Regionalism to and Diachronic Changes of the Mandarin Phonology

Jianguo Shi

National University of Singapore

    It is assumed, in the diachronic study of the Mandarin phonology, that there are three versions of Mandarin: Northern Mandarin (eg. the Beijing dialect), Central Mandarin (eg. the Kaifeng dialect) and Southern Mandarin (eg. the Yangzhou dialect). In this paper, two pieces of supportive evidence are provided regarding sound changes in the previous entering-tone syllables. One comes from the changes of stop endings, such as [ -k] of jiang-dang rhyme groups lost in both Central Mandarin and Southern Mandarin, while it has become [ -u] in Northern Mandarin; [ -k é ] of geng-zeng rhyme groups lost in Southern Mandarin, whereas it changed to [ -i] in both Northern Mandarin and Central Mandarin. The other evidence is of the vowel height in entering-tone syllables from the geng-zeng groups, of which the syllable nuclei of the first and second grades merged to one mid vowel in both Central Mandarin and Southern Mandarin. In Northern Mandarin, however, the nucleus of the second grade changed to a low vowel. Finally, sound change theories concerning "dialect mixture" and "lexical diffusion" are revalued based on the above analysis.

Keywords: Mandarin phonology, diachronic sound changes, Northern Mandarin, Central Mandarin, Southern Mandarin