Wenzhou Dialect Speech Research

This thesis is a comparative research of Wenzhou Dialect in the frame of historical phonology and the theory of linguistic variation and change .Compared with previous studies in this field, this thesis analyzes the order of the sound evolution, then tries to combine the change in Wenzhou Dialect with the theory of linguistic variation and change to confirm the rule of sound change.This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the area and the history of Wenzhou Dialect, its previous studies, the purpose and structure of this thesis. Chapter 2 describes all kinds of consonants in Wenzhou Dialect, and then analyzes the fact that people often confuse h with f when they combined with u or the compounding vowels whose medial sound is u in Wenzhou and the reason that there is only one kind of u which is not rounded in Wenzhou dialect, and there are two kinds of u in mandarin where no one should confuse f with h when they combined with u or the compounding vowels beginning with u : one is rounded and the other is unrounded, but they are complementary. Then this thesis discusses the phenomenon of palatalization in Wenzhou Dialect and presents three principles: (1) y is more likely to make the consonants palatalize than the compounding vowel whose medial sound is y; (2) the compounding vowel whose medial sound is y is more likely to make the consonants palatalize than the compounding vowel whose medial sound is i ;(3) the compounding vowel whose medial sound is i is more likely to make the consonants palatalize than i. Chapter 3 analyzes the system of vowels of nine places in Wenzhou and confirms the three principles of vowel shifting presented by William Labov. Chapter 4 especially analyzes the disappearance of the medial sound u, and analyzes what kind of consonant is more likely to conserve the medial sound u, which can be formalized as: labial>laryngeal>radical>apical. The labial is rounded itself, so it is most likely to conserve the medial sound u. The space between the laryngeal and u is big enough to articulate a whole sound. But there is almost no space between apical and u , so the medial sound u is most likely to disappear. This phenomenon is also linked with the attribute of u . This movement is launched from urban area to suburb.