A Study On Dialect Place Names In Jiangnan

Place names are exclusive designations formed by social groups according to the natural and cultural characteristics in their own specific regions.Existing researches on place names are mostly conducted in terms of linguistics, history and geography, or to reason on the basis of their organic combination.Relying mainly on linguistics and additionally on history and geography, this thesis takes as its research contents place names of water conservancy in Jiangnan’s dialect, studies embankment place names and channel place names from the perspectives of phonetics, semantic changes and synchronic distribution, and digs up regional cultures from them, in the hope of further enriching the research findings on place names of water conservancy in Jiangnan.This thesis mainly includes the following sections:Introduction. This section puts forward the author’s reasons for the thesis and its research objects, then untangles and sums up forerunners’ research findings, and also gives a general description of the thesis’ research methods, and the sources and concept definitions of its corpus.The study on embankment place names in Jiangnan. This section mainly studies the two embankment names, i.e. "圩" and "埭".Firstly, the pronunciation and the definition of the character "圩" are demonstrated, the preliminary conclusion is formed that the character "圩" is derived from the ancient Yue dialect, the different pronunciations in different place names are determined for the character "圩" which is fairly controversial in this regard, and detailed description combined with historical facts is given of the polder land culture in Jiangnan. Secondly, this section makes semantic clarification on the character "埭", and tells that "埭" could be used as a quantifier.The study on channel place names in Jiangnan. This section mainly studies the four (groups of) channel names, i.e. "塘", "港", "溇", "口,兜,斗".Most of these place names have different meanings in ancient and modern times and are rarely used. Hence this section focuses on elucidating the semantic changes of every character, and strives to stress their differences between when used in the Wu dialect and when used for their common meanings.The study on the similarities and differences of channel place names in Jiangnan. This section mainly analyzes in details the semantic items of the channel names "浜", "泾", "渎", "浦", and further sums up the their slight differences.Conclusion. This section concludes the thesis and then sets forth the flaws of this research for further improvement.