History Of Chinese /a/

The research object /a/ in this paper is a variable sequence,which is open,inclusive and unstable.There are different ranges at different times and in different dialects.In standard words,/a/ refers to geyu vowel in the ancient times.Since then,the words from other finals into geyu vowel are also in our research scope.In dialect,due to the limited historical data of the dialect,for the convenience of research,we only limited the /a/ phonetic characters in the dialect part to those under the range of geyu of the ancient rhymes.As for the importance of the study of /a/,Wuyun Pan(2000:187)believes:“the determination of the sound value of yu vowel is an important work in the study of ancient Chinese sounds,This is because the phonetic value of Yubu is a,which is the most important sound in the vowel system of almost all languages.It is the origin of the coordinates in the vowel system.If the ancient rhyme part corresponding to it is determined,other rhymes can easily find its position.”However,its role is not limited to this,many later vowels are formed by its continuous improvement.Therefore,it is crucial to study the evolution of a at each stage to grasp the whole system of finals.At present,there is no systematic research on the /a/ history.This paper hopes to make a simple combing of this problem.This paper is divided into five chapters: the first chapter is the introduction,which mainly introduces the importance of Chinese /a/ sound history,the research ideas and methods of /a/ sound history,and the research status of predecessors.Chapter two and chapter three are the main body of this paper.The second chapter examines the historical evolution of /a/ in standard words in a chronological order.Through research,we draw a “ evolution trace map of /a/ in Chinese standard words”.The third chapter introduces the development of the /a/ sound in the representative points of each major dialect,and compares it with the /a/ sound in Modern Mandarin Chinese.The fourth chapter explains the reason of /a/ tone change.The fifth chapter summarizes this paper.