Western Missionaries Data Evolution, Seen In Modern Shanghai Dialect Voice

The aim of this thesis is to study the phonological changes that occurred in the Shanghai dialect from the middle of the 19th century to the early part of the 20th century on the basis of the linguistic data of foreign missionaries. In order to carry out this research, a few historical linguistic concepts such as reconstruction and basic vocabulary, etc., have been introduced. The contents of this study may be summarized as follows:In Chapter 2, the validity of the missionaries' linguistic data are thoroughly examined, and their data are proven to be highly reliable, except McGowan(1862), which should be subject to further in-depth verification.In Chapter 3, nationalities, academic backgrounds, profession of the missionaries and their works and writings on Chinese language and linguistics are introduced, followed by a bibliographical, data of each book that has been consulted.Chapter 4 observes and analyzes the phonological change of the Shanghai dialect on the basis of the phonemes occurring in the common vocabulary that have been chronologically rearranged. In addition, using the results of the phonological change, the phonological system is also reconstructed for each set of data.In Chapter 5, the phonological change of the Shanghai dialect is also examined from the standpoint of the syllable structure, using the characters that have undergone typical formal change. Furthermore attempt is made to interpret phonological changes occurring in each set of data as adequately as possible; that is, to ensure maximal explanatory adequacy, as follows:1) Dates of change of the modern Shanghai dialect is divided into three periods as follows: Period 1:Port Opening(1843)～1900 Period 2:1900～before 1940 Period 3:from 1940～2) It has emerged from this study that palatalization occurred in the Shanghai dialect in the order of nasal (n), velars (k kh, h), and alveolars(ts, tsh, s).3) Weakening of voiced consonants in the Shanghai dialect began to appear in 1860s at the latest and it was most prominent in the voiced glottal fricative [6]. However, the missionaries'records failed to represent the sounds lacking in their language correctly by the relevant symbols, due no doubt to the interference of their native tongue. Thus, although the sound in question (together with a vowel) was described as a voiced sound, based on the fact that it was relatively lower in pitch than the voiced sound, it tended to be perceived by the missionaries as a voiceless aspirated sound when aspiration was weak. Consequently the fact that voiced sounds other than [(?)] were transcribed as voiced sounds in most of the data seem to indicate that the sounds other than [(?)] were pronounced with considerable aspiration.4) Implosives?b and?d(were mentioned solely by Edkins(1853) whereas other missionaries did not state anything about this unusual phenomenon and transcribed them simply as [p] and [t]. These implosives seem to have existed sporadically in the modern period and its frequency of occurrence in the data is very low. It is surmised, therefore, that implosives in the Shanghai dialect enjoyed the status of phonemes prior to the 19th century.5) Nasals [n] and [η] were in complimentary distribution at that time.6) 1850's, there were two entering tones(abrupt ending)-k and-? as the syllable coda in the Shanghai dialect, and k was allophone. in complementary distribution. But after 1900's there was one entering tone-?.-k was already m erged by -h.Besides, contrary to the expectation that the Shanghai dialect was a mixed dialect, no noticeable evidence was found at the phonological level. Further observations are no doubt required regarding this point in the future.