| Jin dialect, one of the northern dialects of Chinese, is peculiar in yangsheng rhymes (rhymes ending with nasal sounds) and rusheng rhymes (rhymes ending with stops), whose yangsheng rhymes have systematic variants between literary and oral pronunciations and the final glottal stop [-?] is reserved in its rusheng rhymes. Based on the studies on Jin dialect, this thesis gives a tentative exploration to the evolution of the consonantal finals of old and middle Chinese in Jin dialect from the yangsheng and rusheng rhymes perspective respectively. We have discussed the yangsheng rhymes from the literary and oral point of view and illustrated the separation and unification of the rhymes and the representation of the rhyme finals aswell. We assume that the final [-] in dang, Jiang, zeng, geng, tong she (宕江曾梗通摄) in oral pronunciation drop first, and the evolution of xian, shan, shen, zhen she (å'¸å±±æ·±è‡»è‡´æ‘„) is on a par with the that of dang, Jiang, zeng, geng, long she (宕江曾梗通摄) in literary pronunciation thereafter; the three yangsheng rhyme finals[-m, -n,-] had ever been unified into [-], which started from shen, zhen she with [-m, -n] transferred to [-] simultaneously and made an impact on the transformation of xian.shan she to [-]. In terms of the co-variation assumption, we assume that among the three rhyme finals [-p, -t, -k], the back consonants [-k, -t] became weak first and [-p] the last. In the above two sections, we have postulated roughly the points of time of the disappearance of [-m] and the emergence of [-?]. From the perspectives of the balance between the developmental speed of dialect and that of the authoritative language and the divergence in usages between the old and modern languages, we have explored the reason why the disparities between literary and oral pronunciations are richly existed in yangsheng rhymes while rarely in rusheng rhymes, and in the end we have predicted briefly the prospects of yangsheng and rusheng rhymes in Jin dialect. |
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