A Study On The Phonetics Of Dialect Documents Of Siyi (四邑) Region In Guangdong Province Since The Qing (清) Dynasty And The Early Republic Of China

The Sub-dialect of Siyi is a branch of Cantonese dialect,which is mainly used in Xinhui,Taishan,Kaiping,Enping and other places today.Since the Qing Dynasty,documents recording Siyi dialect have come out continuously.These documents mainly include rhyme books,phonetic materials recorded by missionaries in China using Latin letters,phonetic materials recorded by Chinese dialect surveys,and dialect dictionaries,etc.According to these materials,we can outline the clues of the phonetic development and evolution of Siyi dialect(mainly Xinhui and Taishan)in the past hundred years.At present,there are only two kinds of rhyme books in Siyi,namely Tong Yin Zi Hui(同音字汇)of the Qing(清)Dynasty and Xin Ti Tong Su Fang Yin Yun Pu(新体通俗方音韵谱)of the Republic of China.The study of the rhyme book needs to first analyze the characteristics of the rhyme in the book in combination with the middle ancient Chinese phonology,and then compare it with the modern phonology to determine its phonological nature.The rhyme book Tong Yin Zi Hui(同音字汇)has a total of 34 phonological features,32 of which are the same or basically the same as the current Xinhui dialect.On this basis,it can be confirmed that this book is a rhyme book recording the dialect of Xinhui City of the Qing Dynasty.The rhyme book Xin Ti Tong Su Fang Yin Yun Pu(新体通俗方音韵谱)has 28 features of phonology,which is completely consistent with the Taishan Duanfen dialect recorded by Wang Li(1950).It can be confirmed that this book is a rhyme book recording the dialect of Duanfen Town of Taishan City in the Republic of China.At the end of the 19 th century,missionaries A.Don and J.Dyer Ball recorded Taishan and Xinhui dialect and listed syllable lists respectively,which is the earliest record of Siyi dialect using Latin letters.The two missionaries’ syllables can faithfully record the dialect at that time.After sorting out the syllables in these materials,we can get a complete phonological system.After 1949,linguists such as Zhao Yuanren,Wang Li,Zhan Bohui,Mc Coy used modern linguistic methods to conduct dialect surveys.The dialect scholars such as Huang Jianyun and Deng Jun of Siyi region compiled Taishan dialect dictionaries,leaving many valuable materials to record Siyi dialect,of which the Siyi dialect recorded by the China Language Resources Protection Project(2015)is the latest material up to now.Based on the above materials,the following findings can be made by observing the phonetic evolution of Xinhui and Taishan in the past hundred years.The evolution of initial in Xinhui dialect is mainly"the combination of Tou with Ding(透母与定母平上声)and Xiao(晓)of the initial"and"the combination of the group Jing(精)and the group of Zhi and Zhao(知照组)",and the evolution of the final is mainly"the low of the former vowel"and"the high of the latter vowel".The evolution of the initial of Taishan dialect is mainly"the appearance of the initial consonant v of voiced fricative"and"the change from the palatal-alveolar to the apical",and the evolution of the final is mainly"the disappearance of the u of head vowel"and"the evolution from(?)/k to n/t of the the ending of rhyme group Zeng(曾)、Geng(梗)".On the whole,the changes of the local dialect in the two places are mainly the result of the natural evolution of the internal phonetic system.The result of the changes is that the phonetic system gradually tends to be simplified.Dialect literature are valuable materials for the study of phonetic history,but most of them lack precise description of phonetic values and the author’s learning skill is limited,so there are still deficiencies or errors in the analysis of the motivation and mechanism of phonetic evolution.