A Study Of Phononogy Of Dialect In Huayuan Town, Xiaogan City

Xiaogan City is located in the northeast part of Hubei province, and Huayuan Town used to belong to Xiaogan City. Now it has already advanced to a county now, located in the north of downtown in Xiaogan City. The dialect in Huayuan Town represents the native accent of Xiaogan City, which has been investigated in Dialect Investigation Report in Hubei (it will be shortened as Report as follows). That is, Huayuan Town dialect represents Xiaogan dialect. It has 22 initials, 45 finals, 6 tones, and the finals have (?)-Type rhyme which is typical to Chu-yu(楚语). The rusheng (入 声) tone is an independent tone in the Huayuan Town dialect. Because of possessing these characteristics, Huayuan Town dialect was once grouped into "Chu-yu"(also called Huang-Xiao language region of JiangHuai mandarin). However, some scholars put forward different viewpoints on how to group it too. This paper has carried on investigation and analysis concerning about the phonological features of Huayuan Town dialect from the point of phonology in hope of providing material which is believed to support the classification of this dialect.This paper mainly describes the phonological system of Huayuan Town dialect, analyzes their characters and rules, and discovers that:1) In the aspect of tone, Huayuan Town dialect has independent rusheng (入声) tone. Qusheng (去声) is divided into yinqu (阴去) and yangqu (阳去), which intends to combine in the future.2) In the initial aspect, the initial "Zhi(知 )"and "Zhang (章 )"have been combined. "Zhuang (庄) " group is comparatively independent. Under the influence of modern mandarin in recent years, the "Zhuang (庄) " is going to get close to the groups of "Zhi(知) " "Zhang (章) "gradually. When the initial groups of "Zhi (知) ", "Zhang (章) " and "JianXiao (见晓) " meet the rhyme classes of "Yu (遇) ", "Shan (山) "and "Zhen (臻) ", it will become the initials "ts" today.3)In the aspect of finals,(?)-Type finals are the typical features of that dialect.The...