A Study On The Continuous Aspect Of The Dialects In Five Places Of Jiangsu Province

Aspect reflects the encoding process and characteristics of human cognitive event time progression and is a universal grammatical semantic category in human language.However,previous studies on the Aspect in Jiangsu dialects have mainly focused on single points and lack multi-point comparisons.Suzhou,Xuzhou,Taizhou,Yangzhou and Nanjing are representatives of the Wu language Taihu dialect,Xuhuai Mandarin,Jianghuai Mandarin Tai Ru dialect and Jianghuai Mandarin Hongchao dialect,respectively,covering the major dialect types in Jiangsu.This paper focuses on the Continuous Aspect of these five dialects,subdividing into Progressive Aspect,Simple Continuous Aspect,and Durative Aspect,systematically exploring their form,function,and the ability to combine with predicates.Based on historical historical documents and previous research,identifying its sources and outlining its evolutionary path.Finally,these five dialects are examined comprehensively to uncover their overall characteristics in formal function and syntactic semantic aspects,with the aim of providing linguistic resources and evidence to enrich the study of Jiangsu dialects and even the entire category of Chinese language aspect.The paper is divided into three parts: introduction,main body,and conclusion.The introduction introduces the administrative divisions and dialect overview of the five Jiangsu dialects,reviews the existing research on Mandarin and Chinese dialect Continuous aspects,clarifies the relevant concepts of Aspect and Continuous Aspect,the classification of predicates used in the main body,summarizes the research content and ideas,explains the research methods,significance,and sources of linguistic data.The Continuous aspect markers of Jiangsu dialects are classified into two types: Type A mainly consists of adverbs and weakened locative prepositional structures.Adverbs are only used before verbs,and different locative prepositional structures have different syntactic positions,including three cases: one is only used before predicates,the second is used both before and after predicates,and the third is only used after predicates.Type B mainly consists of the aspect particle and semi-weakened elements,which are only used after predicates and pronounced with a light tone.The main body consists of six chapters.Chapters one to five provide a comprehensive and detailed description and analysis of the Continuous Aspect in the five Jiangsu dialects,namely Suzhou,Xuzhou,Taizhou,Yangzhou,and Nanjing.For example,Suzhou dialect’s"le X(勒X)""zi(仔)""hao(好)"and"lao(牢)",Xuzhou dialect’s"pen(喷)""zai(在)"and"zhe(着)",Taizhou dialect’s"zai(在)""zai kuai(在块)""a kuai(啊块)""a xia(啊下)""a(啊)"and"zhu a(住啊)",Yangzhou dialect’s"zai(在)""zai kuai(在块)""a kuai(啊块)""dao kuai(到块)""dao(到)""zhu(住)"and"zhu a(住啊)"and Nanjing dialect’s"zai(在)""zhe(着)"and"dao(到)".The relevant chapters examine the grammatical and semantic meanings,syntactic distribution,and predicate pairing ability of each Continuous Aspect marker,and explore their historical origins.It is pointed out that the original characters of"zi(仔)"in Suzhou dialect,"zhe(着)"in Nanjing dialect,"a"and"zhe(着)"in Xuzhou dialect,"zhu(住)"in Yangzhou dialect and Taizhou dialect are all derived from the Middle Chinese"zhu(住)".The evolution path of the weakened locative prepositional structures in Yangzhou dialect and Taizhou dialect and the"le X(勒X)"in Suzhou dialect exhibit similar patterns,reflecting the underlying expression of Wu language.Chapter 6 integrates the Continuous Aspect markers of the Suzhou,Xuzhou,Taizhou,Yangzhou,and Nanjing dialects as a whole,comprehensively examining their significant features in terms of form,function,and syntactic semantics.Moreover,this chapter explains the reasons for the unique phenomenon of the Continuous Aspect markers in the Jianghuai dialects,taking into account their history of migration and dialect contact.The results indicate that different dialects use different markers to represent the same continuous meaning,and the distribution of Continuous Aspect markers in the five dialects can be classified into three types: A-dominant,B-dominant,and AB-balanced.The different markers have varying degrees of collocation ability with predicates,and the conditions for their appearance in the same sentence structure also differ.Nanjing dialect is similar to Xuzhou dialect,but they both use the same continuous aspect marker "dao(到)" along with Yangzhou dialect,which could be the result of historical migration.Although Yangzhou dialect and Taizhou dialect belong to different sub-dialects,they show relatively high consistency in expressing the Continuous Aspect,which is mostly influenced by dialect contact.The conclusion section elaborates on the research findings,summarizes the basic understanding of Continuous Aspect markers in the five Jiangsu dialects,and points out the limitations and directions for improvement.