Research On The Evolvements Of Chang-chew Dialect In The Past Over100Years Through Chinese-English Dictionary Of The Vernacular Or Spoken Language Of Amoy

Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular of Spoken Language of Amoy withthe Principle Variations of the Chang-chew and Chin-chew Dialects was written byCarstairs Douglas,1873. It reveals the characteristics of phonologic and vocabularyand has important values for the study of Minnan dialect in the last ninth century. Itmainly provides Amoy dialect, but it also presents the Chang-chew dialect, which isalso an assignable part. However, it has not studied yet until today.This paper sets the Chang-chew dialect from the Chinese-English Dictionary ofthe Vernacular of Spoken Language of Amoy as its basic object. With the traditionalinvestigation, analysis, inductive and comparative methods, we present the generalpicture of phonologic and vocabulary in that time. According to its dynamic evolutionfrom today, we attempt to outline the changes of dialectical phonologies andvocabularies and look at the factors that have affected the vocabulary evolvements inthe Chang-chew dialect in the past over100years.The part of phonological study analyses and compares the recordingpronunciation and phonology systems applied in expounds the phonologicalevolvements. On the basis of those researches, we investigate that: the initials havenot changed at all,[dz] is fully retained; the finals have changed a little, but just alittle. It has little impact on the whole phonological system.The study of vocabulary evolvements is the emphases of this dissertation. Topresent a general picture of vocabulary evolvements, we analyze the features and theword formations of Chang-chew dialect vocabularies. Through the diachroniccomparisons between its past and present, we find that some have still continued andhave not changed, some have decayed, and some have died off in the past over100years.Finally, we study the unbalancedness of the vocabulary evolvements from twoaspects including vocabulary classification and different ages. We also analyze thefactors affecting the vocabulary evolvements during the past over100years, such asthe changes of social life, concept, language planning and environment.