A Reference Grammar Of Zhiqiang Speech Of Li Language

This dissertation aims to synchronically make a comprehensive and systematic study on ZhiQiang Speech, a language spoken in the southern part of Ledong Li Autonomous County in Hainan province. According to the instructions of reference grammar, the dissertation mainly discusses its phonological system, morphology and systactic system. It consists of eighteen chapters.Chapter One offers the designing of the dissertation, the aim and significance of choosing this subject, the theory and method this dissertation is based on. A general looking-back to the past linguistic researches on Li langusge is simultaneously covered. Makes a short description of the ZhiQiang Li peaple, including its geography, population, economy, social situation and a survey of the status quo of the ZhiQiang language use, so on and so forth.Chapter Two describes the phonological system of ZhiQiang Speech, the main contents including initials, finals, tonic types and syllable canon. This chapter ends with a phonological compare between ZhiQiang Speech and the BaoDing LuoHuo Speech.Chapter Three makes a presentation of word-building process of language, namely, compounding and affixation. Especially, the types and its constructive rules of coordinate compounding words are concluded through abundant examples. The chapter ends with a short inventory of loans (mainly from HaiNan MinNan language) of the lanfuage and argot.Chapter Four to Chapter Eighteen is made up of ten sub-sections, focusing on the parts of the speech of ZhiQiang, including noun, pronoun, numeral, quantifier, verb, adjective, adverb, conjunction, preposition, and particle, respectively. Each section is a general description of the gramatical features of each part of speech, with special attention to their grammatical functons and peculiar systactic behaviors, if any. For example, such phenomena as the性, number and affix of noun and characteristic of word-formation of the kinship terms,number of pronouns, the formation of the interrogative words and demonstrative pronouns, the order characteristic of structure of quantifier, the number system and its use, the aspect category and peculiar classification of verbs, the reduplication of adjectives are given sufficient observation and description. Attention is also paid to the classification and syntactic funtion of adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and particles.In Chapter Fourteen, the description of phrases are given. The phrasal structure of ZhiQiang Speech is divided into noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, proposition phrases and numeral phrases, among which the constituents and order are emphasized.Chapter Fifteen describes and gives an analysis of process for phenomenon of grammaticalization. The origin of the proposition affix word "τs□1 1","pai1 1", the grammaticalization of verb word "vuNk□□", future marker word "khuNi1 1", aspect marker "ΠbaNi1 1" and pasive marker "Πja3 1" are described and analysed.Chapter Sixteen gives a full description of declarative sentenses, interrogative sentenses, imperative sentenses and exclamatory sentenses in perspective of form and semantic. The express way of interrogative sentenses are emphasized.Chapter Seventeen focuses on the copular sentenses, negative sentenses, comparative sentenses and topic sentenses. puts stress on the types and structural characteristic of the copular sentenses, comparative sentenses and topic sentenses.In Chapter Eighteen, the study of relative clauses, complement clauses, subordinate clauses and coordinate clauses is carried out detailedly. The relative marker, the types of relative clauses and the location of restriction word in relative clauses, subject clause and object clause of complement clauses are introduced, respectively. An analysis is made on the study of six coordination types and six subordinate structure types, namely, and-coordinate, continue-coordinate, advance-coordinate, explain-coordinate, but-coordinate, or-coordinate and conditional clauses, causal clauses, temporal clauses, purpose clauses, concessive clauses and style clauses.Appendices, the last part, contain about 3000 words and several long language materials.It is strongly expected on the part of the author that the present study will be helpful to the further research of ZhiQiang Speech and beneficial to contrastive research and typological study of the Sino-Tibetan Family.