Morphophonology In Middle And South Dialects Of Hebei Province

Due to grammaticalization or meaning losing,certain suffixes in Chinese may be reduced,causing rime change,initial change or tone change,which are distinguished from sound change or sandhi in the course of historical study of languages.While Z Rime Change and D Rime Change have been described in many dialects of Shanxi,Shandong,and Henan provinces,the morphonology-riched Hebei Dialect(s)have largely been overlooked in this regard.Three rime change phenomena are attested in the middle and south dialects of Hebei province,they are rime change caused by(1)the nominal suffix zi ?,(2)verbal suffix le ?,zhe ?,compositon X of “verb + X + locative word”,(4)structural marker de ?/?/?,and(5)er ? rime change characterized by syllabized consonant in consonant clusters.On the basis of our investigation at 103 dialectal sites,we described and analyzed those rime changes from the perspectives of their forms,types,geographical distribution with the help of descriptive linguistics,geographical linguistics,comparative linguistics and experimental linguistics.Internal and external comparisons are also taken into consideration to explore the sound change in history and their areal characteristics.This dissertation consists of nine chapters:The first chapter opens with a brief introduction of the middle and south dialects of Hebei province,the dialect divisions of them and especially the 28 counties where we are carrying out of our investigation.A review of previous studies,and some concepts and data resources can also be found in this chapter.Chapters 2 to 8 constitute the main part of this report.Discussions of zi ?,le ?,zhe ?,composition X and de ?/?/? are to be found in Chapter 2,Chapter 4,Chapter 5,Chapter 6 and Chapter 7,including description of all these suffixes and their merged forms,analysis of their sound and constituents,as well as their geographical distributions.Through comparing them with neighbor dialects,a macroscopic view are taken into consideration.Chapter 3 discusses the geographical distributions,diversions and attributions of er ? rime change,consonant cluster change,and syllabized consonant in consonant clusters.Flaps are also taken into consideration.Chapter 8 is a comprehensive study of previous chapters.It ends with three conclusions:(1)The suffix reduction in this area demonstrates mainly rime change,initial change and tone change.Monosyllablification can be found only in 35 sites.They form a morphonological area represented by Xing-Heng Region,which neighbors Zhao-Shen Region in the north and Cang-Hui Region in the east.On the west and south,in reaches Zhang-Hu region and Han-Xin region in the west and south respectively.(2)The suffix reduction ends in resemblance areally despite their origins,with [l?] as the most common form and [t?] following it.The program from suffixes to disappearance can be summarized as follows:(3)In most dialects investigated,suffixations are found to coexist with monosyllabification,showing mainly as merged and/or lengthened syllables.This shows that the rime change found in the middle and south dialect of Hebei province,compared with their counterparts in north dialects of Henan province and southeast dialects of Shanxi province,are still at the start line of monosyllabification...