The Comparative Study On Cantonese Phonetics Of Three Sites In Zhanjiang

The previous studies of Cantonese in Zhanjiang city have been concentrated onits distribution, and analysis of single grammatical and lexical aspects. However, thereare no articles or monographs focusing on its phonology. Therefore, having chosenthree Cantonese points(Xiashan District, Suixi County, and Maxie communictydistrict) as the investigations, this paper will give a comprehensive description of thephonological features in these three points, and give a preliminary exploration of thephonological evolution.This paper consists of six parts. The first chapter is an introduction, whichintroduces the previous studies of Cantonese in Zhanjiang city; the second chaptergives an overview of the Zhanjiang history; the third chapter describes syllablesystems of the three Cantonese points and summarizes their phonological featuresrespectively; the fourth chapter compares the phonological sounds in these threepoints and with that of ancient phonology; the fifth chapter compares differences andsimilarities in the initial and final consonants in the three points from the aspect ofphonology; the sixth chapter discusses some key issues of Cantonese’s phonologicalevolution, tries to illustrate that the differences are due to the variety of dialects, andpoints out that some further studies are needed to resolve a few phonologicalphenomena.