| Malaysia is a country with multi-racial society. Among the races, with Chinese being thesecond largest ethnic group in terms of its population ratio, mandarin language not onlyrepresents an important communication tool in Malaysian Chinese society, but also the mostcommonly used media language within Chinese society that constitutes of many differentdialects. Even though “Putonghua”(mandarin language in china) and the Malaysian mandarinlanguage are of the same origin, owing to the latter extensive usage and exposure in MalaysianChinese society of multi-dialect context whereby different dialects are also being widely used indaily basis, these circumstances have induced and created some unique characteristics in theMalaysian mandarin language today. As a result, in comparison with“Putonghua”, the Malaysianmandarin language has evolved into a significantly different language in its own right andcontext. The author of this thesis is a Malaysia-born Chinese and through her extensiveobservation as well as research, it has been discovered that there are apparent difference in thegrammar usage aspect of Malaysian spoken mandarin.By using the research method of descriptive linguistics, this dissertation studies theexceptive phenomenon of grammar used in the mandarin language spoken by Malaysian Chinese,whereby its main contents involve:1. Using回as auxiliary words to express the reversion of actions, conditions,circumstances and thoughts.2. Some of the exceptive syntactic construction related to到including the structure ofV+到, X+到+完,有/没（没有）+V+到, V+得/不+到and ADJ+到.3. The reduplication of verbs: VV+quantitative phrase, VV+下, V下V下, VV+directional verb, VV+掉, and the using of reduplicated verbs as adverbial orpredicate. The reduplication of adjectives: the AA form of reduplicated adjective canbe used as predicate without using的, it can also be used as complement, adverbial and attribute, and the reduplication of auxiliary words: V+看看.4. The exceptional order of the syntactic constituents and its related syntacticconstructions: using先,才,多,少as postposition adverbial, using有+VP aspredicate-object structure, using来and去before location, exceptive comparativesentences, the using of (adverb of degree)+(adjective+quantifiers) and (adverb ofdegree)+(adjective+verb phrase) as predicate, the inversion of dual-object sentencethat carries the meaning of “giving”.5. Using够/不够as the marker of comparative, using够as modal adverbsor and placein before noun in a sentence, using够力as adverbial and complement.6. The using of some special modal particles and positive-negative interrogativesentences:'[m55],啊[a21],'[l13],'[l21],'[l51-55],啊哈[21h35],啩[kwa33],嗬[h35], V-不-VO, V不V得C/V-不-V得CO and有没有VP.7. The phenomenon of reading了(le) as了(liao) due to the influence of Fujiandialect’s grammar.Based on the description and analysis of various characteristics in the phenomenon ofgrammar used in Malaysian mandarin, some valuable facts can be deduced and concluded asfollow:1. It has greater assimilation to Guangdong dialect than to Fujian dialect.2. The evolution in a language grammar usage that is triggered by local dialect is knownas the “contact induced grammaticalization” effect.3. The evolution of Malaysian mandarin grammar usage is mainly triggered by themutual “interference” within a brain’s language subsystems in a multi-dialectcircumstance, which subconsciously imparts a “borrowing” process that eventuallyresults in the exceptive phenomenon as discussed.4. The language variation in Malaysian Mandarin is considered to have reached a stagewhere the entire society has adopted the variation subconsciously. |
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