晋语邯新片汤阴方言入声韵变化的社会英语语言学调查研究

Chapter 1 Introduction 

1.1 Background of the present research 
Entering tone (also known as Ru tone), a tone value spoken by Middle Chinese, is  made  up  of  three  different  plosive  terminal  [-p],  [-t],  [-k],  with  a  short pronunciation  (Gu,  1980).  Nowadays,  it  gradually  disappeared  in  most  regions  of China or preserved a glottal stop ending [?] in some dialects, such as Wu dialect and Jin  dialect  (Wen,  1997).  In  the  northern  Henan  province  there  are  39  cities  and counties’  dialect  belonging  to  Han-Xin  sub-dialect  area  which  is  one  branch  of  Jin dialect,  and  Tangyin  county  is  one  of  them  where  entering  tone  exists,  yet  limited attention  has  been  paid  to  the  studies  on  Tangyin  dialect.  This  research  intends  to study  on  the  change  of  finals  of  entering  characters  in  Tangyin  dialect  from  a sociolinguistic perspective. As  described  in  “Atlas of Chinese language”,  Jin  dialect  is  spoken  by approximately  63  million  people  over  most  of  Shanxi  province,  not  including  the lower  Fen  River  valley;  much  of  central  Inner  Mongolia;  adjoining  areas  in  Hebei, Henan,  and  Shaanxi  provinces.  Li  (1985)  described  the  most  significant characteristic  of  Jin  dialect  as  possessing  entering  tone  is  a  key  factor  as  an independent  dialect.  While  in  recent  decades,  Jin  dialect  is  changing  with  the development of our society, especially in the evolution process, the characteristic of entering  tone  is  gradually  disappearing,  then  what  kind  of  new  features  and  new variations of entering characters would appear will reflect the future development of Jin  dialect.  Along  with  its  extremely  special  significance,  studies  of  entering  tone have been a focus of phonetic study of Jin Chinese. Over  the  past  decades,  a  series  of  significant  articles  have  contributed  to  a growth in the study of entering tone of Jin Chinese. Researches on the entering tone mainly focus on 2 categories. One is studies on the finals of entering characters and the  Shuhua  of  entering  tone  (e.g.  Wen  &  Hou,  1986;  Wen,  1997;Hou,  1999;  Xing, 2000;  Cui,  2000;  Fan,  2004).  The  other  is  the  analysis  of  its  features  and  the changing  process  of  entering  tone  (e.g.  Wang,  1990;  He,  1996;  Sun,  2005;  Chen, 2008). For example, Sun (2005) points out that the Shuhua of Ru tone in some places of  Shanxi  is  related  to  the  voice. 
.........

1.2 Significance of the present study 
Present study on the entering tone variation among tri-generation of Chengguan town in Tangyin county has both theoretical and practical significance.

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4