A Study Of The Lexical Differences Between Changzhi Dialect And Taiyuan Dialect

The study on the differences among dialects in the linguistics field is focused on pronunciation while the words and grammar are relatively weaker.In recent years,people are putting more emphasis on the investigation of the words of dialects,so are the study on Jin Dialect,which gets remarkable achievements.Taking Changzhi dialect and Taiyuan dialect in Jin Dialect as the research objects,this thesis collects linguistic data based on the literature method and field method and makes a contrastive study of the lexical differences between Changzhi dialect and Taiyuan dialect from the aspects of word formation,word meaning and difference of the origin of words in order to reveal the concrete lexical differences and to explain the formation of the differences using the theories of cognitive linguistics.The main research contents and main findings are in the following:1.word formationThis thesis makes a contrast of the lexical differences in terms of the difference of syllable number,the difference of constituted morpheme and the difference of ways to create words.It is found out that the use of the syllable numbers is distinctively different.As for the constituted morphemes,the lexical differences between Changzhi dialect and Taiyuan dialect lie in the facts that with regard to the same objects or phenomena,different(either totally different or partly different)morphemes or the same morphemes with different order are chosen by Changzhi dialect and Taiyuan dialect.Besides,there are differences in the use of affixes.The difference of ways to create words is mainly studied from the phenomenon that words of different word formation can be produced because of different motivations of word-creation,i.e.appearance,color,attribute,figure of speech.2.word meaningThis thesis mainly contrasts the word meaning in three aspects: difference of lexical meaning,difference of grammatical meaning and difference of color meaning.As for the difference of lexical meaning,the study shows that there are plenty of homonyms and some words in one dialect have more semantic items or bigger semantic domain than those in the other dialect.The difference of grammatical meaning is reflected from the fact that there are a lot of conversions which can function as different part of speech in Changzhi dialect and Taiyuan dialect.Moreover,some lexicons with the same word formation have different collocative objects or scope.The difference of color meaning is studied in three aspects: affective color,stylistic color and image color.3.the Origin of WordsThis thesis gives a contrastive analysis of the difference of ancient Chinese words,the difference of borrowed words and the difference of local words.This thesis makes a contrast of the Chinese ancient words in Changzhi dialect and Taiyuan dialect according to the ancient word table by Dong Shaoke(2002:152-205).Besides,the borrowed words which are from foreign languages,other dialects and mandarin words are listed in the two dialects.In addition,the local words which reflect the local features in Changzhi dialect and Taiyuan dialect are contrasted in this thesis.In the final chapter,the reasons of the formation of the lexical differences in Changzhi dialect and Taiyuan dialect are analyzed in the internal factors and external factors of a language.The internal factors of a language include the influence of sound change,the influence of language inheritance,the influence of language contact,the restriction of lexical system and the influence of language cognition.The internal factors of a language are applied to explain the formation of the lexical differences of the two dialects from the factors of history,society and geography.Among the internal factors,the influence of language cognition is used to explain in the experiential view,the prominence view and the attentional view.