A Study Of Pronouns In The Zhacheng Dialect

Zhacheng town is located in the eastern part of Zhengzhou City and the town government is situated in the Zhacheng village.The Zhacheng dialect belongs to the Zhengkai sub-dialect of Zhongyuan Mandarin.Zhacheng has a long history.Due to the frequent adjustment of the districts in history,the jurisdiction of Zhacheng has changed a lot.As of August 2006,the town has jurisdiction over 19 administrative villages and 61 natural villages.In recent years,since the urbanization process of the town has been accelerating,the dialect is changing constantly.The recording and preservation of the Zhacheng dialect is imminent.Based on the field work,this thesis makes a comprehensive description and analysis of the pronoun system of the Zhacheng dialect.In addition to the Introduction and Conclusion as the first and last chapter,respectively,there are three chapters involving different pronouns,namely,the second chapter discusses personal pronouns,the third chapter discussing demonstrative pronouns and the third chapter discussing interrogative pronouns.Each chapter firstly describes and analyzes the basic usage of the pronoun system,and then special phenomena are discussed in depth.Chapter Two describes the basic usage of personal pronoun at first.After the comparison of the three first-person pronouns“我、俺”and “咱”,this thesis discusses in depth the differences in functions,meanings,and syntactic distribution.In the Zhacheng dialect,there is a systematic possessive,that is,the tone of the nominoaccusative is 44,which is changed into 453 when used as the attributive.This tonal modification can be used for both personal pronouns and reflexive pronoun,as well as singular or plural.This thesis considers this to be the result of the personal pronoun and“嘞”.The transposition is a means of speech enhancement and can be seen as a “tag mark”.Chapter Three analyzes the demonstrative pronouns of the Zhacheng dialect.The demonstrative pronoun is a near-distance binary system.On the basis of a detailed description of the basic usage,the demonstrative pronouns are divided into “this” and “that” systems,that is,other demonstrative pronouns are regarded as the further development based on the expansion of “this” and “that”,it is found that “this” and “that” indicate that the pronouns are symmetrical from the number and usage of the syllables,and the functions of the proximal and distal.However,they show asymmetry in the functions of topic,definiteness and emotion.Chapter Four discusses interrogative pronouns.It firstly introduces the basic usage of interrogative pronouns,and then classifies all interrogative pronouns into five series,including “谁、哪、啥、咋、多/几”.Other interrogative pronouns are regarded as the extension of the five words,and the way of constructing the interrogative pronouns in the Zhacheng dialect is analyzed and classified.Finally,this chapter describes and analyzes the extended function of interrogative pronouns from the perspectives of including empty reference,arbitrary reference,anaphoric reference and rhetorical question.