| This dissertation examines on the Mien language in Chiangrai Province, Thailand (hereafter referred to as Thailand Mien language). It uses both the principles of reference grammar and the basic theoretical concepts of modern linguistics and traditional grammar linguistics to give a synchronic comprehensive and systematic account of the grammatical structure of Thailand Mien language. Varied methodologies are adopted in the research including field work, description, statistics, convincing and profound original materials are especially collected.There are few achievements of the cross-border research on the Thailand Mien, therefore its description and analysis is very necessary and urgent. The significance is:first, it helps to deepen a synchronic knowledge and understanding to the Thailand Mien; secondly, it will help to provide the text and practical information for the comparative study of the Miao-Yao language family and typological study in grammar; thirdly, it contributes to studies on the cross-border languages, especially on the lingua franca of the different countries and their grammatical characteristics under different socio-cultural background.The dissertation is divided into10chapters.Chapter â… :Introduction. This chapter discusses the research object and content, the value of the present work, theoretical orientations and methodology. It also explains the origin of language material. Moreover this part will be introduce the background of Iu-Mien people in Thailand, including the geographic distribution, history, migration, economy, culture, social and ethnic relations. At last introduce the situation of language used and character of Iu-Mien people in Thailand.Chapter â…¡. Review literature of Iu-Mien people and Mien language. This Part review a summary of the previous research of Mien grammar studies and the current research on Iu-Mien people's society, culture and language. Then a brief comment on studies of all aspects of the Mien language and conclusion the characteristics of the research.Chapter â…¢. Phonological system. This part mianly decribes the phonological system of Mien Language in Thailand.The main contents include consonants, vowels tone and the syllable structure. Summarized the the voice tone type, rules and Pronunciation Variations.Chapter â…£. Morphology. This chapter studies the basic morphological principles and loan words of Mien language in Thailand. A particular emphasis is put on the semantic and syntactic characteristics of quadric-syllable words and on the influence of loan words.Chapter â…¤. Parts of speech. This part focuses the word classes of Mien language in Thailand, including nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, numerals, classifiers, adverbs, interjections, prepositions, conjunctions and particle. A particular emphasis is put on the following:noun prefixes and gender; verb prefixes, verbal aspect, verb reduplication, particularities of object-taking verbs; verbalization of adjectives, adjective reduplication, object-taking adjectives, differences and similarities between object-taking adjectives and object-taking verbs.Chapter â…¥. Phrasal structure. In this part, the phrases structure is divided ten categories, including coordinate phrases, modifying phrases, subject-predicate phrases, verb-object phrases, numeral classifier phrases, serial-verb phrases, supplementary phrases, locative phrases, appositive phrases and including phrases. A special emphasis is put on phrasal structure and semantic relations between the internal components, rules governing the order between internal components in parallel phrase structures, differences between modifier-modified and modified-modifier phrasal structures.Chapter â…¦. Syntactic constituents. The syntactic constituents in sentences of Mien language are subject, predicate, object, attributive, adverbial and complement, etc. And further approached both from syntactic and semantic way.Chapter â…§. Sentence Patterns. This chapter describe and analysis of simple sentences and complex sentences. Simple sentences include verbal-predicate, adjectival-predicate, nominal-predicate sentences, sentences with no subjects, elliptical sentences and one-member sentences. In the part of complex sentences, a distinction is made between coordinate and subordinate sentences, which are further divided into five and six categories respectively, according to the semantic relation between the two clauses.Chapter â…¨. Special sentences. This part gives a full description on the judge sentences, existential sentence, passive sentences, comparative sentences, topic sentences and disposal sentences, etc.Chapter â…©.Sentence category. According to the syntactic mood, this chapter proposes a description and a complete analysis of declarative sentences, interrogative sentences, imperative sentences and interjectional sentences. Further from aspects of form semantics and mood respectively.The dissertation points out that the Mien language has mainly the monosyllabic words and a few multi-syllable words. The word-building remains the word formation pattern of 'the modifier morpheme+noun morpheme', and constitutes state adjectives with 'state morpheme+adjective morpheme'. The words reflected politics, economy, science, technology, culture, education, and many words meaning the abstract concept are mainly loaned from Chinese and others from Thai language. New words of the Mien language are numerous formed by means of morpheme composed of inherent morphemes from the mother tongue and previous Chinese morphemes. From the point of word overlap, in addition to verbs, quantifiers and adjectives that can overlap, nouns can also overlap, mainly referring to the overlap of time nouns and the overlap of some monosyllabic nouns as quantifiers. From the point of word order, the Thailand Mien Language is the type of S VO, word order and function words express grammatical meaning. Attributive position is flexible, some located before the center word, and some after the center word. For example:the quantifier attribute is located before the center word, while the adjective, pronoun or noun are usually located after the center word.This research is the first comprehensive study of the Thailand Mien grammar. It gives a systematic analysis on grammatical structure features, conducts in-depth discussions on some important and valuable grammatical phenomena. It also tackles numerous points that had never been studied before. The corpus is the first-hand material recorded more than20million words. The author is the mother-tongue speaker who has a strong sense of language. Additionally the other several Mien pronunciation partners in Thailand also provide a large number of materials and reliable evidence for this dissertation.Although linguistic phenomena are extensively described, the presents study does not always provide rigorous analyses and lacks theoretical content.The dissertation is followed five appendices:1) folk stories (Appendix â… );2) conversations in everyday life(Appendix â…¡);3) riddles and songs(Appendix â…¢);4)3,559Mien classified words(Appendix â…¥); and5) distribution and population of Iu-Mien people in Chingrai, Thailand(Appendix â…¤).
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