A Study On The Phonetic Variation Of The Ri-Initial In Xiantao Dialect

The rapid development of the local economy greatly promotes the popularization of Putonghua.As a special initial with salient local characteristics in Xiantao dialect,Ri-initials have seen the phonetic variations and changes under the influence of its contact with Putonghua.This study guided by language contact theory and speech accommodation theory applies sociolinguistic research methods such as tape-recording spontaneous conversations and observing daily conversations to collect natural corpus from 55 local people in Xiantao.Then the data are recorded and analyzed through Excel?2010?and Gold Varb X software.This thesis mainly focuses on three questions.What kind of changes happened to the pronunciation of Ri-initials in Xiantao dialect?How do the social and linguistic factors influence the phonetic variation of Ri-initial?What are the possible causes for such variations?The result shows the overall distribution of Ri-initials in Xiantao dialect.There are three variants of Ri-initials,including zero initials,[???]initials and[l]initials,among which,zero initials are the old form while the latter two are new forms.For instance,“?/y¹³/”reads as“/lu¹³/”,“?/ou³⁵/”as“/???ou⁵³/”and so on.[l]initials can be seen as a transitional form of the zero initials in Xiantao dialect during the transition to Putonghua.In Xiantao dialect,the speed of the local forms changing to the standard variant[???]on the structure of zero initials beginning with/i/or/y/is faster than that on the structure of zero initials beginning with nothing as well as the changes towards[l]initials.The pronunciation position of vowels and the frequency of use of Ri-initials in different positions affect the speed of change.Besides,social factors such as age,gender,education level and occupation have a certain impact on the phonetic variation of Ri-initials,among which,age,gender and education level show a greater impact,however,the significance of regional factors is not obvious.Young people are the main force in using the standard variants,while middle-aged and older people hardly use standard variants,and the educational level shows a positive correlation with the frequency of using standard variants,in addition,women generally pay more attention to their pronunciation than men,and use standard variants more frequently.The phonetic changes of Ri-initials in Xiantao dialect is affected by such factors as the vigorous promotion of Putonghua,the extensive use of social media,and the speaker's accommodation to different language environments.In general,this study enriches the research on the initial variation in Xiantao dialect and further recognizes the difference between Xiantao dialect and Putonghua,which not only contributes to the construction of local regional culture,but also helps provide relevant factual data for local language planning.