Comparative Study On Demonstrative Pronouns This And That Between Zhuang And Thai

There are two kinds of exclusive views of demonstrative pronouns in Zhuang in previous studies. Some think they can only be deixis while others believe they can replace nouns to be as a subject or an object in a sentence. Surprisely, there are two kinds of demonstrative pronouns in Thai.Since Zhuang and Thai are of the same origin,there are inevitablely multitudes of similarties.Using the theories of Contrastive Linguistics and Historical Linguistics, this thesis compares similarities and differences of this and that in Zhuang and Thai from their phonetical forms, word-building ability and grammatical function, analyses them in details by using real data in Zhuang-Chinese-English Dictionary ,Fang Kuei Li's Longzhou Zhuang and Wuming Zhuang and Thai-Chineses Dictionary and Xiaorui Pei's New Thai Grammar,and then explains the causes by using grammaticalization theory.The dissertation is composed of four chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction. In this chapter we overview the previous studies and also present the necessities, objectives,data sources and ways of this study. Chapter 2 compares this and that between Zhuang and Thai from phonetical forms, word-building ability and grammatical function.Chapter 3 analyses the reasons of their similarities and differences from the perspective of language itself by using grammaticalization and social factor.Chapter 4 is the conclusion.