Song County (Cecun Town) Dialect Phonetic Research

Checun town is located in the south of Song county,Luoyang city.Checun dialect belongs to the Luo-Song subgroup of Zhongyuan Mandarin.On the basis of field investigation,this paper describes the phonetic system of Checun dialect,which is divided into six parts.The introduction introduces the geography and history of Checun town,the language belonging of the dialect,the study status,the purpose and methods of the study,the source of materials and the information of the pronunciation partners.The second chapter describes the phonology of Checun dialect.Checun dialect has twenty-four initials(including zero initials),thirty-nine finals and four tones.Then lists the phonological feature and the matching table of the initial,final and the tones.There exists the phenomenon of final variations with tones in Checun dialect,the finals from MC Xie,Xiao,Zeng,Geng and Tong rhymes falls into two neat types according to thier different prsent-day tones.The third chapter is the homophony syllabary.The fourth chapter describes the phonetic changes,including the tone sandhi,soft tone and retroflex suffixation.The tone sandhi of two-syllable group,three-syllable group and adjectives overlapping word are described and illustrated with examples.there is no fixed tone pitch for soft tone,and the tone varies according to the different types of the previous tones.Checun dialect has eight er diminutive finals,which ended by(?).The fifth chapter compares the past and prsent pronunciation of Checun dialect from initial,final and tone,and lists irregual words.The main features of Checun dialect are as follows:the sound of ancient voiced initials turning into voiceless.The sharp and round sounds are distinguished.The words of zhi,zhuang,and zhang groups have different initials of ts and ts.The finals of MC Xie,Zhi rhymes Fei groups are i now.The finals of MC Xie,Zhi rhymes Close Duan,Ni groups are ei now.The words of apical initials in Yu(excluding ZhiZhang groups)and entering tone of Tong rhymes merge into Liu rhyme.The finals of Duo,Yao and Jue rhymes read ?,u? and y?.De,Mo and Mai rhymes read (?) and u(?).In the aspect of tone,the ancient entering tone now is distributed into Yingping and Yangping.The entering tone of voiceless and sub-voiced words now read Yinping,the voiced words now read Yangping.The sixth chapter compares Checun dialect with Songxian,Luoyang and Nanyang dialects,and analyzes the differences.The difference between Checun dialect and Songxian dialect is small.The difference between Checun dialect and Luoyang dialect is mainly the pronunciation of Yi initial,Ying initial,and Yu,Xie,Zhi rhymes.The difference between Checun dialect and Nanyang dialect is mainly the pronunciation of Wei initial,ZhiZhuangZhang groups,and Jia rhyme Open third-grade Zhang group.In Checun dialect,the initial of Ri in Zhi rhyme Open third-grade groups reads 1,which is different with Songxian,Luoyang and Nanyang dialect.