A Phonetic Study Of Hejiang Dialect

The county of Hejiang locates off the southern border and belongs to Luzhou City, Sichuan Province. Based on the 3700 basic words contained in the Survey Table of Dialect which is complied by the Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Language, the thesis is going to make a field investigation on the pronunciation of this county. On the basis of reliable speech materials, fully detailed description and analysis have been carried out on the phonetic system of Hejiang dialect. And through the comparison with the phonology of Guangyun, the evolution law of Hejiang dialect's phonology is revealed.There are 21 initials in Hejiang dialect. Two approximants, [(?)],[(?)], which exit between vowels and consonants are concluded in finals, for they appears in the position of finals. Therefore, compared with the phonology of Guangyun, "Jing" group are pronounced [ts],[ts'],[s] in the front of "Hong-Yin", [(?)],[(?)],[c] before "Xi-Yin"; and the "Xiao" group are pronounced [k],[k'],[x] in the front of "Hong-Yin", [(?)],[(?)],[c] before "Xi-Yin".The Ancient Voiced Initials are pronounced voiceless at present, and the differentiation rule is that the Ping tonal is aspirated, while Ze tonal is not; "Xiao-Xia" initials spell "Xie" group "He-Kou-Yi-Deng" finals is pronounced [f]; "Ying" group mostly are pronounced initial [0] or [(?)]; "Ni" group are pronounced initial [1] before "Hong-Yin", in the front of "Xi-Yin", "Ni" group are pronounced initial [(?)] and "Lai" group are pronounced [n]; "Yi" group are pronounced initial [(?)],[(?)] or [(?)] in Hejiang dialect.In terms of finals, there are 42 in Hejiang dialect. The vowels'pronunciation is produced in the front and can be divided into two categories:lax tone finals and entering tone finals. Through a comparison with the phonology of Guangyun, it is got to find out that the "Si-Hu" conditions in Hejiang dialect exit quite a big difference from Guangyun. In the case of the coda, the plosive coda of entering tone finals totally disappears; the nasal coda is left with [n],[(?)] in lax tone finals and meanwhile the coda [(?)] is replaced by the coda [n]. As a consequence, a trend emerges that codas of consonants are decreasing and pronunciation becomes voweled.With regard to the tone, there are five categories, Yinping (44), Yangping (21), rising tone (42), falling tone (13) and entering tone (33). The value of tone is generally low and undulating. The primary evolution trend of Hejiang dialect of ancient and modern tones is shown in that the ancient level tone has tones of Yinping and Yangping in the temporary Hejiang dialect and the rule of differentiation is the voiceless is Yin, voiced is Yang. The rising tones of ancient voiceless and secondary voiced initials are pronounced rising tone; the rising tone of ancient voiced initials is pronounced falling tone and ancient falling tone is still pronounced falling tone in the present Hejiang dialect, generally remaining ancient entering tone.The phenomenon of tonal modification and retro flex is included in the phonetic variation of Hejiang dialect. Tone variation is manifested in two aspects, that is, "Yangping+Yangping→Yinping+Yinping" and "falling tone+falling tone→falling tone+Yinping". The mode of retro flection is to add retro flex vowel [(?)]. The generality of the retroflex phenomenon is displayed in two aspects. On one hand, most of the finals can be retrofiexed and on the other hand words can be retroflexed are abundant. The functions of retroflex are word-formation, Little Said and the changing of part of speech.The thesis has made a deep research on the entering tones of Hejiang dialect. After an exhaustive investigation and analysis on the lax tones change to entering tones and entering tones change to lax tones of Hejiang dialect, it is found that the example characters of entering tones change to falling tones and falling tones change to entering tones are most. The reason of lax reading lies in great influence by Mandarin on one hand, and relations with example characters'literary and colloquial pronunciation, old and new radical differences and harmonic sound on the other hand, which could account for the entering reading as well.The last chapter of the thesis is to make an exploration into the ownership of Hejiang dialect. According to the formation of the Sichuan dialect, reference academic circle deny that Hejiang belong to the Hakka dialect island. In the light of another official statement, it is regarded that Hejiang dialect originated from the Chinese that was passed to Ba Shu district from the Central Plains in ancient times. Therefore, it can be classified into indigenous language of Ba Shu.