A Study On The Phonetic Characteristics Of Lanzhou Dialect

Lanzhou, the political, economic and cultural center of Gansu province, was a place of strategic importance on the Silk Road. Since the1950s, it has developed from a consumer city into a new industrial city. Once the only artery of the Silk Road, the city now become the junction station of Lanzhou-Xinjiang, Lanzhou-Qinghai, Baotou-Lanzhou railways, as well as the master station of highway station and the aviation center in Gansu province.Lanzhou dialect was a northwest sub dialect subordinate to the dialect of north China."Qin language"(used in the area around Xi’an) is closely related with the "language branch in Qin-long district", and is the representative of Mandarin language used in Jinchen. Different from mandarin Chinese, Lanzhou dialect has27initial consonant, with pf, pf h, z, v that are not included in mandarin. As for compound vowel, the number in Lanzhou dialect is four less than in mandarin, for there is no differentiation between front and back nasals in (?)-type nasal rhyme. There are four citation tones in Lanzhou dialect which correspond to level tone, rising tone, falling tone, entering tone in mandarin. In old entering tone characters, voiced sound belongs to rising tone, while sub voiced sound and unvoiced sound to falling tone, which have nothing in common with mandarin. Lanzhou dialect is a typical Lan Yin official language, and has great influence on dialects in northwest or even north China.In the19th century, Klas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren first systemized Lanzhou dialect based on modern Chinese linguistics. Of all the research findings, Lanzhou Dialect by the language research group of department of Chinese language and literature, Lanzhou University has attracted the greatest attention for it systemically introduced the pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary of Lanzhou dialect. The research on Lanzhou dialect has had further development since the1980s. However, researchers mainly focused on the above mentioned aspects and didn’t analyze the reason for the development of new Lanzhou dialect; and didn’t contrast the new dialect with the old. The author tries to supplement in these aspects.The paper consists of five chapters. The first chapter:General Introduction. The part mainly gives a general introduction to Lanzhou and the partitions of Lanzhou dialect as well as overview, significance of the subject, research method and source of materials of the paper. The second chapter is about the tone, rhyme and tune of Lanzhou dialect. From the above mentioned three aspects, the paper illustrates the pronunciation characteristics fully and systematically. In the third chapter, the author compares Lanzhou dialect with ancient Chinese phonology in the aspects of initial consonant, compound vowel and tone. In the fourth chapter, the author discusses several characteristics of Lanzhou dialect, mainly including literary and colloquial readings, internal differences, phonetic changes and the influence of ethnic groups’languages on the dialect. The fifth chapter is about the phonetic change of Lanzhou dialect. By comparing the old Lanzhou dialect with the new one, the author summarizes the characteristics, rules and influential factors of changes in Lanzhou dialect.