Research On The Evelution Of ’Ru Sheng’ Characters In Cixian Dialect Of Hebei Province

The research on the ’RuSheng’ characters of Chinese dialect has always been one of the important issues in academic research.There are ’RuSheng’ characters ending with a glottal sound in Cixian Dialect,which is classified as a small piece of Cizhang in Hanxin pian in Jin language district.There are numerous studies on the pronunciation of Handan ’RuSheng’ characters,but it is mainly focused on the study of the ’RuSheng’ characters extinction in the present-day Handan dialect,and Few people are interested in research on the diachronic evolution of ’RuSheng’ characters’in the Handan dialect in the context of the history of modern Chinese phonology.On the basis of the corpus obtained from field investigation,this paper makes quantitative statistics and analysis on the evolution of the rhyme and tone of‘RuSheng’characters among the old,middle and young generations in Cixian dialect.Among the elderly,the rate of the Cixian dialect’s transformation from’RuSheng’ to ’ShuSheng’ is 34%,which is as high as 67%among the young generations.The tendency of transformation from ’RuSheng’ to ’ShuSheng’ among the three generations is more or less the same.The full voiced initials are the easiest to transform from ’RuSheng’ to ’ShuSheng’.After the transformation,the full voiced initials are mostly classified as rising tone,while the voiced initial consonants and sub-voiced initial consonants are mostly classified as yin tone.In Cixian dialect,literary and colloquial readings are systematic.By analyzing the old and new literary readings,we found that the early source of the literary readings of the’RuSheng’ characters in the Cixian dialect was the Daming dialect or the widespread Hebei dialect,which refers to the dialect areas where don’t exist ’RuSheng’ characters in Hebei Province except Daming,Jingxing and Weixian.And later it was mainly influenced by the horizontal spread of Mandarin.At the synchronic level,this paper compares Cixian dialect with other six counties in Handan,Pingshun dialect in Shanxi and Anyang dialect in Henan.It is found that the retention rate of ancient ’RuSheng’ characters in Handan dialect is decreasing from west to east,and the vowel tongue position in Cixian dialect is lower than other counties after the transformation from ’RuSheng’ to ’ShuSheng’.And the nasal rhyme i? is a unique rhyme category in Cixian dialect.The obvious differences between Pingshun dialect,Anyang dialect and Cixian dialect are as follows:after the transformation from ’RuSheng’ to ’ShuSheng’,no matter whether the initials are clear or voiced in Pingshun dialect,most of them are classified as falling tone;In Anyang dialect,most of the voiced initial consonants and sub-voiced initial consonants are classified as falling tone,which is rarely classified as falling tone in Cixian dialect.At the diachronic level,there are many similarities between "Xi Ru Er Guang Zi"and Cixian dialect in terms of the classification of rhymes of ’RuSheng’ characters and the merging of rhymes.We believe that "Xi Ru Er Guang Zi" partially absorbed the Shanxi dialects and the voice of the Central Plains at that time when recording sounds,which provides new ideas and materials for the discussion of the phonological basis of the "Xi Ru Er Guang Zi".From three aspects:the classification of ’RuSheng’characters’ rhymes,the literary level of ’RuSheng’ characters’ and tone of’RuSheng’,it is found that Yuan Yun Pu,Wu-fang Yuan Yin and Zhuo An Yun Wu all embody the inheritance and development of Zhong Yuan Yin Yun.Comparing Cixian dialect with the five rhymes of Dang(宕),jiang(江),Zeng(曾),geng(梗),tong(通)in the phonology of Zhong Yuan Yin Yun,we can be sure that Cixian dialect is not the direct successor of Zhong Yuan Yin Yun.And the phonetic basis of the Zhong Yuan Yin Yun does not include the Handan dialect.