A Comparative Study On The Phonological Markedness Of Wujiang And Wenzhou Dialects From The Diachronic Perspective

The Wu dialects have been one of the focuses in dialectal studies for many years, but few people have done researches on the comparison of phonological structures among different subsets of Wu dialects. Based on the contemporary phonological theories, this thesis presents an analysis of the phonological structures of the two Wu dialects:a northern Wujiang dialect and a southern Wenzhou dialect, from the diachronic perspective. On the assumption that the more marked the phonological structure of a dialect is, the less intelligible it is with other dialects, the aim of this thesis is to analyze the phonological rules and constraints which configurate their diachronic changes from Middle Chinese in terms of the segmental phonology, syllable structure, tone system, and to examine the relationship between the markedness degree of the phonological structures and the intelligibility degree between the two dialects.In the studies of the Wujiang dialect and the Wenzhou dialect, different contemporary phonological theories are used to analyze their phonological structures to make the explanation as tenable as possible. An OT approach is applied to explain the different phonological structures of the two dialects, focusing on the diachronic sound changes of syllable initials in the two dialects, the theory of feature geometry is adopted in an analysis of assimilation of initials in Wenzhou dialect, and the particle approach in element theory is also used to illustrate diphthongization in Wenzhou dialect. For tone sandhi in the two dialects, asymmetry in directionality is found to be the most important characteristic. At last, the comparison of phonological markedness between the two dialects is made to testify the assumption of the relationship between the markedness degree of the phonological structures and the intelligibility degree.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One is an overall introduction about previous studies, working hypothesis and the significance of the present studies. Chapter Two introduces those foreign phonological theories used in this thesis. Chapter Three and Chapter Four describe the surface phonological forms of Wujiang and Wenzhou dialect and analyze the phonological rules lying behind the sound change from Middle Chinese to the present dialects. And Chapter Five makes a comparison on phonological markedness between the two dialects. Chapter Six is a conclusion of the analysis throughout the thesis.