On the two pronunciations of xia in the Lanzhou dialect
兰州方言中"下"的两种读音
Wenxuan Zhang 张文轩

Abstract 摘要
In the speech of Lanzhou dialect xia (下) has two different pronunciations: and. The former is known as “colloquial pronunciation”, the latter as “literary pronunciation”. When xia is used as causative verb, it is never pronounced as, but. In other situations the two pronunciations are both allowable. Most of the young people are likely to adopt the literary pronunciation, whereas the middle age and old people the colloquial pronunciation. By comparing with the pronunciations of xia in various places such as Xi’an, Hu county in Shanxi Province and Linxia county in Gansu, it is clear that the change of xia from to did not affect all the words at one time. The causative verb xia is the pioneer of this change. There is no transitional sound such as between and. This is just in accordance with the lexical diffusion sequence theory. It is suggested that one of the causes of the lexical diffusion sequence is due to both the grammatically special use of a word and its combinations with other words.

兰州方言中的“下”有两种读音，一种是,另一种是。“下”是中古匣母马韵开口二等字。很明显，这两种读音反映了“下”古今语音形式上的差别。前一读是较早时期的读音，后一读是晚期的读音。古今语言形式并存的现象在汉语方言中不乏其例。而且往往以文白异读的途径表现出来：白读用较早的语音形式，文读用晚起的语音形式。因此，研究兰州方言的文献，对“下”的两种读音也只以文白差异（前一读为白读，后一读为文读）一说而了之。说文白之差，当然是对的，但具体怎么个差法，还值得做进一步的观察和研究。例如，同样是口语常用单音词，“下山”，“山下” 的 “下” 有文白两读。而 “下蛋”， “下雨” 的 “下” 只有文读，没有白读，也就是说，只能念后一种读音，不念前一种读音。这是为什么？本文拟就兰州方言中“下 ”的用法和两种读音的关系做具体说明，并对形成这种关系的原因提出一些看法，以就教于学界同行。为了排印方便，下文对 “下” 的前一读称 “白读”，后一读称 “文读”，尽量少写音标。

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