published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Chinese and Comparative Literary Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

Cantonese, the standard and socially the most prestigious of the Yue dialects, is certainly an important dialect for investigation. Apart from being a regional dialect of the Guangdong province, Hong Kong and Macau, it is also widely used throughout the Chinese communities in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K. In the past seventy years, a number of dictionaries on Cantonese have been compiled. Among them, the Langwen chujie zhongwen cidian 朗文初階中文詞典 and the Zhonghua xin zidian中華新字典 are both widely used and are therefore influential standards on the dialect. Yet, despite their importance, specialist and systematic studies on the Cantonese pronunciations given in them are few and far between. The present dissertation is the first attempt to study the subject. It is found that many Chinese characters are given surprisingly different pronunciations in the two dictionaries. However, the two dictionaries do not state very clearly how they determine the Cantonese pronunciation given in them. This results in great confusion for dictionary users. The present thesis attempts to analyze differences between the two dictionaries with reference to (1) the number of pronunciations given to each character, (2) the order of listing the pronunciations, (3) tone change and (4) the listing of commonly used pronunciations. / published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

Although we see an increasing use of Putonghua in Hong Kong since the 1997 handover, under the government’s language policy encouraging bi-literacy and tri-lingualism, Cantonese still retains its dominant position in the territory, where a continuing concern over “proper” Cantonese pronunciation persists. To join in this discussion, the present thesis compares Cantonese pronunciation contained in a recently published Chinese dictionary, The New Commercial Press Dictionary (Shangwu xin cidian 商務新詞典, appearing in 2010), with that in a classical reference A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton (Yueyin yunhui粵音韻彙, first published in 1941). A detailed analysis reveals that among the 5,872 common characters, 1,182 differ in their Cantonese pronunciation. Apart from differences in phonological makeup, the two books also diverge in their treatment of literary versus colloquial, and archaic versus contemporary readings. This is most likely due to their 70-year span and disparate natures – a dictionary versus a syllabary. / published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts