The continuous simplification of the sound system of Shanghai dialect over the past 160 years is characterized by the following:
1. A large number of rhymes are merged, the number of homophones increases, and the number of two-syllable words increases. For example, "noodle" and "rice" were originally homophonic in Shanghainese, but in order to avoid confusion, Shanghainese people changed "noodle" to "cut noodle", which has now been changed to "cut noodle". In order to avoid confusion, Shanghainese people changed "面" into "切面", and "面条" into "面条", and "去买米" and "去买面条" can be distinguished again. Another example is "socks", "rope", "bottle", "chopsticks" in old Shanghainese, "Duck", "Blue", "Cloth", "Window", "Umbrella ", "waist", "mouth", "bag" were all monosyllabic words, but nowadays they have become "socks", "rope", "socks", "socks", "socks", "socks", "socks" and "socks". Nowadays, they are "socks", "rope", "bottle", "chopsticks", "duck", "basket/basket head", "cloth head", "window door", "umbrella", "waist-eye," "mouth," "pouch," and commonly used two-syllable words. Gradually, those vowels and rhymes containing few words were merged, for example, after the 1970s, "iu (靴)", which had only one character, was merged into "y (需要)", and "i亊(旺)", which had only one character, was merged into "i?(旺)". "i?", "u?" is merged into "u? (恒)", and "iE (廿)" with only two or three characters was merged into "E (难)", and its vowel was changed from "¤" to "In the 1990s, some Shanghainese who had lost the "? In the 1990s, some Shanghainese who had lost the "?" vowel pronounced "¤" as "eye" for "eyeglasses" and "顏" for "color" as "". "¤iE (廿)".
2. Take the path of development and simplification of the same Wu phonetic system***. The phonemes that are more common in other parts of the Wu language have won in the phonological variation of Shanghainese, for example, the old retracted tone is replaced by the common unaspirated clear stop, and the "dz" vowel is merged into the "z" vowel at the earliest in some developed places, which has long been accomplished in Wuxi, Suzhou, and other places. In Wuxi and Suzhou, the merger was completed a long time ago, but in most places to the west and south of Shanghai, such as Wujiang, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, and Ningbo, the merger was completed at the end of the 19th century. The consolidation of Shanghai's acoustic group consonants predates that of a large part of the former Suzhou prefecture, occurring in the 1940s and 1960s, while the consolidation of Suzhou's acoustic group consonants only began in the 1980s, with a peak at the end of the century. The Shanghai area (the former Songjiang prefecture) has the richest retention of ancient sounds among the Wu languages. Later, under the influence of a large number of immigrants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang to Shanghai, the phonetically closest entries began to be merged one level at a time, and by the 1960s and 1970s, they had been simplified to look similar to those in Wuxi, Suzhou, and Kunshan. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was simplified to a level similar to that of Wuxi, Suzhou and Kunshan. Later on, the two major rhymes "A/" and ""/"" were merged into "? /", Shanghainese began to take the lead in the merging of the initials, and now Hangzhou has begun to merge as well. The phonology of Shanghainese was dramatically simplified in the late fourth period, and it was already in the lead in the entire Wu language area.
3. High vowelization of rhyming vowels, monophthongization of diphthong rhyming vowels, and the loss of nasalized sounds from high vowels. This is the evolution of many areas in the Wu language phonological **** the same law. For example, the changes in the Shanghai dialect of XianShanRhyme over the past 160 years can illustrate these three characteristics. At the end of the 19th century, due to "?" and "i?" were nasalized high vowels and were first lost as "e", "ie" or "i". Later, "E~" also became "E"; some other Hamsan took the road of high vowelization of E>E>e>I>i. At the end of the 19th century, there was "uo" rhyme incorporated into "o", and at the end of the 20th century, the medial consonant was abolished in large numbers, and there was a culmination of vowelization, such as "u?>?", "y? and "y?>y", "iE" was merged into "E", and there are very few compound vowels with medial consonants. In Shanghainese, the medial "u" of the "k" group of vowels was originally a tightly integrated sound made at the same time as the vowel (it was already rounded-lipped when pronouncing the "k" vowel); the "tt" group of vowels was originally pronounced with an "i" or "y". " or "y". If we switch to a different phonemic analysis, and put k, kh, ɡ, ? h, the medial u after k, kh, ɡ, ?w, and h are grouped into consonants, the medial i after tt, tth, dü, t, ¤, ü, and l are counted as a prolongation of the consonants and grouped into consonants, and kw, k'w, ɡw, ?w, and hw consonants are established, as well as tti/y, t'ti/y, düi/y, ti/y, ¤i/y, and li/y consonants, then only one of the compound vowels in Shanghainese is "i?" is left. Together with the 19 univowel rhymes, there are only 20 rhymes in total***.
4. Sounds with similar pronunciations are easily merged. two major mergers in the late 20th century were the nasalized sounds "? The two major mergers in the late 20th century, the nasalized sounds "?" and "ROP", and the incoming rhymes "A/" and ""/", are all mergers of similar sounds. The pronunciation of all these sounds is based on their medial consonants "?" and "? /", or pronounced very loosely, the free variants of the phonemes have a larger range because there are no more similar sounds. The merger first started with the blending of compound vowel rhymes with medial consonants, some of which contained fewer words, and after the merger, a large number of new homophones were produced. In the current neo-systematic phonological table, the remaining phonemes are distributed farther apart in the organs of articulation. Language in the "clear" and "economic" two factors automatically regulate and mutual control in order to achieve the purpose of communication without confusion. In modern society, the speed of speech is accelerated, the Shanghai dialect sound system can be merged so simple, that is, after the bisyllabification of words, the simplification of the syllables in the sound and rhyme is a wide margin.
5. Tones evolved towards accentuation. The tones of Shanghainese were merged from 8 to 5, leaving only one falling tone (yinping) and one rising tone, making it very simple. This allows Shanghainese to pronounce tones with a wide range of free variants, such as "53", "51", "552" for the falling tones, and "552" for the flat ascending tones. does not affect comprehension. After the lexico-grammatical bisyllabic consonants became mainstream, Shanghainese evolved the fastest to the "extended" consonants in Wu, and the latter words lost their independent tones and weakened their adhesion, changing again to the flexion language. The former characters have the role of tonal phonemic position, other than that, there is only one high and one low or one low and one high, and the pronunciation of phonological words in the Shanghainese stream has been similar to that of the Japanese language. At present, there are two types of relatively stable phonemic positions in the flow of Shanghainese, one is the consonant and the other is the tone of the former character, and these two types of capital phonemic positions are playing an important stabilizing role in Shanghainese speech. It is worth noting that among the youth, some common words are read as 44 before the word, and the last word is read as a low ascending mobilization, such as: sleepy ku"?44k?3, a little bit /iI/4ti44ti13, do not come tsu44v?/4lE13, rules and regulations kuE44kuE44tty44tty13, which is slowly developing.
This is a precursor to the shift of Shanghainese to an accented language.
The causes of phonological change
The reasons for the phonological change in Shanghainese can be found in the physiological, psychological, and social aspects, which are intertwined and have an effect on the language. The fundamental reasons are as follows:
1. Frequent communication and accelerated language rhythm. Modern city economic and cultural life of the connection to strengthen the language communication requirements of clear and fast, pronunciation requirements to reduce the twists and turns, the unitary phonation, extended type of continuous reading tone to win. Pronunciation requirements are simple, small openings, so vowels high, post-nasal rhymes in the front, before the change into a nasalized tone or even the loss of nasal sound into the yin sound rhyme, under the premise of the developed word meaning is clear, the sound class as far as possible to reduce to the point of the most economical. From the simplification of Shanghainese phonological system, it shows that after the bisyllabification of Chinese words, the phonological system will continue to simplify the phonemic system, and there is a great deal of room for merging the tones and moving towards the rhythmic tonalization of heavy and light tones, and the large number of mergers of the rhyming consonants.
2. The collision of multiple dialects. Shanghai city for a long time after the five parties mixed, immigrants stayed in Shanghai for a long time, had to make a choice in the language, so that they are integrated. Whether it is to stick to the original dialect, or learn Shanghainese, there will be a tendency to deviate from the original model to take the center. People who speak Shanghainese with different accents of Jiangsu and Zhejiang are most likely to seek the greatest common denominator of Wu, and the impact on the non-conforming native sounds is also a matter of survival of the fittest, with various pulling forces acting against each other, so that a set of phonemes that are most easily accepted by everyone will win the race, which is inevitably simpler, and which seeks to be the same by giving up the differences. For example, the influence of Suzhou dialect, Ningbo dialect, etc. makes the three different initial consonants of the original Shanghainese combine into one like them, mut de/≠te d?k≠capture d?/>mut=te=capture d"/. The collision of multiple dialects and the frequent social interactions do activate the accelerated evolution of the Shanghai dialect. But it must also be pointed out that in the sound change of Shanghainese, the change caused by language contact is secondary. For example, several major sound changes in the fourth period of rapid change - A/, "/ and for ? /, ? , rc and merged into ? , u? merged into ? , y? merged into y, o merged into u, and other major sound changes that occurred earlier in Wu in the fourth period (when Putonghua became widespread in Shanghai and became one of the bilingual languages of the Shanghainese people) ahead of other Wu places (and which have already made a large number of words homophonic), are not sound changes caused mainly by external influences.
3. Aggressive and experimental psychology. Shanghai people's "sea" mentality is good at development, with pioneering, into the spirit. The emergence of a new form of young people's psychology is often tend to follow, not willing to abide by the old, often with newer sound changes to show their own avant-garde meaning and tend to the characteristics of the time. This can be seen from the fact that Shanghai rap and burlesque often use fashionable new language and are therefore popular with the audience. Once a form of language has gained a foothold, it often spreads so smoothly that the old guard is often out of power among the public and is ostracized by the new public opinion. For example, "嗲[tiA334]" comes from the English word "dear", which has no phonetic status and can be made into one more syllable. When "乓乓响" was used to mean "too good to be true" or "dry and trustworthy", it was phonetically exciting enough, and the new word quickly became popular. Nowadays, the use of the popular word "ku" can be directly transferred from the English phonetic and Mandarin phonetic "ku51". The merger of A/, "/ and Hui? The merger of A/, "/ and Hui? makes the words "拆尿(piss)" and "出书" homophonous (拆尿[ts'A/4s "52]≠出书[ts'"/4s?). "/4s?2]> urination = book [ts'? /4s?2], foreigners sometimes put "you more demolition demolition of urine, early review on the professor" used to joke about the Shanghai people, we do not feel compelled to distinguish between them, visible Shanghai people's awareness of the development of tolerance and not to avoid taboos. 160 years of the Shanghai dialect phonetics has undergone such a big change, fully explains the rapid development of society, the stimulation of human vitality in the society and the development of a new society, and the development of the Shanghai people. The stimulation and increase of human vitality in the society has contributed to the active evolution of the human language mechanism, and thus played an important role in the development of language, thus proving one of the most basic principles of linguistics: "language develops with the development of society".
4. The influence of the standardized language: After the 1950s, Putonghua was vigorously promoted, and young people were well educated in Putonghua, and the internal language of many people was Putonghua, which was the language they used to read books and think. Many of the new sound changes in Shanghainese are close to the Mandarin phonetics. ", "tt'iA/", and "düiA/" to "ttyI/", "tt'yI /", "düiI/", and by the fourth period, "slightly", "absolutely", "snow, chipped By the fourth period, some words such as "略", "绝", "雪", "削", "约", etc. changed from "liA/", "üiI/", "tiI/" to "liI/". Some words such as "about" have changed from "liA/", "üiI/", "tiI/" to "liI/", "düyI/", "tyI/", which are all the result of the influence of Mandarin phonetics. Another example is "辅(vu>fu)", "颂(zo?>so?)", "赠(z"?>ts? >ts"?)" , "復(vo/>fo/)", "羨(zi>ti)", "演(úi>/i )", " (úi>ti)", "演(úi>/i)" and "系(úi>ti)" are all turbid-voweled characters in Shanghainese in the second period, and gradually become clear-voweled in Mandarin in the third and fourth periods. The influence of Mandarin is the dominant and far-reaching factor in external competition, and those factors that are similar to Mandarin in sound change tend to gain a selective advantage
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