The Research On The Future Tense Structure "X+LAI" In Jishou Dialect

Chinese future auxiliaries have been a controversial topic in the study of Chinese grammar in many aspects. There is a special use of LAI in Jishou(in Hunan province) dialect; that is, in Jishou dialect LAI can be used after verb, adjective and limited noun, which can be described as structure "X+LAI". This structure means something will happen in immediate future. Li Qiqun(2002)&Qu Jianhui(2011) did research about this special use of LAI, and they both defined it as aspect. But we reckon that it is a future gram and it is a immediate future gram other than simple future gram.In the first chapter we mainly describe about the Jishou dialect.Chapter Two aims to describe the "X+LAI" structure from the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic perspectives.The third chapter aims to study the problem that how LAI have developed this special use in Jishou dialect. We expose four possible sources in this chapter, which are:language contact with Miao language, grammaticalization from "Verb+LAI" structure, language contact with Tujia language and reservation of LAI in modern Chinese. After analysis, we come to the conclusion that language contact with Miao language made LAI become a immediate future gram in Jishou dialect.Chapter Four and Chapter Five are related to Chinese research about tense and aspect referred to the theories of Language typology. We have some statistical data about Sino-Tibetan languages and Chinese dialects here, which can support our idea that future tense is common in Sino-Tibetan languages but LAI is not seen as a common future tense gram in Chinese dialects.This paper is deeply influenced by Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins&William Pagliuca(1994) and Chen Qianrui(2008,2012).Bybee et al.(1994) pointed it out that twenty-six primary future grams had immediate future of some kind as a use; in nineteen of the cases, this was the sole use. Immediate future was also the sole reading of two imperfectives and two perfectives. It was probably not accidental. Chen Qianrui(2008,2012) defined LE in Chinese as a mark of immediate future. We agree with them both in conclusions and in approach.We have further discussed about LAI in Chapter Four and Chapter Five. We agree that the phenomenon that7out of11’come’-futures are actually immediate futures, while none of the’go’-futures is not accidental(Bybee et al.1994). So we explore the motivation which makes it happen that’come’-verbs become future grams,and most of which are immediate futures. We reckon that three characters of LAI are very important in this development, which are reference object, displacement(or called movement) and "moving time" metaphor. We are coincident with Fleischman(1982).She suggests that’go’-futures involve the "moving ego" metaphor, in which the subject is moving away from the present moment, and that’come’-futures involve the "moving time" metaphor, in which the subject is stationary and time moves toward him or her(as in the phrase the coming weeks, etc.)In Chapter Five we also explain the phenomenon that in Jishou dialect, there is always LE after "X+LAI", which means the structure can be concluded as "X+LAI+LE". We infer that it may have roots in Miao language, but we cannot prove it in this paper.