A Research On Zixue Yuanyuan

Wuxiantang Zixue Yuanyuan, (Zixue Yuanyuan for short), is an important rhyme book in the history of modern Chinese phonology, which covers rich content of dengyun (a term used in ancient Chinese phonology), the exposition of phonological theory, the analysis of diagram of rhyme .Although previous scholars have discussed the nature of Zixue Yuanyuan, the research of the phonological nature is not complete at all. Therefore it is important to make an all-round study the modern phonological system of Zixue Yuanyuan.By careful study of the book, we find there are standard sound and dialectal sound in the phonology.For the standard sound, the consonants presented in the Zixue Yuanyuan retain the 36 zimu (ancient Chinese initial consonants) of the phonological system of ancient Chinese. For the vowels of Chinese syllable, there are some difference between those in the Zixue Yuanyuan and the phonological system of ancient Chinese. For the tone, there are ping shang qu ru ( four tones in ancient Chinese phonology ) . The phonological system of the standard sound, is a written form system, namely, common Mandarin form.of that time, which mingles the sound of the past and the present.For the dialectal sound, it is thought as the wrong sound by Yuan Zishang, but it reflects the dialectal phononlogical system of Chenzhou in the 16th century. From the view of the initial consonant , the sonore has changed into sourde. The initials of zhi zhuang zhang jing has mingled;Ni niang has merged, so has fei fu, yi yu has splited. ri (some initial consonants in ancient Chinese) read as nasal. From the view of vowels of Chinese syllable, the pre-nasal finals ofzeng geng (vowels in ancient Chinese) has disappeared, ru has disappeared and then mingled into yingshengyun (vowels in ancient Chinese). From the view of the tone, Ping has mingled with the ring tone and the high and level tone. Ru has mingled with the high and level tone part of shang with the falling tone. The dialectal sound is largely identical but with minor differences with present phonology of Chenzhou, which proves the phonology of Chenzhou in the Ming Danasty has become theMandarin form.