A Grammatical Study Of Degree Adverb Hen In Leishan Dialect Of Guizhou Province

This thesis mainly discuss the degree adverb hen ‘very’ in Leishan dialect,including the combination of hen with adjectives,VP-structures and other degree adverbs.Leishan county is located in the southeastern of Guizhou province and belongs to southwest mandarin region.In addition to two structures ‘hen A’ and ‘A de hen’,which also exist in mandarin,Leishan dialect exist a special structure ‘A hen’,it is a dominant word-order in the Leishan dialect.Among these three structures,‘A hen’ is used most frequently,‘A de hen’ has the highest degree and strongest emotional of expression.Both ‘A hen’ and ‘A de hen’ can be used to express irony while ‘hen A’ can’t.The verbs or VP-structures combined with hen can be divided into two types,one can be represented by psychology verbs and the other by action verbs.When combined with psychology verbs,hen uses for indicate a high degree.hen combined with action verbs is not commonly used in mandarin,it differs in Leishan dialect.‘hen VP’ is a structure with multiple semantics in Leishan dialect,including ability and volition.We inferred that hen is a modal verb in this structure which can also indicates a broad sense of degree,including quantity frequency and intensity.‘hen VP hen’ is another special structure in Leishan dialect,VP in this structure can only be action verbs,not psychology verbs.We tested the combination of hen with other degree adverbs and finally found that the structure ‘hen VP’ in Leishan dialect has quantitative characteristics while ‘VP hen’ doesn’t,the combination of ‘hen VP hen’ should be ‘[hen VP] hen’.Therefore,the other degree verb in ‘hen VP hen’structure like ‘hen’ ‘zui’ ‘lao huo’ are used to modify ‘hen VP’ as a whole.