Research On The Plural Forms Of Dongkou Dialect

The thesis makes a detailed investigation on plural form of the dialect of Dongkou town in Dongkou—a county of Shaoyang in Hunan province. Based on the investigation of the real lives of the local people, especially on the analysis of the auxiliary "Lila"(哩啦)with plural meaning, the thesis aims at describing and analyzing the Dongkou Dialect from the angles of semantics and syntax. In this thesis, comparison is made on the semantic, syntactic and the pragmatic features between the Dongkou Dialect and Putonghua in order to discover the characteristic of Dongkou Dialect and draw a conclusion about the grammatical features of the plural forms of Dongkou Dialect.The thesis consists of six chapters as well as the introduction section and the conclusion section.The introduction section introduces the geography, history, population and the language of Dongkou county. The author also introduces the linguistic research and the phonetics system of the dialect in Dongkou town as well as the main points and the meaning of this research.Chapter1mainly discusses the plural form of pronouns in Dongkou Dialect. The author analyzes the attached components to personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns and interrogative pronouns in this chapter."Chai"(侪)is especially analyzed as a mark of plural meaning to personal pronouns. The analysis shows that "chai", often used after the singular personal pronouns like "I","you","he","she", and "it" has become a stable grammatical component with plural meaning.Chapter2is a specific analysis of "Lila" as a plural auxiliary which is often attached to all nouns meaning differently from people to objects. On the semantic aspect,"Lila" can not only be used to express real plural meaning but also to express plural meaning of a certain category.Chapter3analyzes "Lila" as an attached component after verbs or verb phrases. It is found that "Lila" can be attached after a small number of verbs which mean the act of doing something. It is also discovered that "Lila" is used more flexibly after verb phrases for expressing plural meaning of a certain category. Through the analysis on the fact that "Lila" is attached after verbs or verb phrases in Dongkou Dialect, the author tries to find out more differences between Dongkou Dialect and Putonghua, hoping to do something useful for the comparison and research of Dongkou Dialect as well as Putonghua.Chapter4mainly discusses the condition on which "Lila" can be used in a sentence. Actually there are some situations when "Lila" is confined to match nouns. One of the conditions is that the nouns before "Lila" are not the ones meaning time such as season, holiday and so on. Another condition is that "Lila" can’t be attached after nouns which mean unique relatives. It is a feature of "Lila" that it is more widely used as subject or object attached after nouns, verbs or verb phrases for plural meaning. Sometimes "Lila" also has attributive function. It is found that "Lila" is seldom used as predicate, adverbial or complement.The fifth chapter compares the plural forms in Dongkou Dialect with the plural forms in Putonghua. It is special that in Dongkou Dialect personal pronouns have their plural mark "chai", and nouns have their difference on shape between the singular form and the plural auxiliary. What’s more, the plural meaning of nouns is often expressed by the help of "Lila"."Lila" can even be attached after a small number of verbs or verb phrases as plural mark. While marks of plural meaning after verbs or verb phrases are not seen in Putonghua.The six chapter mainly discusses the origin of the term "Lila". It is discovered this term first originated from the two auxiliaries from the two auxiliaries for tone:"Li"(哩)and "La"(啦).The last section of this thesis makes a conclusion on the characteristic of the plural forms of Dongkou Dialect. Compared with "men’’(们)in Putonghua,"Lila" as a plural auxiliary in Dongkou Dialect is more powerful and useful in the aspects of grammar, semantic and syntax. As to the cause which developed "Lila" as an auxiliary of plural meaning, we need a further research both from diachronic and synchronic angles.