A Study On The Animal Words Of The Mandarin In Northeast China

In this research, the featured animal nous of northeastern mandarin dialect includes the vocabulary of animals and the vocabulary related to animals or constituted by animals. First of all, the paper summarizes the animal vocabulary in northeastern mandarin dialect based on two representative works on the study of northeastern mandarin dialect in Jilin, Shenyang and Benxi regions:The Concise Dictionary of Dongbei Dialect and The Liaoyang Dialect. The summary also refers to the usage of animal vocabulary by the study participants. In the second part, it extracts the featured animals vocabulary of northeastern mandarin dialect through comparing with the Beijing Jargon Dictionary and the Mouping Dialect Dictionary, respectively on behave of Beijing mandarin dialect and Shandong and Liaoning mandarin dialect, investigating the usage of the local speakers of the both dialects, and then removing the overlapping words. It also thoroughly describes animal vocabulary in northeastern mandarin dialect from the structural, semantic and pragmatic aspects. The last part focuses on the investigation and analysis of the social usage of the animal vocabulary in northeastern mandarin dialect, and forecasts the trend of development.The research sample was selected from three groups:the residents of Shenyang Qingyun urban community, the residents of Faku Woniushi Jianshanzi rural community, and the teachers of Faku Woniushi Central Elementary School. They represent the Tongxi brunch of northeastern mandarin dialect of Shenyang and Jilin regions. The research investigates the three groups’knowledge, usage and attitude to the animal words to analyze the correlation between linguistic variables and social variables, and to identify the difference of the animal words use by different social groups. Moreover, the research reveals the subjective factors that affect the use of animal words through examining the different attitudes toward animal words. On the other hand, it analyzes the objective factors through observation on Putonghua popularization, school education, social media and development of various art forms based on northeastern mandarin dialect.The study has shown that from the perspective of ontology, the featured animal vocabulary in northeastern mandarin dialect has within it from one to six syllable(s); from the morpheme perspective, it contains single morpheme words and compound words. The compound words are classified into derivation and composition by words structure. Derivation words are categorized into root with word-affix and affix-root with word. Composition words contain modifier-head, verb-object, subject-predicate, combination, and complementation. Some of the words can be further divided into more complex structures, and they are modifier-head-modifier-head,modifier-head-complementation,modifier-head-sub ject-predicate, modifier-head-verb-object, subject-predicate-complementation, subject-predicate-modifier-head,subject-predicate-subject-predicate,verb-object-verb-object, combination-combination, and complementation-subject-predicate. Lastly, from the semantic perspective, featured animal nous of northeastern mandarin dialect possesses both metaphor and derogatory features; from the pragmatic perspective, it expresses similarity and economic features.From the awareness and usage aspect, the knowledge rate of featured animal nous of northeastern mandarin dialect is high, but the usage rate of it is relatively very low. As for the gender difference, female speakers tend to use standard Chinese worlds, whereas male speakers incline to use dialect words. In the age aspect, the older of the speakers the more featured animal words they use. Moreover, education degree has an inverse relation to the use of animal words. The awareness rate in rural communities is higher than that in urban areas. The teachers are strict about language in class but more relaxed to the extracurricular terms. They also instruct students to use standard Chinese timely.The attitude of language influences the use of it. The study has shown that the majority of the participants agree with the practicability of featured animal nous of northeastern mandarin dialect in communication and hold positive attitude toward to various art forms of northeastern mandarin dialect. On the other hand, these participants highly identify standard Chinese and expect its continuous use and development.The featured animal nous of northeastern mandarin dialect will continue to be used under subjective and objective factors. However, with the further popularization of Putonghua, bilingual speakers who use both northeastern mandarin dialect and standard Chinese will increase. Moreover, some vulgar words of the dialect will gradually phase out as they obey the development of moral cultivation.