The Research Of Aspiratedness Of Ancient Voiced Plosive By Studying Chinese Dialects

According to phonology of "Qieyun", the Initials of Middle Ancient Chinese was in a systematic order, which was featured by the corresponding system of voiced consonants and voiceless consonants, such as Bang (voiceless)-Pang (half-voiceless)-Bing(voiced)-Ming (half-voiced). Voiced consonants, including "Bing, Feng, Ding, Cheng, Cong, Xie,Chuang (Chong, chuan), Shan, Qun, Xia".These voiced consonants were changed into voiceless in modern Chinese Mandarin and most of Chinese dialects. You can just find some voiced consonants in Wu dialect and parts of Xiang dialects. Research on the evolution of the voiced consonant, has been the focus of history for Chinese language and Chinese dialects. Previous study was based on the analysis of a large number of historical documents and dialects materials, focused on the present pronunciation and historical evolution of voiced consonants, which achieved fruitful results, but there are still many problems with the argument, it is worth to be further explored.On the basis of previous research, this paper select Bing、Ding、Cheng and Qun consonant as object, to describe their pronunciation in modern Chinese dialects, to analyze the order of evolution for these consonants, and dig evidence from the related relatives of language material and historical documents.Hoping that through this research, we can deduce whether the ancient voiced plosive aspirated or not, and to provide more materials and evidence for the research of this field.The first chapter is to introduce the difference of voiceless and voiced consonants as well as the corresponding system of voiceless and voiced consonants in some dialects.The second chapter selectes the representative dialects from the seven major dialect areas,and describes the aspiratedness of ancient voiced plosive in these dialect areas. According to the evolution of the situation, we can deduce whether the ancient obstruent consonants aspirated or not,.Chapter Three adds some unaspirated evidence, including phonology of "Qieyun" of the WuDai dynasties and Sino-Sanskrit phonetic contrast and transliteration materials.Chapter4explores the source of voiced consonants in modern Chinese dialects, which inconcludes two main reasons,one is the evolution of the language itself,the other is language contact.The last chapter summarizes the major modern Chinese dialects’speech performance,and find that the ancient obstruent consonants should be unaspirated.