Nominal Possessive Constructions In Changde Dialect Of Chinese

Possession is one of the most basic categories in human cognition.And thus the possessive construction is also a common form of expression in human language.Possessive relations and constructions have always been the research focuses of scholars at home and abroad.The domestic research on possessive constructions mainly focuses on Mandarin.In recent years,many scholars begin to take Chinese dialects as the research object,and give a comprehensive discussion to the constitution of their possessive constructions.As one of the Chinese dialects,Changde dialect belongs to the Southwest Mandarin of Northern dialect.The possessive construction of this dialect not only has something in common with Mandarin,but also has its unique characteristics.In view of this,this thesis intends to make a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the nominal possessive construction of Changde dialect,which is aimed at enriching the research on possessive constructions in Chinese dialects,and also providing a case reference for the typology research on that kind of constructions.With the language data collected from the field survey and the relevant former research results of possessive relations and constructions at home and abroad,this paper mainly discusses the categories of nominal possessive constructions in Changde dialect,the presence or absence of the possessive marker“ti33”and the singularization of the plural form of personal pronouns.There are three research questions in this thesis:（1）What is the categories of possessive constructions in Changde dialect?（2）In different categories of possessive constructions,what are the rules and motivations for the presence or absence of the possessive marker“ti33”?（3）In different categories of possessive constructions,what are the rules and motivations for the singularization of the plural form of personal pronouns?This research shows that the nominal possessive construction of Changde dialect includes“N₁+ti33+N₂”and“N₁+N₂”.The former is the prototype structure.The latter mainly appears in the following possessive relations:human&human,object&space,time&time and space&space.The presence or absence of the possessive marker“ti33”in possessive construction can be explained from the perspective of relational combination,ambiguity resolution and prototype of possessive semantic relationship.Besides,the plural forms of the first and second personal pronouns“uan23”and“lin23”,when used as modifiers to modify head nouns of interpersonal relations and institutions,express singular meanings.This is mainly related to the factors of typical communication mode and subjective emotion expression.