Research On Semantics Of Dingxiang's Local Dialectic Proverbs

At the beginning of the 21th century, Mr. WenDuanzheng made a proposal that Chinese words and Chinese phrases should be separated, a theory so-called "separation of phrasbulary"(语词分立).In light of this theory, two textbooks entitled Chinese Phraseology and Course-Book of Chinese Phraseology were compiled under his guidance and launched into publication one after another. This event marked an establishment of a new theoretic system of Chinese phraseology, which has been used in the classroom teaching in the institutions of higher learning. As a result, Chinese proverbs as part of its vocabulary have been much valued once again. Guided by theory on phraseology, this thesis attempts to make a study of the semantics of Dingxiang's local dialectic proverbs. The purpose of this study is to lay bare the characteristics of Dingxiang local dialect and its cultural connotations. In addition, this study also intends to supply Shanxi local dialects and even the research work in the whole dialectology with some linguistic resources so as to improve the quality of compiling the relevant dictionaries. Meanwhile, this study carries a wish that its findings could be used as reference in the field of folklore studies and cultural pragmatics.In this study, what has been done first is making an analysis of the collected 3,648 proverbs of Dingxiang local dialect from the perspective of levels. Each level is put to comparison with popular Chinese with view to an attempt to set up a research pattern with which the dialectic phrases and expressions are examined according to the level morpheme of language i.e. from words to sentences. This pattern or paradigm serves, in a way, to clearly expose the special aspects of dialectic phrases and expressions and it shows where the emphasis this kind of study has laid. To be more exact, in the study of words or phrases, its emphasis is laid on the relationship between the objects and their denominating motivations; in the study of dialectic expressions, what brought into focus is the images organized in the minds of local-dialect speaking people to express their thoughts and their experiences reflected in the correlations of those images they use, and in addition, the local cultural connotation hidden behind their experiences. These threads of thoughts function as a research track of the study in which an analysis of the cultural connotations and semantic level.This thesis is made up of three parts.The first part is an introduction in which a brief account of Dingxiang covers its historic changes, its geographic situation, its local dialect and its basic dialectic phonetic system. Aside form what mentioned above, a brief account of the language materials, academic terms and symbols is also given in the introduction. Besides, in this part what can be found is the definition of the attributes of proverbs and what is sorted out in a rough way is the relevant research results.The second part is the body of the thesis, consisting of three chapters. In the first chapter, Dingxiang's local proverbs are divided into three levels, namely, morpheme level, phrasal level and sentence level according to outcome of statistics. At each level a comparison between the related element and that of popular Chinese is made, which is followed by a quantification analysis in accordance with the results of the comparison. In chapter two, what is dealt with is the meaning of Dingxiang's local dialectic proverbs, a study at their semantic level. An interpretation of the meaning from three aspects is made in this part, which involves the basic and colorful meaning, the superficial and deep meaning, the central and the set-off meaning. In chapter three, what is dealt with is the correlation of Dingxiang's local dialectic proverbs and the local culture. Category and statistic the nomenclature in relation to Dingxiang's local dialectic proverbs which is an important perspective of studying local culture reflected by dialectic proverbs; then from the perspective of the material and spiritual culture, an interpretation of the local culture information that the Dingxiang's local dialectic proverbs are imbued with is made in this chapter.The third part is conclusion of this thesis. In this part, the study arrives at a conclusion and the existing issues are presented.Attached to the end of this thesis are the local dialectic morphemes, i.e., the mono-syllable characters, two-syllable idioms and three appendixes of tables for lists of local dialectic proverbs in Dingxiang local dialect.