A Study Of Zhiyin Of Lv Zuqian’s Phonetic Notation Work

Lv Zuqian(吕祖谦),a representative figure of Southern Song Confucianism,was born in Wuzhou(now Jinhua,Zhejiang)and was the founder of the"Eastern Zhejiang School"(浙东学派).He,together with Zhu Xi(朱熹)and Lu Jiuyuan(陆九渊),is known as the"Three Masters of Southern Song Taoism"(南宋道学三先生).Lv Zuqian once set up a college to teach for the imperial examination,and wrote books and theories for this purpose as a teaching material for professors.In recent years,The Complete Works of Lv Zuqian(《吕祖谦全集》)has been published in 16 volumes with over 8 million words,including 26 existing works of Lv’s,covering various aspects of confucian classics,history,philosophy and literature.Among them,there are six types of Lv’s phonetic annotation books.There are a total of 4154 phonetic annotation materials(excluding repetition),including five categories:Fan Qie(反切),Zhi Yin(直音),"Four-tones"(四声),"Ru Zi",(如字)and"Xie Yin"(叶音).Among them,Zhi Yin is annotated with homophonic characters,which has the characteristics of simplicity and clarity,and is convenient for teaching and reading.It is one of the main phonetic annotation methods used by Lv’s book annotation.Zhi Yin have strong practicality and are valuable for analyzing actual speech sounds at the time.Lv Zuqian had served as an imperial examination examiner and proofreader for many times,so his Zhi Yin provided the pronunciation standards of written language at that time,and to some extent reflected the reading pronunciation before the Song Dynasty.At the same time,it did not exclude some features of the early Wu language.This article takes all 1292 pieces of orthographic materials in Lv’s phonetic annotation book as the research object.It first conducts an investigation and analysis from aspects such as style,classification,quantitative statistics,sources,collation,and the frequent pronunciation of polyphonic orthographic characters.Then,using comparative methods,it compares the orthographic"phonology"summarized in Guang Yun(《广韵》)with Lu Deming’s Jing Dian Shi Wen(《经典释文》).In addition,by comparing the"phonology"of the straight tone with the phonology of Zhu Xi’s Shi Ji Zhuan(《诗集传》)and Zheng Qiao’s Er Ya Zhu(《尔雅注》)of the same era,we can analyze the similarities and variations of the sound,rhyme,and tone of the Zhi Yin.Finally,it concludes the phonetic system of Lv’s Zhi Yin:a total of 38 initial consonants,26 rhyme parts,and a system of eight tones.Through comparison,it is found that some scholars in the past believed that Lv’s phonetic notes were not accurate enough to follow Lu’s Shi Wen statement,but there were still many differences between the two.That is,Lv’s direct pronunciation reflected the actual pronunciation of the Southern Song Dynasty on the basis of inheriting the past reading pronunciation.This can be corroborated by comparing the phonetic notes in Zhu Xi’s Shi Ji Zhuan and Zheng Qiao’s Er Ya Zhu.Since the straight sound reflects the"current pronunciations",it naturally presents some characteristics of the Wu dialect in the Southern Song Dynasty.