Phonetics And Phonology Of The Min Dialect In Hainan

The Hainan Min dialect is one of special part of Min dialects. The population speaking it is estimated at about five million. The study of the Hainan Min dialect was initiated by the famous linguistician, like Fang-Kuei Li, Zhan Bohui and Hashimoto etc. in 20 century. We want to represent how about the characteristics of Hainan Min dialect in this thesis through phonetics, experimental phonetics, phonology and linguistics geography.We give a brief introduction on chronological record about local gazetteer and the physical characteristics, especially the surface features, of Hainan island in the first two chapters of this thesis .The third chapter is phonetics of Hainan Min dialect. We confirm tones and sounds values of the Hainan Min dialect. It is concluded that in the Hainan Min dialect there are 16-19 initials, 30-55 finals and 6-8 tones(include sustained tones and abrupt citation tones). The fourth chapter is concerned with a comparative study of the Hainan Min dialect with historical phonology. The difference between the classification of sound in Guangyun and modern Hainan Min dialect are all presented in the table 4:l~4:66.Base on this we make sure the phonetic correspondence between modern Hainan Min dialect and ancient Chinese. In chapter 5, we discuss the polyphonetic characters in modern Hainan Min dialect, it include (1) literary reading and colloquial pronunciation, (2) Xundu. We carry forward our research in linguistic geography. We try to describe some characteristics by maps in chaper6. In chapter7 we give a comparative study of the Hainan Min dialect with other languages of Kam-Tai branch, Tebito-Chinese family. The eighth part is conclusion: the Hainan Min dialect as I saw it.