A Dynamic Study On The Variation Of The Initials In Qingjian Dialect

Language does not exist in isolation and in the process of contacting with otherlanguages, variation and change emerge. Variation theory lies at the heart ofsociolinguistics, which is a significant branch of linguistics, and it concentrates on theco-variation between linguistic structure and social space, trying to explore the natureof language variation and change.Qingjian dialect is a variety of mandarin and it falls into the category of Jindialect for its entering tone. With the radical transformation of the society and therapid development of our culture and economy, Qingjian dialect has been goingthrough changes over these years within its system and these changes penetrate intoevery layer of language, phonetic, lexical, syntactical layer and so on.Under the guidance of variation theory and its methodology, this experimentinvestigated the phonological variation of the initials in Qingjian dialect with the helpof a convenience sample of25key informants, requiring them to read a wordlist of79representative words which conclude all the initials of Qingjian dialect. Then a briefquestionnaire is designed to further investigate the attitude of them and other citizenstowards Qingjian dialect and standard Chinese mandarin. After the phonetictranscription of the acoustic data, statistical analysis will be performed with the helpof Microsoft Office Excel2007and the results will be presented in the forms ofhistograms, figures or tables.We found that the actual use of Qingjian dialect has changed radically comparedwith preceding records and the initials in Qingjian dialect are approaching to those ofstandard Chinese mandarin. This process can be further divided into two directions:from colloquial pronunciation to literary pronunciation and from colloquialpronunciation to standard Chinese mandarin. Among25initials there are19initialsgoing through change from standard Qingjian dialect to standard Chinese mandarinamong which three original sounds [v],[(?)] and [z] showed a tendency to disappear.But the shift has not finished and different initial variation showed varied stagefeatures and certain directional feature and there is clear social stratificationunderlying beneath them. What’s more, the frequency of the use new forms decreasesas the age increases showing it’s a change in progress. The frequency of the new forms decreased when people received more education. The contact between standardChinese mandarin and Qingjian dialect and gender is of relatively great importance inleading the shift.To sum up, the approaching of Qingjian dialect to standard Chinese mandarin isquite complex and multi-dimensional and an exploration into it can not only helppeople hold a rational understanding of it but broaden and deepen the study onvariation and domestic dialects, especially contribute further to the preservation of thediversity of our dialects.