New Ping Yi December Lu Then

This Dissertation makes a systematic study on the structure and functional use of Lalu Dialect in Jianxing Township, Xinping Yi and Dai Autonomous County, Yunnan Province. For the part of structural studies, a detailed description on the phonetics, words, and grammar is made by using the format and procedure of reference grammar studies. Theories on modern descriptive linguistics, comparative linguistics and linguistic typology have been used. For the functional studies, a tentative study is made on the language maintenance and young people's language loss, while the theories and methods of social linguistics and psycholinguistics have been used for this purpose.The dissertation is composed of 9 chapters. Chapeter One and Two are the introduction to the whole work. "Chapter One Introduction" gives a brief review on the studies on the dialects of Yi Language in South China, so the academic value and significance of this study is given afterwards. In "Chapter two Survey on Lalu People of Jianxing Township, Xinping Yi and Dai Autonomous County and a Brief Introduction to the two Spots of Investigation" gives a preliminary description on the history of Jinping Country while the life, culture and economy of Lalu People is introduced on the basis of field work. An introduction to the chosen spots is also made for further reference. Chapter Three to Chapter Seven are the main body of the dissertation, which make careful descriptions and analysis on the phonetics, words, word class and grammar of Lalu Dialect. "Chapter Three Phonetics" describes the vowels, consonants, tones and mutation. "Chapter Four Words'introduces the word building and the word system of Lalu Dialect. "Chapter Five Word Class" gives a detailed study on the 12 word classes of Lalu Dialect. "Chapter Six Phrases" and "Chapter Seven Part of Speech" respectively describe and analyze the phrases and syntax of Lalu Dialect. "Chapter Eight Types of Sentences" divides the sentences of Lalu Dialect into single sentences and complex sentences while the basic structure and features are described. Chapter Nine is a case study on the language use of Lalu People of Jianxing Township from the perspective of the functional use of language. At the same time a detailed discussion is made on the language loss of the young of Lalu People. The end of the dissertation is the appendix, which includes the glossary, language materials and questionnaires.Through systematic description and analysis we find that the Lalu Dialect has the following features:First, the phonetic feature:Relatively more stop and affricate consonants, having a set of aspirated unvoiced respectively, palatalization and non-palatalization bilabials rightly correspond, while lacking of blade-palatals. Tense and lax vowels are distinctive. Relatively less double finals are found. There are 3 types of tones. The syllable structure of LaLu Dialect is simple, lacking of consonant coda, and all is open syllable.Second, the word order is the main way of building Lalu words. There are 10 types of word building with a few prefixes and suffixes, mainly for nouns. The grammatical categories of adverbial words are comparatively simple, while the difference between tenses, aspects, voice,causative, can be expressed by analytical ways. There are rich measure words to describe the feature of the noun modified. There exists limited number of echo classifiers. In Lalu Dialect there are rich structural and auxiliary mood words.Third, form words using and changing word order are the main ways for Lalu Dialect to express grammatical meanings. In single sentence, "S+O+V" is the main type of sentence structure of Lalu Dialect. In complex sentence, the relations between each single sentence can be express by the innate meaning with few conjunctions. Usually Chinese and Lalu are mixed. Among the dialects of Yi language, Lalu dialect is closer to the Nanhua branch of central dialect of Yi Language.Four, the language maintenance within the community of Lalu People of Jianxing County varies greatly. On the one hand, the language maintenance of Mowei is good, which is closely related with their strong language attitude and strong sense of hometown. On the other hand, the language maintenance of the Lalu People of Malutang Community is declining, especially among the young people who have left their mother tongue environment. The language loss is obvious, while there are great difference in different age groups and the time of loss.