Haimen Dialect Syntax Research

Haimen,located at the north estuary of Yangtze River,and its surrounding areas form the biggest Wu dialect community in north of Yangtze River·This dissertation is mainly to study five characteristic grammar items in Haimen dialect,namely adverbs,degree expression,negative words,aspectual presentation and identifiable type.Based on the synchronic description,the paper tries to compare with the other Wu dialects and Wu dialectal literature of Ming and Qing Dynasty.Besides the parts of introduction and conclusion,this dissertation is composed of 5 chapters.The first part introduces the geography,the history and the population of Haimen briefly,the phonetic system and the grammar features of Haimen dialect,as well as the present studies on its grammar,the study significance and study methods of this paper.Chapter one Adverb,describes the syntactic and semantic features of time adverb,scope adverb,mood adverb and modal adverb respectively,involving more than 50 common adverbs.Chapter two Degree Expression,describes the degree expressions in Haimen dialect from four perspectives:affix,overlap,adverbial adjunct,complement.Chapter three Negative Word,describes the meaning and the related negative sentence and interrogative sentence of such five negative words as "Fu(弗),Fen(朆),Ao(奥),Wude(呒得),Wuchu(呒处)" in Haimen dialect.Chapter four Aspectual Presentation,describes the realized aspect,immediate aspect,ingressive aspect,progressive aspect and continuance aspect in Haimen dialect.Chapter five Identifiable Type, mainly describes the identifiable function of the numeral word "多" in the identifiable system of Haimen dialect,in order to further explore the identifiable types of the common nouns in Chinese dialects.The main conclusion is as follows:1.Since situated at a corner of Yangtze River and Yellow Sea,comparing with such urban dialects as Shanghai dialect and Suzhou dialect,Haimen dialect retained more grammatical ingredients of Wu dialect in Ming and Qing Dynasties.The unique geographical position enables some grammatical phenomena,such as using "Jiaoguan(交关)" as complement to express high degree etc,which have already vanished or be vanishing in Metropolis of Wu dialect,to be still enlivening in Haimen dialect.2.The differences in some grammar items between Haimen dialect and its mother-dialect, Chongming dialect,are mainly attributed to the influence of its neighboring dialects spoken in the district of Nantong,such as the usage of putting "Kuaisha(快煞)"ahead,etc.3.The regular identifiable pattern of common nouns in Chinese dialects is "deixis+numeral+ classifier+noun".Deixis-type,classifier-type and numeral-type are the elliptical and integrated variants of the regular identifiable pattern.The identifiable meaning of numeral "Duo(多)" in Haimen dialect derives from the ellipsis of deixis. 4.The variants of Yes-No Questions of perfect aspect in Wu dialect are as the result of the different combinations of aspect element,interrogative element and predicate verb.Among which,aspect element must abut against predicate verb.The unique type "fen+V+va(朆+V+(口伐))?" in Haimen dialect may be considered as the co-effect of negative-word-type "V+le+va(V+勒+(口伐))?" of Shanghai dialect and interrogative-type "ang+V(阿曾+V)?" of Suzhou dialect.