Three Red Gelao Statement Method

As Gelao language is believed to be on the brink of dying out, the investigation and description of Gelao language will be undoubtedly of great significance in getting an overall picture of the language and as well as in preserving and documenting the language. Being one of the few areas where Gelao language is relatively well preserved, Sanchong Gelao will thus provide more meaningful data to the historical comparison of Gelao including Geyang and Kam-Tai, the study of the development of the sentence pattern and the subdivisions of the Gelao language. The case study of Sanchong Gelao, in addition, could also help the people of Gelao ethnic group to objectively realize and understand importance of their native tongue and so as to protect this linguistic and cultural heritage.So far, some studies have been made on Sanchong Gelao by domestic and overseas scholars, but little publication is available. The US scholar Yu-May Shen had written "Phonology of Sanchong Gelao" as her M.A thesis based on the records made by Jerold A. Edmondson. She then made two subsequent investigations of Sanchong Gelao. However, there has still no work of comprehensive introduction and description of Sanchong Gelao. Therefore, the present work aims to give an overall description of Sanchong Gelao, one dialect of the Gelao language, with the focus on its morphosyntax.The present thesis is divided into 5 chapters and each deals with:Chapter 1: The phonology, vocabulary, morphology and dialect type of Sanchong GelaoChapter 2: Parts of speech and its characteristicsChapter 3: The Structure of phrasesChapter 4: The structure of simple sentencesChapter 5: The structure of complex sentences.The source materials used in the thesis come from the field investigations made by Professor Li Jinfang in 1995 and 1999 and the supplementary investigation by Li Jinfang, Wang Huairong, Li Xia and Wei Mingying in 2006.To ensure the reliability and authenticity of the data collected in the present study, standard methods and procedures have been followed in field linguistics, endangered language documentation and sociolinguistics, so as to provide overall and objective documentation of the language being studied with audio files and Unicode-font transcription for future access and popularization. As for the description of Sanchong Gelao, focus is given to its morphosyntax with descriptive and functional approaches.Compared with other studies of similar kind, the present study stands out in several ways. The first lies in the variety, reliability and authenticity of the collected data. Apart from words, a wealth ofgrammatical example sentences and texts are documented. Besides, every effort has been made to ensure that the data collected are reliable and authentic. Secondly, this thesis gives an systematical discussion on the syntax of Sanchong Gelao, which differs from most previous studies of Gelao language.