A Study On The Phonology Of Xingtang Dialect In Hebei Province

This paper takes the pronunciation of Xingtang dialect as the object of study,and describes the phonetic system of Xingtang dialect by collecting dialect data through field investigation.At the synchronic level,this paper compares the phonological differences of four dialect spots in the county,analyzes the contextual variations of Xingtang County Zhili Township dialect,such as tone sandhi and erhua,and at the diachronic level,this paper compares Xingtang dialect with the the middle Chinese sounds and analyzes its phonological characteristics.Finally,based on the typical features of Jin dialect,this paper discusses the attributes of Xingtang dialect.Apart from the introduction,the paper is divided into five chapters:The first chapter describes the initial,final and tone system of the four dialect points in Xingtang County,makes an experimental analysis of the tones of the four spots by using the T-value method,and obtains the fundamental frequency curve of tone,there are four tones in Zhili Township dialect,which are the level tone（24）,the rising tone（55）,the falling tone（51）and the entering tone（213）.According to the actual dialect,this paper combs pronunciation list,and finally combs the phenomenon of literary versus colloquial distinction.The second chapter is homophone vocabulary.Through the investigation,we have carried out a detailed collation of the characters frequently used in Xingtang dialect.The third chapter describes the contextual variations in Xingtang dialect,including tone sandhi of bi-syllabic form,er diminutive,assimilation and weakening and so on,and summarizes the changing rules of the dialect in the language flow,showing its synchronic features.The main conclusions are as follows:（1）there are 25 combinations of read two words together and 19 combinations of tone sandhi,most of which are reverse tone sandhi;In independent tone,the level tone does not distinguish between Yinping and Yangping;when the level tone are read with the voiced level,rising and falling tone,the former characters does distinguish between Yinping and Yangping;when the former characters are the falling tone,a fixed tone pattern will be formed.（2）erhua is rich in vowels,including two phonetic forms:the end of the vowel of the rolled tongue and the end of the marginal vowel,and a few syllables of the Zhi,Zhuang and Zhang groups are added with the vowel-like marginal vowel[（?）]after the initial consonant.Some old-school dialects also cause consonants to change.The fourth chapter compares the initial,final and tone of Xingtang dialect with those of the Middle Ages from a diachronic perspective and analyzes their phonological characteristics:1.Consonants:ancient initials group of Jing are pronounced in three different pronunciations:[（?）][（?）^h][s]、[（?）][（?）^h][（?）]and[t][t^h];Jian is pronounced differently from Tuan,that is[t][t^h][s]in the former while[（?）][（?）^h][（?）]in the later;2.Vowels:the nasal end of the Xian and Shan rhymes disappeared and the main vowels were nasalized;Some words of the close mouth of Xie and Zhi rhymes in Xingtang dialect read the opening mouth,such as“腿”[t^hei⁵⁵]、“对”[tei⁵¹]、“嘴”[（?）ei⁵⁵]、“醉”[（?）ei⁵¹]and so on.3.Tones:the level tone is not divided into Yinping and Yangping;the ancient entering tone retains the independent tone;a few Shangsheng characters come from ancient Pingsheng characters;the relaxation time of the characters with voiced initials is earlier than that of the characters with clear initials,and the relaxation speed of the characters with voiced initials is faster than that of the characters with clear initials.The fifth chapter discusses the attribution of Xingtang dialect.This chapter mainly summarizes the typical and universal features of Jin dialect except entering tone,and discusses whether Xingtang dialect belongs to Jin dialect.This paper also discusses the problem of“entering tone”,in which the ancient entering tone only retains independent tone category but no entering rhyme in modern dialects.Based on the tone representation in Shijiazhuang and the surrounding counties,we consider that it is inappropriate to regard the independent tone category of the middle ancient entering tone of Xingtang dialect as the entering tone,and should be regarded as the non-abrupt tone besides the level,rising and falling tone.After comparing the phonetic features of Xingtang dialect with the typical features of Jin dialect,we think that Xingtang dialect has more obvious features of Mandarin,which should not be classified into Jin dialect,but into Jilu Mandarin together with Xinle and Zhengding dialects.