Contained Watt Language Reference Grammar

Aiming to synchronically make a comprehensive, systematic and deeply study of Zhefang, a language of Burmese Branch, Tibeto-Burman Group, Sino-Tibetan Family,this dissertation covers its phonological system, word-building, word classes, and syntactic system on the basis of the writing mode of reference grammar. This dissertation mainly consists of eight chapters.Chapter One. Preface. Serving as an introduction, this part offers a short description of the Zhefang Zaiwa nationality, and the present situation of language use of the Zhefang Zaiwa are at the same time included. A looking-back of past linguistic researches on the language is also mentioned. The designing of the present dissertation also cover the object, significance, data-collecting of the study,etc.Chapter Two. Phonological System. This part mainly decribes the phonological system of Zhefang Zaiwa.The main contents include consonants, vowels, tonic types, syllable structure and phonetics change. Phonetics change including phoneme addition, reduction and tonic variation are also tentatively covered.Chapter Three.Word-formation. single morpheme word and compound word are analyzed and described. Especially make a meticulous introduction for several major word-formation affixes.Chapter Four. Word-classes. This part focuses on the word-classes of the language, including noun, pronoun, numeral, classifier, adjective, verb, auxiliary verb, adverb, conjunction, particle, exclamation and onomatopoetic word respectively, with special attention to their grammatical functions and peculiar syntactic behaviors. The key and difficult point of this chapter is to completely and accurately portray verbs, auxiliary verbs, adjectives and auxiliary. Taking verb for example,such phenomina as grammatical aspects, grammatical voice, reduplication and the relationship among existential verbs, possessive verbs and locational verbs. As for auxiliary verb, the specific usage and auxiliary verb grammaticalization problem are investigated. As for adjective,attention is paid to the similarities and differences between verb and adjectives, divisional of nature adjective and state adjective is also mentioned. particle is one of the main vehicle to embody the grammar relationship in Zaiwa language, the number is large and the grammatical meaning is rich, so it's difficult to analysis and describe. In section of particle, this paper make a detailed description of the typical usage of the main particles, especially first reveal those which have not mentioned previously.Chapter Five.Phrases. parallel phrases, subject-predicate phrases, object-verb phrases, etc. are described. The focal point is characteristics, types, development level and internal reasons of produce of Bingdong Tongxing phrase.Chapter Six. Simple Sentences. The special energy and attention are paid to the analysis and descpription of the main clause types. At the very end of the chapter,sufficient space is contributed to the study of five syntactic structure types, including existentials and comparative syntactic structure, topic structure, lingking-verb structure, etc.Chapter Seven. Complex Sentences. This part gives a full description on the complex sentences of the target language from the viewpoint of the semantic relations.This chapter also makes an in-depth analysis on the various connective means.Chapter Eight.Conclusion. This chapter includes a brief overview of the main points of the dissertation, innovation, inadequate research as well as future research directions.Long corpus (including legend, stories, riddles, proverbs, poetry, etc.) and classified words are presented at the end of the dissertation.The significance of this dissertation is mainly as followed:(1) providing valuable reference for the in-depth study to the grammar of Zaiwa in the future. (2) filling some of the blind spot in previous research. (3) providing authentic and practical information for the Sino-Tibetan language typology; (4) providing valuable reference for theory research of language contact.(5) providing necessary foundations for the diachronic study of zaiwa language.