A study of the phonology and chronological strata of the performance-Mandarin of Cantonese opera = 粵劇戲棚官話音系及歷史層次研究

Abstract

Cantonese Opera (粵劇, Pinyin: Yuèjù, Jyutping: jyut6 kek6) has long been a popular performance art in Cantonese speaking regions. It is crystal clear that artists use Cantonese as their performance language in present-day Cantonese Opera. However, before 1920s, the performance language of early Cantonese Opera was not Cantonese, but rather was Mandarin, which was referred to as ‘performance-Mandarin’ or ‘stage-Mandarin’ (戲棚官話, Pinyin: Xìpéng Guānhuà, Jyutping: hei3 paang4 gun1 waa6).

Performance-Mandarin has been a neglected topic in the study of early Cantonese Opera. This is primarily because, (1) performance Mandarin has become an endangered language, so scholars of Cantonese Opera attach little importance to it; and (2) it is seen to be an artificial language by linguists, who also thus consider it to be of little importance.

In this thesis, I have gathered expansive and reliable recording data, including 33 performance-Mandarin songs from 16 artists for the following goals: first, to summarize the phonological system of the language; second, to analyze some phonological features of the system; and, third, to determine the different chronological strata in the language.

Analysis of the data identifies four chronological strata: (1) a late-Ming and early-Qing southern Mandarin layer; (2) a Yue dialect layer; (3) a layer of other recent Mandarins, including mid-Qing Mandarin, Nanjing (南京) dialect and Guilin (桂林) dialect; and (4) a layer of traditional and artificial pronunciation.

I hope that this thesis and its data and analysis can provide some contribution not only for a deeper understanding of the history of performance-Mandarin, but also that of Cantonese Opera itself.