The Phonologic And Lexical Evolvements Of Amoy Dialect In The Past Over 100 Years

This dissertation focuses on the phonologic and lexical evolvements of Amoy dialect in the past over 100 years.In the late 19th century,Amoy dialect experienced both diachronic evolvements and language contacts.The dissertation attempts to outline the relationship between phonologic evolvements and lexical developments, and find out factors affecting the lexical evolvements in Amoy dialect.The main book of Amoy dialect in the late 19th century is by Carstairs Douglas,1873. There are two more books as reference,< Anglo-Chinese Manual with Romanized Colloquial in the Amoy Dialect > by E.Doty(1853),and by John Macgowan(1871).All the 3 books written by missionaries got little recognition in formal Amoy dialect studies.This dissertation is divided into six sections.First of all,we point out the theme and significance of the study,and also the basic theories,methods and illustrations.The second chapter expounds the phonological evolvements,the phonetic evolvements related to characters,and the phonetic evolvements related to words.The third chapter presents a general picture of lexical evolvements in the vocabulary of nature,the vocabulary of men and their relationships and also that of social life.The glossaries of time,physiognomy and apparatus of human body have a better reservation,while the glossaries of government,religions and fishery experience a great loss of more than 50%.Glossaries of clothing and dressing, customs,literature and art experience a loss of more than 40%.Chapter Four analyses the factors affecting the lexical evolvements,such as the changes in social life,the competitions of synonymies and the rivalship between literal words and colloquial words.It also argues that language contacts played and important role in lexical evolvements during the past over 100 years.Chapter Five shows us the visages of idioms,proverbs and locutions in Amoy dialect in the late 19th century.Comparing to idioms and proverbs,locutions experienced greatest lose during the past over 100 years.It occurs mainly because the meaning of locutions is not so direct,and the arrangement of its morphemes is unsteady and usually changeable.The last chapter outlines the main evolvements of word-building,and argues that word-building with phonetic methods experienced a shrinking while that by affix basically preserved.Morpheme order seemed to settle down and word-building by literal and colloquial pronunciations had a tendency to extend.