A Grammatical Study Of The Siyi Dialect In Guangdong

As a subdialect of the Yue dialect, the Siyi dialect is mainly spoken in the most areas of four cities (Taishan, Kaiping, Xinhui and Enping) in the southwestern part of Guangdong Province of China. It shows many special features compared with Cantonese, the representative dialect of the Yue dialect. With a pioneering method of research and analysis, this dissertation presents an overall grammatical description of this dialect in 12 chapters, including an in-depth discussion of all sorts of tone changes in the Siyi dialect from the angle of morphology, full explanations of parts of speech (specially function words), and clear comparison of the main differences between Siyi and Cantonese in both word order and syntactic patterns. At a word, it is the valuing work of this dissertation that establishes a three-dimensional system of the grammar of the Siyi dialect through a method combining synchronic investigation and diachronic research.