An Investigation On The Entering Tones Of Yangqu Dialect

Entering tone is a kind of linguistic phenomenon which exists in some of Sino-Tibetan language system. Generally speaking, entering tone is really short and rapid. Entering tone is one of the four tone values in ancient Chinese. Nowadays, there is no entering tone in most of the dialects in China. It mainly exists in Taiyuan, Suzhou, Nanjing and Guangzhou. The Jin dialect district is the place where entering tones mainly exist. Just because of its existence, Jin dialect could be an independent language branch in China.Yangqu county, as a historical county firstly built in West Han dynasty, is a small county in the middle of Shanxi province. As the first city in Shanxi province, its name is from the river Futu. The dialects there are really chracteristic which few scholars have ever given a systematical research on them. Shanxi dialects can be divided into six districts according to the existence of entering tone and the fourth tone value in the dialect, they are the middle area, the west area, the north area, the south east area, the south west area and the north east area. There are twenty one cities and counties in this dialect system. Because of the differences in the system, there are small groups. Yangqu dialect belongs to the Jinyang group in Bingzhou area. Under the influence of Taiyuan and Xinzhou dialects, Yangqu dialect owns its characteristics. The dialect there can be divided into three groups:the center of Yangqu, the west Yangqu and the east Yangqu. Meanwhile, they have something in common, for example, the preservation of the ancient entering tones and the Shuhua of entering tones.This thesis mainly researches the current pronunciation and the historical changes of the entering tones in these three areas. By studying the pronunciations by the old person, the middle-aged person and young person, the existence and change of entering tones can be found. This research investigates the entering finals and the tone values of Yangqu county comprehensively, it is significant for the research of dialect there.