A Study On The Speech Of Cili Dialect In Hunan Province

Cili is located in the border of Hunan province and Hubei province. The dialect is surrounded by Eastern Mandarin dialect, Southwestern Mandarin dialect and Xiang dialect. Its dialect environment is rather special and the dialect features are too ambiguous to classify. Up to now, there is few comprehensive and deep research that has touched upon Cili dialect. There are arguments about its attribution till now. The paper tries to explain its unique characteristics, common characteristics of southwestern mandarin dialect and its attribution, comparing plenty of linguistic materials which are based extensive practical investigation.This thesis is divided into five parts.Chapter I gives a brief introduction of Cili dialect and then reviews the previous studies relevant to the topic.Chapter II gives a brief introduction of the phonological systems of three vernaculars selected in Cili dialect, it includs consonants, vowels and tones.Chapter III gives a comparative analysis to find out the identities and differences of Cili dialect and to find:out Cili dialect’s phonetic features.Chapter IV makes a synchronic and diachronic study on its phonetic features.Chapter V is the conclusion of the article, we compares Cili dialect with Changde, Dayong, Wuhan, Xiaogan dialects in conjunction with its dialect formation of the historical geography, this part proposes that Cili dialect is a tie with Chang-he group and Cheng-yu group of Southwestern Mandarin dialects.The description and analysis of Cili dialect can make the reader have a profound understanding of the features of Cili dialect and provide the data for further study.