A Typological Description Of Dehong Dai Language

Dai language is mainly used by Dai nationality people in China.Since the establishment of People's Republic of China,Dai language has been deeply explored from different perspectives.Remarkable fruits have been made in phonology,lexicons,grammar,dialect,writing,education,culture and other fields.From the perspective of typology,this study strives to give a comprehensive description and analysis of Dehong Dai language,one of the dialects of Dai language.Chapter one briefly introduces the previous achievements and current state of study on Dai language and shows what type of Dehong Dai language and Chinese should belong to in WALS.Chapter two presents the analysis of Dehong Dai language.By selecting 76 features from WALS,this study gives an account of Dehong Dai language from nine aspects: the phonology,morphology,nominal categories,nominal syntax,verbal categories,word order,simple clause,complex sentences and lexicons.Chapter three,based on the principle of identifiability priority,makes an analysis of the order of noun and quantifier in Dehong Dai language.It is found that more often the quantifier “one” is placed behind the noun and the quantifier has the defmiteness when it modifies the noun alone.More efforts are made to analyze Heaviness-marking Correspondence from the point view of ditransitive construction of Dehong Dai language.Chapter four first summarizes the major findings of this research,and then offers some implications and the limitations of this study.Finally,it offers some suggestions for further studies.In summary,the article,from the perspective of the typology,makes a multi-angle investigation of the Dehong Dai language.It also makes in-depth investigations on the two important aspects in the language.It will enrich our knowledge of the language and provide help to the cognizing and learning of Dehong Dai language,and it also will contribute to the international exchanges of research in this area.