The Sound Is Jiyun Variant Pronunciation Word Study

Wuyin jiyun, or Gaibing wuyin jiyun known as its full title, is a rhyme book recompiled by Han Daozhao, who based it on the revision of Jing Pu’s Wuyin jiyun. Han’s Wuyin jiyun for the first time merges rhymes in Guangyun into160categories, and its novelty lies in that it employs the compilatory method of rhyme charts, and arranges each rhyme based on36letters,dengdi, and kaihe, which exerts a tremendous influence on the compilation of rhyme books of later times.The compilation of Wuyun jiyun adopts Guangyun and Jiyun as its exemplars, supplements documents of phonetic materials such as Yupian and Longkan shoujing, and incorporates the compiler’s own critical judgment of pronunciation. As a result, the Wuyin jiyun contains rich and layered phonetic structures, and is of great value to the research on the history of phonetic development of classical Chinese.The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter reflects on the investigatory background of the Wuyin jiyun, the significance of the subject as a thesis topic, methodology and procedures. The second chapter introduces the compilation of variant pronunciation characters, their phonetic notation and semantic definition. The third chapter categorizes the complex system of variant pronunciation characters. The fourth chapter, from the perspective of historical documentary transmission, traces the source of the variant pronunciation characters, particularly focusing on those newly introduced variant pronunciation characters in the Wuyin jiyun. The fifth chapter discusses the reflection of the characteristics of the contemporary pronunciation based on variant pronunciation characters. The sixth chapter, also the conclusion, on the one hand supplements what Ning Jifu has proposed as "The Second Phonetic System," on the other hand, summarizes the characteristics of the variant pronunciation characters in the Wuyin jiyun.