A Study On The Notes

As a Dian-Zhi-Ti historical writing,Tong Dian describes the reform and change of the political and economic system during the long history.It is a significant historical document to study the politics,economy,civilian official,legal institution, ceremony,territory and diplomatic of Tang Dynasty and the middle ancient in China.The recent research of Tong Dian are most about the politic,economy,historical view etc..But there is merely research about the phonetic notations in Tong Dian.The phonetic notations are important elements of Tong Dian,after checking,we find 1290 phonetic notations(eliminate the repetition).Most of them are annotated by the author himself.The annotation forms are Fanqie and Zhiyin,such as,“煴,於问切”、“繶,音忆”.The author Du You was in politics for sixty years and worked for six emperors,he held posts from the local governments to the central governments.In766B.C.Du You began to compiled Tong Dian and finally made it in 801B.C.It took such long time and covered such large place so that the phonetic notations in it can help us to study the law of the historical Chinese phonetics’change during Middle and late Tang Dynasty better.This thesis selects three editions of Tong Dian to compare and analysis. Firstly,we collate the phonetic notation’s phonological system including the initials and finals. Then, study the special phonological phenomenon different from Guang Yun phonological system. At last,we get the relationship between Tong Dian’s phonetic notation and the law of the historical Chinese phonetics’ change during Middle and late Tang Dynasty.There are five chapters in this thesis:Chapter one introduces Du You’s life and the editions of Tong Dian,the precious studies and the research value,the materials and methods of Tong Dian’s phonetic notation.Chapter two describes the initials’ system of Tong Dian’s phonetic notation.The initials’ classification is on the basis of Chinese Language History Draft written by Wang Li.Chapter three describes the finals’ system of Tong Dian’s phonetic notation.As to the initials,we also depend on the Chinese Language History Draft to classify the finals.The Fanqie comparison method and Xilian method are both used here.We compare Tong Dian’s phonetic notation to Guang Yun phonological system,then make sure their classes by Guang Yun.Chapter four arrangements the special phonetic phenomena in Tong Dian’s phonetic notation including the initials,the finals,the tones and the relationship between different rhyme systems.Chapter five concludes the relationship between Tong Dian’s phonetic notation and the law of the historical Chinese phonetics’ change during Middle and late Tang Dynasty like devoicing,the mixing between the initial duan(端) and zhi(知),the mixing in the rhyme zhi(止) and the phenomenon of “lower rising tone becomes falling tone”.Finally,we summarize the phoneme groups and the rhyme system of Tong Dian’s phonetic notations.