Phonetic Changes In Xi’an Dialect:a Study Based On The Comparison Of The Old-Style And New

As the capital of China for13dynasties, Xi’an has a profound cultural foundation. Many ancient words, expressions, sentence patterns and pronunciations have been reserved in its dialect. Thus Xi’an dialect is also called the living fossil of Chinese language. Studies of Xi’an dialect have attracted many scholars’attention. However, most of the researches focus more on the static description of the phonological system of Xi’an dialect, and few researches have been done to look into the current phonetic changes of Xi’an dialect.Based on the comparison of the old-style and new-style pronunciation of Xi’an dialect, this study aims to find out the phonetic changes occurred in Xi’an dialect. There are three research questions in this paper:1) Comparing with the phonological system described in Bai Dizhou’s Report on a Survey of the Middle-Shaanxi in Dialect Pronunciations, whether the phonological system of Xi’an dialect has experienced some kinds of change.2) What are the exact phonetic changes that occurred in Xi’an dialect?3) Why do these phonetic changes take place in Xi’an dialect and what is the internal mechanism of these phonetic changes?Both literature studies and field study methods will be applied in this study to find out the phonetic changes in Xi’an dialect. Speech data of both the old-style and new-style Xi’an dialect will be collected. Through the detailed data analysis and comparison, information about the phonetic changes and current condition of Xi’an dialect has been obtained. In the discussion part, social networks theory has been used to analyze the reason why these phonetic changes have occurred in Xi’an dialect. Models built on the basis of the feature geometry theory have been used to explain how these phonetic changes have occurred. The models also provide a clear view of the internal mechanism of the sound changes.Based on the above analysis and discussion, results show that1) the phonological system of both the old-style and new-style Xi’an dialect still remains the same as described by Bai Dizhou in1930s.2) There are altogether eight initial consonants and four syllable finals of Xi’an dialect which have been pronounced differently, and the sounds are [pf],[pf],[f],[v],[ts],[ts’],[s],[η],[uo],[ou],[uei], and [ue].3) Speakers’ social networks have a strong influence on their language behavior. Through the detailed analysis and description of the phonetic changes that have occurred in Xi’an dialect, this study will help people obtain a clear knowledge of the current development and phonetic condition of Xi’an dialect.