The. Silver The Village Mulao Language Reference Grammar

This thesis aims to make a comprehensive and systematic study to the Mulao language, which used by the Mulao ethnic group of Yin family living in Dongmen town of Luocheng county, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. It describes and analyzes the grammar structure and its features in the synchronic Yin's Mulao by means of the description framework of reference grammar, as well as some points from modern functional linguistic theories.Mulao language is classified as a member of the Kam-Sui group of the Kam-Tai branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Since a few studies have done in Mulao, this thesis will be the first description focusing on the comprehensive and systematic study on one geographic, that is Yin family, grammar level on Mulao language. The significance of this thesis mainly goes as followed:1. providing a comparatively detailed grammar study on Mulao language.2. providing a valuable reference for the cross-languages comparative study and typology study between Sino-Tibetan languages.3. providing practical examples for the studies of language contact theories and the phonological system, word classes, and grammar structure as well as the changing mechanism under this contact theories.4. providing languistic evidence for the studies on the way with which Mulao people see the world, and the history and culture it presents.Mulao language is used by Mulao ethnic group. Among them, people who share the same family name are usually living together, which makes people in a village or the closing ones are in one family name, usually are in one patriarchal clan. Mulao language contains a little inner difference geographically, and difference presents in some pronunciations and words, while little difference in grammar. Minor differences in pronunciations and words are also existed in different Yin villages. This thesis makes Dayin, the center village of Yin villages, as the main language material collection field, as well as the villages of Shiwei, Beishe and Shangnanan. Besides, it tries to concern about the differences points existing in other Yin's villages. With those collection materials, the phonological system, word formation, part of speech and syntactic system will be described and analyzed on the basis of the description framework of reference grammar.This dissertation consists of nine chapters. Chapter One is the preface, serving as an introduction to the design of the study, general situations of Mulao ethnic group and its language. Chapter Two focuses on the phonological system of Yin's Mulao, including the consonants, vowels, tonic types, syllable configuration and phonological processes variation. Chapter Three describes the word formation, mainly introducing the word-building types and the features of the loan words. Chapter Four discusses the parts of speech of Yin's Mulao. The formations, syntactic functions and semantic functions of Yin's Mulao will be discussed in this chapter, as well as the grammatical features of the compounds. Chapter Five introduces the syntactic constituent of Yin's Mulao. including the phrasal structures and syntactic elements. Phrasal structures include eight categories, they are coordinate phrase, subject-predicate phrase, verb-subject phrase, modify phrase, added phrase, appositive phrases, linked phrases and subjective-object phrase. In the section of syntactic elements, the syntactic elements as subject, predicate, object, attribute, adverbial and complement in Yin's Mulao will be discussed. Chapter Six concerns about the simple sentences. The styles of simple sentences of Yin's Mulao are SV structure, S-P predicate sentence, double objects sentence, predict sentence, subjective-object structure, interrogative, passive construction, determinative sentence, existential and possessive constructions, disposal construction, comparative construction, non subject-predicative sentence, and topic-comment construction. Chapter Seven discusses the complicate sentences of Yin's Mulao, including complex sentence, contained sentence and compound sentence. Chapter Eight describes the Yin's Mulao's syntactic moods, giving a detailed division into four types due to the usages of the moods, which are also called mood categories. Chapter Nine is a conclusion of this thesis. This chapter includes a brief overview of this study focuses, innovation, and also points out the limitations of this study, as well as the questions needed to make a deeper research in the future. An appendix is added, including a long corpus and classified words.This thesis takes fieldwork as the basis method, other methods as statistics and self-construction are used comprehensively, emphasizing on the first hand material collection.