Study On The Pronunciation System In Ma Shi Deng Yin

Ma Shi Deng Yin is a book of pictures on rhyming words and homophones by Ma Ziyuan, a scholar from Yunnan province in the Late Ming Dynasty and the Early Qing Dynasty. This book was written from about the tenth to the twentieth year of Kangxi (1671-1681). The thesis textually researches in detail the writer's life experience and the characteristics of his language environment, analyses the system of sound, rhyme and tone in this book and compares the link and difference between and among this book and another three dictionaries of rhyming words and homophones, i.e., Hong Wu Zheng Yun, Yun Lue Yi Tong, and Wu Fang Yuan Yin. Through the methods such as internal analysis, textual research and comparison, the thesis comprehensively explores the nature of pronunciation system in Ma Shi Deng Yin and the fact of development and change in the speech sound in official language of central plain from the year of Hong Wu Zheng Yun to that of Ma Shi Deng Yin, which lasts for more than three hundred years.We conclude that the phonetic basis of the pronunciation system in Ma Shi Deng Yin is the oral speech sound in official language in the southwestern district from the Late Ming Dynasty to the Early Qing Dynasty. But strictly speaking, the pronunciation system in this book does not exist. Just as other dictionaries that pursue "standard pronunciation", it is only an ideal pronunciation system for reading, a theoretically regulated one. On one hand, this system embodies bravely, objectively and accurately the features of the oral speech sound in official language in the southwestern district from the Late Ming Dynasty to the Early Qing Dynasty because of the influence of practical speech sounds in Jin language, Yunnan official language, etc. On the other hand, this system displays typical ancient characteristics in some aspects, but generally observes the rule of changes in pronunciation. This is because the system is not the practical description of a certain specific official oral speech sound, but the classification of Yun and the arrangement of characters on the basis of speech sound from different places and on that of prior dictionaries. Especially when it comes to some links of doubt and divergence, the system emphasizes the reference to prior dictionaries and regards it as the standard.