Research On The Tone Of Chinese Language Before Eastern Han Dynasty

Tone, as one of the most important features of Chinese language, performs the role of distinguishing meaning of words. Up to the present, scholars researching Chinese have being attached great importance to the study of tone and their work have been proved fruitful. This dissertation takes the tone of Chinese language before Eastern Han Dynasty as object of study, firstly reviews and comments on the standpoints of different schools on the basis of the existing study of this field, then points out their advantages and disadvantages respectively. It aims to sort out the formation, development and evolvement threads of the tone of Chinese language before Eastern Han Dynasty and reaches at the author's own standpoint about it.The main body of the dissertation covers three chapters:the chapter"on the formation of the tone of Chinese language"mainly discuses the formation of four tones. In this part, hypothesis about formation of four tones at the very first stage are put forward, and varied viewpoints of scholars in different era over the tone formation of Chinese language in ancient times are discussed onwards.Next chapter"on concepts related with tones of Chinese language before Eastern Han Dynasty"chiefly introduces and talks about related significant concepts and issues concerning study of tone of Chinese, including mainly"four tones","five notes"of Chinese language and relation between them; nature of tone, tone pitch and tone category; and the earliest literature records about"four tones".The last chapter"On the tone of Chinese language before Eastern Han Dynasty"is the key chapter of the dissertation, in which the scholars'standpoints are classified into two categories:"there is no tone in Chinese language before Eastern Han Dynasty"and"there are tones in Chinese language before Eastern Han Dynasty". The first viewpoint is represented by Chen Di in the Ming Dynasty. And the scholars who insist there are tones in Chinese language in ancient times can be classified into four schools: those maintaining two tones in Chinese language before Eastern Han Dynasty , those maintaining three tones, four tones, and five tones. Lastly, viewpoints of representative scholars of these four schools are analyzed and commented respectively.