漢語方言中聲調演變的幾個問題

Some Aspects of Tonal Development in Chinese Dialects

近年來頗有一些人討論古漢語聲調起源的問題，我自己的研究（丁：1981）認為在詩經時代已經具有以音高區別的四個聲調，就和中古音的情形類似；上古的聲調如果從韻尾輔音變來，至少也是諧聲時代的事。中古以後，四個調類由於聲母的清濁及其他因素演變為今日方言中或多或少的聲調，在演變的過程中，有一些實例可以作為我們擬測古調值的幫助。

Although different theories have been proposed in recent years about the origin of the tones of Archaic Chinese, it is generally held that there were four tone categories in Archaic (cf. Ting 1981) as well as in Ancient Chinese. These tone categories might have derived from final consonants in Proto-Chinese, but eventually changed into various tonal systems in all modern dialects, such as Northern Mandarin, which has four or three tones and Cantonese, which has nine or more tones. Tonal splits and mergers were mainly conditioned by the contrast of voiceless and voiced initial consonants, and sometimes by sonority or aspiration (cf. Li 1980). In the process of tonal developments, it is worthwhile to observe some facts which may lead to new methods in reconstructing the value of proto-tones. Three aspects of tonal developments will be discussed in this paper.