Moon Bay Gelao Language Study

Yueliangwan is a mountain village in Malipo of Yunnan Province, the Gelao language spoken here is a local vernacular of Duoluo dialect, one of the four dialects of this language. With very few speakers, the Gelao language here is almost extinct, therefore it is important to give a description, whether from the view of rescuing this endangered language or helping to have a better understanding of it. In this thesis, the present writer gives a brief description of phonology, lexicon, and grammar of the Yueliangwan Gelao language. Being rich of retroflex consonants, which makes it rather different from other dialects, is one of its outstanding features. An elementary study of this notable feature is made in this paper, meanwhile, the author analyzes some features of word formation, the loan words from Chinese, word class, word order and sentence type in this vernacular.