Research In Dialectal Terms Collected In GuangYun

The difference between Chinese di lects can be traced back to ancient times. These kind of differences were first recorded in YangXiong's Dilects and later in other various traditional scholarly works dealing with philological studies.GuangYun is one of the most important scholarly works on phonology in the middle ancient times. It keeps a good record of dialectal terms and homographs which were collected from various dialectal regions. To study these dialectal terms and homographs will be of significant importance to the controversial issues in the phonological circle as well as the research of the dialectal history. Through the analysis of the 67 dialectal terms included in GuangYun (These 67 dialectal terms were marked as from Dialects or regional dialects), we find that only 43 of them can be found in the modern version of YangXiong's Dialects or GuoPu's annotations to Dialects and annotations to ErYa or some other works. The remaining 24, however, can't be found there. It is likely that these 24 terms are from the two Dialects which were written by LiuBing and WangHao respectively in the period of the Sixteen States(十六国) and sometime later. Unfortunately, these two books have been lost. However, they may also refer to the dialects orfolk adages at that time.According to the analysis of the 41 dialectal terms included in GuangYun, we find that dialects evolve in two ways: On the one hand, we can, by studying the ancient works or documents, prove conclusively that the regional dialects in ancient times didn't limit themselves to a specified place. That is, thay were also used in other places. On the other hand,the dialectal terms recorded in GuangYun have witnessed certain changes in their uses:their usuable areas have been expanded, transferred, contracted or even stopped to ext i st. D i a I ects are liable to being borrowed when two adjacent dialects contact with or influence each other.So far, the evolutions of dialectal terms have been in a contradictory movement of promotiont, transfer, contraction or disappearance since ancient times.The homographs in GuangYun reflect the variations in pronunciation of the dialects. Though the adjacent dialectal terms are subject to assimi lation,the homographs from different dialects usually retain their original pronunciations according to GuangYun, and they are mirrors of the differences of various dialects in pronunciation.