| This dissertation aims to synchronically make a comprehensive and systematic study on ZhaoZhuang Vernacular, a southern dialect of the Bai language. According to the instructions of reference grammar, the dissertation mainly discusses its phonological system, morphology and syntactic system and discourse structure. It consists of ten chapters.Chapter One offers the designing of the dissertation, the aim and significance of choosing this subject, the theory and method this dissertation is based on. A general looking-back to the past linguistic researches on the language is simultaneously covered.Chapter Two makes a short description of the ZhaoZhuang Vernacular-speaking nationality, including its geography, history, population, economy, social situation and a survey of the status quo of the ZhaoZhuang language use, so on and so forth.Chapter Three describes the initials, finals, tonic types and syllable canon of the ZhaoZhuang Bai language (ZZBL). Phonological inflections and phonological processes including assimilation and tonic variations are also tentatively referred. This Chapter ends with a phonological compare between ZZBL and the Xizhou Bai language.Chapter Four makes a presentation of word-building process of the language, namely, affixation and compounding. Especially, the types and its constructive rules of coordinate compounding words are concluded through abundant examples.Chapter Five is made up of thirteen sub-sections, including noun, pronoun, numeral, quantifier, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, particle, and interjection, respectively. Each section is a general description of the grammatical features of morphology, with special attention to their grammatical functions and peculiar syntactic behaviors, if any. For example, such phenomena as the referential and classification of nouns, the number and case of pronouns, the formation of interrogative words and demonstrative pronouns, the number system and its use ,the compulsion and classification of classifiers, and the evolution of copied classifiers are given sufficient observation and description. Attention is also paid to the grammaticalization and aspects of verbs, the syntactic location of modal verbs, the reduplication of adjectives, as well as the classification and origin of prepositions, etc. Besides the above, adverbs, conjunctions, auxiliaries, words express mood and their syntactic function are also introduced, respectively.In Chapter Six, the phrasal structure of ZZBL is divided into noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, proposition phrases and numeral phrases, among which the constituents and order are emphasized.Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, and Chapter Night concentrate upon syntactic aspects of the language. Starting from sentence types (Chapter Seven), the dissertation goes all the way through simple clause types (Chapter Eight) to complex clause types (Chapter Night). Chapter Seven gives a full description of declarative sentences, interrogative sentences, imperative sentences and exclamatory sentences in perspective of form and semantic. Chapter Eight puts stress on the semantic types and construction features of copula clauses, negative sentences, passive sentences, comparative sentences, topic sentences and so on. In Chapter Night, great importance is attached on the study of relative clauses, complement clauses, coordination and subordinate constructions. The section of clauses gives prominence to the restriction and the location of head of relative clauses, and the marker of complement clauses. An in-depth analysis is made on the study of four coordination types and six subordinate structure types, namely, and-coordinate, but-coordinate, or-coordinate, continue-coordinate and conditional clauses, causal clauses, purpose clauses, concessive clauses , temporal clauses, etc.Chapter Ten analyses the markers and structure of discourse in BLZZ.Appendices, the last part, contain about 3000 words and several long language materials.By descriptive study, this dissertation makes a conclusion on the grammar features of ZZBL. On the level of grammar, the order of basic elements of syntactic construction is SVO. The basic types of word order are: adverb of manner preceding verb; adverb of degree preceding noun; adverb of negative preceding verb and adjective; preposition with verbal semantic showing prepositional feature; preposition with location semantic expressing postpositional feature, and the proper name of appositional construction proceeding the generic term. The word order of noun phrases is: head after the modifier noun; genitives preceding the head; deictic after the head; adjective preceding the head; classifier phrases after the head; the relative clause preceding the head and so on. The syntactic construction form shows the priory of topics. The construction and function of topics are very complicated. Some typological features of ZZBL are similar with those of Tibeto-Burman languages, but still others are not. In another word, ZZBL is a special language in Tibeto-Burman group.It is strongly expected that the present study will be helpful to the further research of ZZBL and beneficial to the contrastive research and typological study of the Sino-Tibetan family. |
