A Survey And Research On The Pronunciation Of Longzhong And South Dialects

This paper investigates and studies the dialects of south-central Gansu Province. The contents focuses on the speech sounds of27dialects in25counties in this area.In the aspect of research contents, it gives an overview of the current research findings on the dialects'speech sounds in the area firstly; then presents investigation reports on27dialects, each dialect'cotents of which includes phonologies and phonetic descriptions, syllabary of homophones, phonological relations; and then makes a comprehensive analysis on the dialects, concludes18phonetic features,15phonological features; and then by comparing the dialects in the area with around dialects, it summarizes7phonetic and phonological features of the dialects in the area; lastly through the internal comparison of the27dialects, it makes a dialectal divisions on the dialects in the area.The paper has following basic ideas in3aspects. Firstly, it offers some good views different from the previous findings. Secondly, it argues that the main phonetic and phonological features of the dialects in the area are as following:having3tones in some dialects; ancient voiced initial consonants being partly aspirated sounds, and partly unaspirated sounds when they are plosives and affricates with uneven tones; the ancient initials of Zhi(?), and Zhuang(?), and Zhang(?), merging with the ancient initials of Jing(?), the initials of the dialects from the ancient initials of Zhi(?), and Zhuang(?), and Zhang(?) with rounded articulation features being laminals; the ancient initial of Ni(?) and ancient initial of Lai(?) can being distinguished when they are small aperture sound; high vowels having some friction features and having a end sound in some dialects; the rhyme groups of Shen(?) and Zhen(?), merging with the rhyme groups of Zeng(?), Geng(?), Tong(?). Thirdly, it gives the dialectal division views, which are as following:the dialects of south-central Gansu Province can be divided into3dialect clusters:Longzhong, Qinglong, Chuanqian; Longzhong Dialect Cluster can be divided into3dialect sub-clusters, Dingtian, Jingning and Qin'an; Qinglong Dialect Cluster can be divided into4dialect sub-clusters:Longxi, Minxian, Wudu and Chengxian.The main innovation points of the paper are as following. It makes a rather comprenensive and systematic investigation on the dialects of south-central Gansu Province, describes phonologies in more detail, analyzes and summaries phonetic and phonological features goodly, presents plausible conclusions in dialectal division in the dialects'area.Endly, The paper will study more comprehensively the speech sounds of the dialects in the future, by comparing the speech sounds with the investigated vocabulary and grammar of the dialects.