| dc.description.abstract | The theme of this research focuses on the phonology of Chengguan Hakka in Changting Country of Fujian Province. Changting Country is located in the west area of Fujian Province. The city wall was built in the 24th year of Kaiyuan in Tang Dynasty(AD 736). It was an economic, political, and cultural center of the west area of Fujian（閩西）, and also the Hakka capital city of the Fujian at that time. The mother river, Ting River, runs through Fujian. The southern part of Wuyi Mountain stretches to the west side and is bound by Gannan area. This area belongs to the central west area of Fujian, the same as the Liancheng area. The phonics contains the features of Hakka from the southern and northern west area of Fujian, and the words contain obvious features from dialects of northern west area of Fujian. Even though Changting is a Hakka country, the underlying words are highly related to Old Jiangdong Chinese, Hmong–Mien, Kra–Dai, and She languages; it also has connection with Gannan dialects.
There are six chapters in this research. The first chapter, introduction explains and studies the motivation and purpose of Chengguan Hakka in Changting Country of Fujian Province, used research methods and steps, investigation and review of related literature, and the description about the historical and geographical background of Changting Country and overviews of the languages there. The second chapter is about phonetic system of Chengguan Hakka in Changting Country. The features of the phonics are discussed based on the systems of initials, finals, and tones, continuous tone sandhi, literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters. The third chapter is about the comparison between Chengguan Hakka in Changting Country and ancient phonology. The corresponding relation between Chengguan Hakka in Changting Country and ancient phonology can be observed through their comparison, and the evolution process and directions of ancient and current phonology are investigated and discussed at the same time. The fourth chapter is about the characteristics of the phonics of Chengguan Hakka in Changting Country which means that the readers can see the inductions, collections, and the organizations of the sound features about initials, finals, and tones in the third chapter and the comparison with other dialects and underlying languages. These processes lead to the mechanism of phonics evolution and the characteristics of phonology of Chengguan Hakka in Changting Country. It is found that that the most apparent points of Chengguan Hakka in Changting Country are the position of tongue goes to the front while pronouncing post-apical t、t、, pronouncing nasal rhythm, u when reading Shan She words. The former pronouncing way shows the rapid changes of initials; while the latter one shows the nasalization of u rhythm. However, u rhythm is actually the hardest one that can be nasalized. The fifth chapter contains the discussion about words and points of Chengguan Hakka in Changting Country, the comparison about the words used in Changting and the countries surrounded, such as Ninghua, Qingliu, Liancheng, Wuping, Shanghang, Yongding, Ruijin, Gannan, and Meixian, etc. This chapter also talks about the differentiation between dialects from the Gan area and even the mother tongue of the author（Sixian dialects of Taiwan）. It also shows the observation about the reservation of underlying languages. From the observation, the reserved words can be inducted and listed as below,ancient Chinese words and relative words of ethnologies from ethnic minorities in the southern area. These words also preserve the features from Hakka dialects of the northern area. Local unique words and the suffixes of the nouns also grew well, such as “Li” and ＂Zi”. The content of the sixth chapter will be the conclusion. The conclusion presents the characteristics of the phonics and the words of Chengguan Hakka in Changting Country, the points without enough discussion, and the proposed suggestions and directions for future research. | en_US |