A Contrastive Study Of The Suffixes Of The Dialects Of The Southern And Hunan Dialects

Xiang dialect (or Hunan dialect) is the main language of Hunan province located in south central China. chonnam dialect is the most prevalent language in South Jeolla Province in the south-west of Korea. Applying contrastive linguistic theory as the main theoretical framework, from the perspective of synchronicity, this paper studies the personal suffix of the two dialects in China and Korea to figure out the similarities and differences on the morphological structure and semantic features between them in hope of offering some suggestions to dialect researchers.The whole thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction, which outlines the research purpose, previous research in related fields and research method. The objects of the study and the source of the data are included in the research method. After referring to the dictionaries about Hunan dialect and chonnam dialect and the research data from other scholars, the author selected 20 personal suffixes from Hunan dialect and also 20 from general southern dialect as research objects.The second and third chapter first define the basic definition of personal suffix of Xiang dialect and chonnam dialect because there is no common standard in the definition of particle. As a result, this paper attempts to discuss the standard in defining personal suffix of Xiang dialect and chonnam dialect on the basis of former researches. Then the paper analyses selected 20 personal suffixes of Xiang dialect in chapter two and selected 20 personal suffixes of chonnam dialect in chapter three separately. At last, the paper concludes the characteristics in morphology and semantics.The fourth chapter is the comparison and analysis of the personal suffixes of Xiang and chonnam dialects. From the perspective of part of speech of the word base and word formation ability in morphology, this thesis demonstrates the similarities and differences of personal suffix of Xiang and chonnam dialects. In terms of the semantic characteristics, the present study also investigates the similarities and differences of the semantic distribution of personal suffix of the two dialects from four aspects including property of behavior, occupation, characteristics, hierarchy.The fifth chapter is the conclusion of this article. Furthermore, it also illustrates limitations of the present study and suggestions for future study.