A Study On The Phonology Of The Jiaocun Dialect

Jiaocun, belonging to the region of Old Xuanzhou in history, is one of the villages of Huangshan county in Anhui province. Its dialect belongs to the Wu dialects in Xuanzhou.Based on the materials of survey and the comparison from synchronic and diachronic levels, the thesis lists a homophony syllabary of the Jiaocun dialect; summarizes some critical phonological characters; probes the laws of phonetic changes in the Jiaocun dialect and the relationship with the dialects of the surrounding areas.The thesis consists of the introduction and the body.In the introduction part, the author briefly describes Jiaocun's circumstances of geography, history, immigration, dialect and so on; then expounds the related study results of the Wu dialects in Xuanzhou and the significance of studying the Jiaocun dialect, and finally presents the structure of the body.The body is composed of four chapters. To begin with, the author minutely describes the phonetic system of the Jiaocun dialect, including its initial, final, tone, and homophony syllabary. Seeing that the dialect is on the brink of disappearance, it is very important to record and keep its phonetic system. Next, in chapter 2, the author makes a comparison of the Jiaocun dialect from synchronic and diachronic levels, and summarizes 24 pieces of phonological characteristics of the dialect, among which 7 pieces are related to the initial, 13 pieces to the final, 2 pieces to the tone, and 2 pieces to the syllable structure. Meanwhile, the author probes that the Jiaocun dialect is deeply affected by Jianghuai Mandarin; and it also has a close connection with the dialects in Huizhou. Chapter 3 is devoted to analyze the exceptions of laws that are summarized according to phonetic changes. The products of these exceptions are mainly attributed to the borrowings from other dialects, the conservation of oral phonetics, the remains of historical phonetics, erroneous pronunciation and the modified phonetics in the course of continuous pronunciation. Chapter 4, the study of the special subject, analyzes two special instances: one is about the changes of completely muddy initials, and the other is that [-i-] medial occurs in the division I (—等韵) in the Jiaocun dialect.