A Linguistic Geographical Study Of Shaoxing Wu

For this thesis, I surveyed the dialects of more than 30 towns (or villages) in Shaoxing, mainly about their phonological and lexical systems, with the method of Linguistic Geography. Based on these data, this paper analyses the features among those distrinct accents in Shaoxing, for the exploration of the relationship between them.The outline of this thesis:The part of introduction gives a short history of Shaoxing and a brief overview of its topographic features and administrative divisions. My approach and the material sources are also accounted here. In this thesis, Linguistic Geography is an independent discipline which researches the development of language and its mechanism through an intensive investigation of a living language continuum.Under the scheme of the subgrouping of Shaoxing dialect, from Chapter Two to Chapter Four is the main part which analyzes the differences among those accents in detail. According to the analysis, the relationship of Shaoxing dialect can be summarized as "One Core, Two Cinctures". "One core" refers to the urban area. "Two Cinctures" are made up of "The First Cincture" and "The Second Cincture". The former refers to the Eastern and Southwestern Suburbs, and the latter refers to the Edge Region, including the Southern and Western Suburbs. The age differences among the Urban, East (Gaobu as an example) and Western Suburbs (Keqiaoas an example) are discussed in each part respectively.Chapter Five analyses the characteristics of the Junction Zones, taking Pingshui, Ma’an and Lizhu as examples to explore the further relationship between the accents of plain & hill area, and the Centre & Edge Region.Chapter Six explores the relationship between the age differences and regional differences through the view of "Apparent Time" and "Real Time".Chapter Seven summarizes the previous chapters. Based on the theory of "Distribution around Prefecture Center", I put forward that the distribution of the subgrouping of Shaoxing dialect is a kind of concentric distribution.Chapter Eight discusses the role of Shaoxing dialect in Wu dialects. It is obviously that Shaoxing dialect can be a prefect representative point of Wu.