A Study On The Phonological System In "Shu Xue Shen Yu"

"Shu xue shen yu" is a monograph on historical phonology written by Li Zijin in the Qing Dynasty.The whole book is divided into two volumes.The first volume consists of two parts:the self-preface and the introduction.The itroduction contains the author’s rich historical phonological thoughts;the second volume is a "Leipu" with initials,finals and tones,and the phonetic notation is Fanqie.The article uses historical comparison method,internal reconstruction,statistical method and internal and external literature research method to research,sort out the compilation style of the book and analyze Li’s historical phonological thoughts,examine the phonological system of the book and make specific phonetics descriptions,and make a comprehensive comparison with modern zhongyuan Mandarin in the area of Zhecheng in Henan Province on this basis.The full article consists of seven chapters.The first chapter mainly introduces the basic aspects of“Shu Xue Shen Yu",involving the author’s life and the book’s version information,compilation style,research value,research methodology,and research design.The second chapter mainly sorts out and evaluates Li’s phonological thoughts,involving Li’s views on letters,rhymes and four tonal categories,as well as the researcher’s own views.The third chapter mainly organizes the system of initials.There are 24 initials in the book,and the fully voiced initials have been devoiced:the fully voiced plosives and affricates,except for the Chuan 船 initial,have changed into aspirated and non-aspirated unvoiced sounds respectively,according to the even and uneven tonal categories.The Chuan 船 initial has been devoiced into[∫].Except for some characters of Shan 禅 initial,the fully voiced fricatives have become voiceless fricatives of the same part,and some characters of Shan 禅 initial have become unvoiced fricatives.The two sets of initials of Zhi 知 and Zhao 照 are in the process of merging.The Ying 影 initial,Yu 喻 initial,Yi 疑 initial and Wei 微 initial have merged,leading to the expansion of zero initial accordingly.After the fully voiced initials are devoiced,a large number of pronunciation exceptions are produced.The fourth chapter mainly organizes the system of finals.There are 48 finals in the book,and the rhymes with an open ending have merged separately.The rhymes with a stop ending have disappeared and merged with the rhymes with an open ending.The rhymes with a nasal ending have merged separately.The fifth chapter is mainly about tones.There are four tones in the book,namely level tone with a voiced consonant,rising tone,departing tone,and level tone with a voiceless consonant.After investigating the middle Chinese sounds of the characters governed by the four tones,it was concluded in the book that level tones Pingsheng can be classified into level tone with a voiced consonant and level tone with a voiceless consonant;most of the characters with rising tone are still pronounced with rising tone;a small part of the characters with the fully voiced rising tone are prounouned with departing tone;characters with departing tone mainly remain with departing tone;characters with fully voiced rhymes with a stop ending are pronounced with level tone with a voiced consonant;characters with voiceless rhymes with a stop ending and characters with voiced sonorant are pronounced with level tone with a voiceless consonant.The sixth chapter analyzes the characteristics of the modern Zhongyuan Mandarin in the area of Zhecheng in Henan Province which are reflected in the phonological system of the book,namely the appearance of[t(?)],[t(?)h],[(?)]in initials,the discrimination of sharp initials and round initials,finals with only[-n]and[-(?)]as nasal consonants,the mergence of the nasal consonant[-m]into[-n],the unsynchronized disappearance of rhymes with a stop ending,the presence of hekou medial in Guo果 she hekou first division combined with Jian 见 xi velar and guttural,articulation with[u]as medial in Zhi 止 she hekou third division combined with Lai 来 initial,Xie 蟹 she hekou first division combined with Lai 来 initial or Ding 定 initial,the articulation of[-i]in Zhi 止 she hekou third division combined with labial sounds;in terms of tone,characters with voiceless rhymes with a stop ending and characters with voiced sonorant are pronounced with level tone with a voiceless consonant and characters with fully voiced rhymes with a stop ending are pronounced with level tone with a voiced consonant.The seventh chapter summarizes the research results of the article.