A Study on the Sound Changes of Obstruents in Chinese Historical Phonology

The changes of obstruents are one of the most widespread and noticeable phenomena in both ancient and modern Chinese historical phonology. From the viewpoint of historical linguistics, most of these changes are “lenition,” the weakening process of sounds in which airstream becomes less obstructed in the oral cavity. Lenition involves sound changes from stops to affricates, from affricates to fricatives, and from fricatives to complete disappearance of sounds. In today’s Chinese dialects we can find many examples of lenition and few of their opposite sound change, fortition, which exemplifies the two sound change types classified by Hans Henrich Hock: “orthodox” and “heterodox” (1986).
The sound changes of Chinese voiceless consonants, the fei, fu, xin, sheng, shu, xiao group, mainly belong to lenition; sound changes of Chinese voiced consonants are divided into two groups: the feng, xia group and the xie, chuan, chan group. The feng, xia group has only undergone lenition, but the sound changes of the xie, chuan, chan group (the voiced sibilants) are so complicated that their rules have not been ascertained before.
The author verifies these complications by (1) comparing various materials of modern Chinese dialects, (2) relating the results to the written documents of ancient Chinese dialects, and (3) inferring the sound change rules of the xie, chuan, chan group. Expanding the studies done by our predecessors, this comparative analysis of historical dialect materials contains credible evidence showing that ancient Chinese and modern dialects have many similar variations. A proper understanding of Chinese sound changes with clear explanations is thus produced.