Shayan Phonetic Study

Shayan town is located in the southeast of Gaoyou City, its south is connected to Jiangdu City and its east is adjacent to Xinghua City .The special geography position make Shayan dialect since have the general characteristicses of Jianghuai dialect ,and then have some characteristicses of itself, so it has typical meanings and significant value in research. This paper takes the Shayan dialect as the research object and makes a systematic approach to its phonetic system through the traditional and modern experimental methods.The research indicated that Shayan dialect essentially belongs to the Jianghuai dialect and it has the transitional characteristic between Hongchao dialectal area and Tairu area of Jianghuai dialect.The paper consists of five chapters.In Chapter One, the author gives a brief introduction of the cultural setting and geographic traits, in addition, the author introduces the conditions of Shayan Dialect (including the main characteristicses and the internal difference of Shayan dialect) as well as former researchers do on this dialect.In Chapter Two, the author describes the phonetic system of Shayan dialect, including its eighteen initial consanants, fifty-nine vowels and five tones with traditional and modern experimental methods, among, the mono-syllable tone value and the sandhi value of the bi-syllable tone is got through the experiments, also dose the acoustic vowels chart. Then the article futher depicts their association and sound compounding and sound dropping phenomena about Shayan dialect, etc.In Chapter Three, the author collects one thousand and twelve groups of homonym and gives references to some of them.In Chapter Four, the author makes a comparison between Shayan dialect and Beijing dialect in order to find the rule of differences in pronunciation.In Chapter Five, the author makes a contract between Shayan dialect and medieval Chinese phonetics, and finds out the differences between them.