Initial Explore Of The Pronunciation Changing Track And Changing Consecution Of Frequently-used Ancient Entering Tone Characters

The current research on the evolution of pronunciation mainly lies in the pack-up and sum-up of the materials as a whole, while we rarely see the analysis for the evolution of pronunciation of each single character of a specific type. The present pronunciation evolution rules are mostly a conclusion of the general rules when taking the evolution as a whole. However, they are more complicated elements which have influence on pronunciation evolution if we transfer our attention from the commonness of the pronunciation of every single character during its evolution to the uniqueness of each one. This diversion will lead the research of pronunciation evolution to a more detailed and truthful result, which is very meaningful in ways of constructing the pronunciation history of Chinese, facilitating the standardization of Chinese and promoting Chinese teaching.Because of the huge amount of the Chinese characters and restrictions due to various conditions and factors, this essay focuses on picking up a small amount of characters to probe into their pronunciation evolution one by one. The pronunciation evolution of frequently-used ancient entering tone characters is much more complicated than ordinary shusheng characters. Though there is lots of research on this subject, none of them sort the pronunciation evolution of frequently-used ancient entering tone characters one by one. The essay will explain in graphics the pronunciation evolution of every frequently-used ancient entering tone characters since <>《(李氏音鉴》). And in the third part of the essay, some major evolution rules will be drawn from the explanation, demonstrated and illustrated one by one in details. Based on the << frequently-used Characters of Contemporary Chinese (2500 characters)>> (《现代汉语常用字表(2500字)》)issued in 1988 and <> (《古今字音对照手册》)edited by Ding Shengshu, the essay lists 405 frequently-used ancient entering tone characters and comparing the pronunciation and meaning with the same ones in <>(《康熙字典》),《Mr. Li's Pronunciation Research;Article on Northern Pronunciation of Rusheng》(《李氏音鉴·北音入声论》)(1810),《Dictionary of Chinese Pronunciation》(《国音字典》)(1949)and《Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese》(《现代汉语词典》)(fifth edition, 2005)From the essay we can conclude that the pronunciation evolution of ancient rusheng characters is complicated and almost each character has its own characteristics, behind which there are various reasons including: 1. the more or less of the meanings of the character result in the more or less ways of pronouncing the character. 2. the difference of pronunciation in colloquial and literary increase the ways of how the character can be pronounced, which is very usual among the frequently-used ancient entering tone characters 3. the reason of local dialect and grammar. 4. the influence of classified-pronunciation on ancient entering tone characters 5. the conscious and unconscious pronunciation rules reduce the ways of how ancient entering tone characters can be pronounced. Besides these, keeping ancient words will increase the pronunciation ways of some ancient entering tone characters. Among the reasons above, the first two have the most significant influence on the pronunciation evolution of the frequently-used ancient entering tone characters.