Phonological Aspects Of Heyuan Tuhua In Jiangyong County

Tuhua of South Xiang, which is the abbreviation of Hunan Province of China, has been surveyed and studied gradually from 1980s. Although these researches have provided us affluent resources about the local dialect, they were still insufficient. Therefore,it is difficult to find its ascription. During this period, Nüshu of Jiang Yong County gained people's attention and scholars went to study Nüshu from different angles. As far as Nüshu is concerned, research of Jiangyong Tuhua is the base of that of Nüshu. So, doing some researches and surveys about Jiangyong Tuhua has double significance. This thesis mainly concerns Heyuan Tuhua in Jiangyong county.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter, "Foreword", presents a summary of Jiangyong Tuhua and Nüshu's current research stage. This part also gives us some brief introduction about those pronouncing cooperators. The second chapter is "Horizontal description and induction". In this part, the author describes the phonetic system of Heyuan Tuhua and depicts Heyuan Tuhua Yunjing. This phonetic system includes 21 initials, 38 vowels and 5 tones. After this description, the author inducts Heyuan Tuhua has 674 syllables and then makes its homonym list. In the third chapter, "Vertical comparative research", the author compares roundly the sound and phonetic system of Heyuan Tuhua with that of "Guang Yun" and concludes its own characteristics. The fourth chapter is "Retrospecting the historical origin of Heyuan Tuhua". With historical and human background of Jiangyong, the author investigates the historical origin of Heyuan's dialect from the angles of administrative region and migration. In this way, the author seeks another kind of evidence about the research of Heyuan Tuhua. The last chapter, "Postscript", introduces the author's intention and reasons of writing this thesis as well as the writing process and research methods.After doing these studies, the author conjectures initially that Heyuan Tuhua should be ascribed to New Xiang dialect.