialect, broaden the horizon of later study and provide relevant data and references for the study of Chinese history, its phonetics and the the pronunciation of some dialects.