A Rhythm Textual Research Of The Quanzhou Traditional Liyuan Opera

The Quanzhou Traditional Liyuan Opera(梨园戏)is one of the oldest opera in China, which is dating back more than800years of history. It is known as the "living fossil of ancient Nanxi(南戏)"This genre of opera retains many old sayings of Quanzhou dialect features because of its strict line of succession. It is helpful to understand dialect evolution from taking traditional classical repertoire as a threshold, making a comprehensive study of rhymes in local opera and discussing on language attributes of local opera.In this paper, we take a systematical revision and analysis on three genres of Liyuan Opera in exhaustive, and figure out the frequency occurrence of each rhyme words. Based on the data, we conclude that the Quanzhou traditional LiYuan Opera rhyme system consists of20rhymes, which are including83finals.On the basis of the comprehensive investigation of the Liyuan Opera rhyme, we draw the following conclusions:First, it is hard to form a sole rhyme category for Ru Rhyme(入声韵)in Liyuan Opera rhyme. Second, the most two significant attributes of LiYuan Opera rhyme are:the cross-rhyme exists among finals and three positive endings"-m、-n、-η" can be cross-rhymed. Third, there is a high consistency on Liyuan Opera rhyme from Ming and Qing dynasties to the modern400to500years.The biggest difference between Liyuan Opera final system and Modern Quanzhou dialect final system is that a group of finals which have head vowels are disappeared. Based on the study of Liyuan opera final system, we can describe the phonological evolution track.To conduct a comprehensive study of the Liyuan Opera provides valuable and fresh materials for us to construct final systems both of Quanzhou dialect from Ming dynasty even earlier era and of Huiyinmiaowu(《彙音妙悟》)，it also be beneficial to study the evolution of the Fujian Southern local accent around400to500years.This study is not only contributing to further understanding of opera phonological system features and the clearance of some problems in opera history, but also can enrich the understanding of Chinese phonetic history. What’s more, it provides the impetus for research on history of the Modern Chinese Phonetics. The research results can also help local theater actors to understand the local opera phonetic system from the perspectives of phonetics and phonology; it can also be used for providing a reference of training new actors in the future.