The Study Of Capacity Categories In The East Hubei Dialect

In the course of understanding and transforming the world, we have formed such categories as"time","space","number"on basis of perception of the nature and characteristics of different things."Among various categories, capacity is the important one for our understanding and representing the world. All the objects in the world are expressed in capacity". For instance, objects are measured in numbers and geometric quantity; events measured in time; and quality measured in degree. Those categories are linguistically termed as"capacity categories". In linguistic system, nouns refer to objects and show"space"; verbs refer to actions and show"time"; adjectives refer to qualities and show"degree". As a result, nouns correspond with space; verbs with time and adjectives with degree. The capacity categories are not only semantic but also grammatical, for it is formed by classifying grammatical meanings.This dissertation makes a special study of capacity categories in the dialects in yingsan, Luotian, Xishui, Huangmei, Qichun, Wuxue, Hong'an, Macheng, Tuanfeng and Huangzhou in the East Hubei. It consists of 9 chapters, including objective capacity, spatial capacity, temporal capacity, action capacity, degree capacity, proximate capacity, subjective capacity, reduplication, and classifiers in Chinese dialects. Chapter1—5 discusses the categorical system of capacity----a syntagmatic study of capacity contents: Concerned with substance and materials objective capacity is linguistically expressed by definite nouns and classifiers; Concerned with the measurements of distance, size, amount and proportion of three-dimensional space, space capacity is linguistically expressed by spatial classifiers; concerned with quality, events and objects, temporal capacity is linguistically expressed by temporal classifiers: Concerned with strength, scope, frequency and duration of actions, action capacity is expressed by verbal classifiers; Concerned with quality of objects, degree capacity is linguistically expressed by affixed adjectives and adverbs. Chapter6---8 mainly discusses different forms of capacity categories------a paradigmatic study of expressive modes of capacity: Subjective capacity refers to speakers'subjective evaluation of quantity expressed by grammatical means, including large quantity, enough quantity and small quantity; Proximate capacity refers to approximate quantity, equivocal quantity and indefinite quantity expressed by numerals, numeral phrases, classifiers and combinations of numerals and classifiers. Various reduplications in the East Hubei Dialects are grammar methods in change of expressible capacity and they are closely related with capacity. Discussions of proximate capacity, subjective capacity and reduplications pave the way for our understanding of capacity categories. Chapter 9 is especially devoted to classifier systems in Chinese dialects. Without inflectional forms for number, Chinese resorts to classifiers. Since capacity categories are related to classifiers, a study of classifiers should be made in the discussion of capacity category. The nine chapters in the dissertation are related to and complementary with each other They are either macro study of the capacity category theories or a rough study of capacity categories or a micro analysis of expressive modes of capacity categories. It enlarges the range of"capacity", projecting it upon other semantic categories and getting beyond the coverage of"capacity".An outward research approach is adopted in the dissertation, namely from meaning to grammatical forms. It makes a thorough investigation and a careful analysis of the capacity categories in the East Hubei Dialects to find out grammatical forms and phenomena of the capacity categories in the East Hubei Dialects and to discover the relationship between meaning and forms. This outward research approach has a wide coverage of most of grammatical phenomina; It can help us to work out basic laws of capacity catagories by means of comparison between capacity category of East Hubei Diolects and that of Standard Chinese. It also paves the way for the semantic study in the linguistic research.The research of the dissertation is grammatically generalized. Two expressive forms of capacity categories: structural and contextual, are distinguished. Structural form has structural marks; while contextual form has no structural marks but can be understood in contexts. This dissertation mainly makes deeper study of structural forms of capacity categories in the East Hubei Dialects. The structural forms consist of lexical forms and grammatical forms. Lexical forms mainly include classifiers and numeral phrases; while grammatical forms not only include those forms in traditional sense, for instance, word order, functional words, affixes and reduplications, but also include some special structural frames.The dissertation is attached with three appendixes: Appendix 1: A table of collocation of classifiers with nouns in the East Hubei Dialects; Appendix 2: A table of borrowed verbal classifiers in the East Hubei Dialects; Appendix 3: colloquialisms for expression of capacity categories. Those appendixes are supplementary to the dissertation and helpful for a better understanding of the capacity categories in the East Hubei Dialects.