The Study Of The Phonetic System Of "Dictionnaire Chinois"

The speech sounds of Ming and Qing dynasties play an important part in Chinese phonetic history, especially the history of modern Chinese. Western scholars’ Romanised writings of the speech sounds are excellent materials for the study of Ming and Qing Mandarin, which are superior to the rhythmic dictionary and rhyme table."Dictionnaire Chinois" compiled by the Italian Franciscan priest Basilo Brollo was completed in1694-1700and was published by the French DeGuignes in Paris in1813. Although the dictionary was involved in a Plagiarismin history, it’s still of great value thanks to the contribution made by DeGuignes. The edition we have adopted in this paper is the1813Paris edition by DeGuignes.In this paper, statistical, descriptive and comparative methods are used to make detailed description and analysis of the consonants, vowels and tones of"Dictionnaire Chinois". Furthermore, comparison is made between "Dictionnaire Chinois" and "An Audio-Visual Aid to Western Scholars"、"Yu-yen Tsu-Erh Chi"、Romanised "Mandarin New Testament" to draw the nature of its sound system. For a complete discussion, the study is divided into five chapters.In the past the study was limited in the field of history. However, in this paper, we start the research from the perspective of phonology."Dictionnaire Chinois" has20consonants (excluding zero initial),51vowels(including23Yin rhyme,15Yang rhyme,and13Ru rhyme). There are five tones:Yinping, Yangping, Shangsheng, Qusheng and Rusheng. By comparison with the phonemic system of mediaeval Chinese and "An Audio-Visual Aid to Western Scholars",”Dictionnaire Chinois" reflects the phenomenon of devoicing, non-palatalization of Jian and Jing group, non-retroflexion of "Zhi Zhuang Zhang", independence of "Wei" consonant, disappearance of-m,the Ru terminal sound merging into glottal stop, opposition of Han and Huan, opposition of nasal and after nasal, homophony of Hekou word between Zhi and Jian series etc. Voiced Shangsheng words are partly read as Shangsheng and partly read as Qusheng.By analyzing the phonetic system of Dictionnaire Chinois", it enables us to know the early Qing Dynasty Mandarin. On the other hand, it helps to the study of the history of Chinese Mandarin speech. In this paper we are inclined to adopt the idea that the phonetic system of "Dictionnaire Chinois" has more similarities to the Nanking Kuan Hua. However, it also reflects some characteristics of the northern mandarin...