Zhuang Physical Appearance Areas Of Research

Aspect and manner categories have been the focus of research by scholars from home and abroad since twenty or thirty years ago in the field of linguistics. Yet the development of this research is unbalanced among all the languages in the world. With the new method of field linguistics for collecting data in the first hand from Liangpeng Village, Luobo Town, Wuming County, Nanning City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Regions, as the base of our field work, and with Southern Zhuang Dialect and other materials, we have a relatively overall, deep and systematical study of categories of aspect and manner in Zhuang language for the purpose of revealing its characteristics in typology. This dissertation consists of six chapters as follows.Chapter One Preface makes a review on the development of aspect and manner study from home and abroad, mainly on the study of aspect and manner in Zhuang language. Also the research method, aims, value, significance are introduced. And more information about the base of our field work, Liangpeng Village Luobo Town Wuming County, like its geography environment and human environment as well as its phonological component are showed.Chapter Two Perfective subcategorizes three types, namely present perfective, past perfective and transient perfective. The present perfective includes(?)dai55'get', liu42'finished', pan31'succeed', poi33'go'four markers, and past perfective marks with kwa35'cross', the transient perfective with duplication. The contents cover semantic analysis, grammaticalization, verb types and verbal arguments etc.Chapter Three Imperfective subcategorizes seven types as progressive (?)i:(?)35 'right', durative t(?)k55'touch', future marker(?)i55'want', inceptive hun55tou55'up come', continuous (?)o:(?)31poi33'down go', pre-inchoative ko:n35'first'and, iterative or habitual(?)jou35(?)jou35'stay stay',(?)jap55(?)jap55'wink wink', kwen35'get used to'. Semantic, syntactic, verb types and grammacticalization of imperfective are explored.Chapter Four Manner subclassifies eight groups based on the definition of Chinese'Mao'(manner) by Zheng Ding'ou, namely descriptive manner'abb' construction, tentative manner(?)ja(?)55'look', casual manner Ca:k55'sound suffix', arbitrary manner'V+wa:(?)33+V+(?)ai13'construction, repetitive manner 'V+poi33+Vma33'construction and ka(?)35'saw', pek55'beat', less-lovely manner Ce:t55'sound suffix', more-detesting manner Ca:t55'sound suffix', and will-determining and urging manner Ca(?)35'sound suffix'. The manner category is also explored from semantic, grammaticalization, verb types, negative etc.Chapter Five Difference, characteristic and explanation of aspect and manner in Zhuang makes a comparison between Northern and Southern Zhuang dialects and points out that Zhuang is a language of manner prominent as well as mood prominent interms of its characteristics of typology. And as hypothesis a new model of diachronic evolvement of TAM is put forward as M>A>T. Chapter Six Conclusion points out the new points, shortcoming of present study and further research in the future.The value of this dissertation includes the following four points:(a) Filling the gap of grammar study in Zhuang language; (b) Helping reveal language features in this regions and broaden our horizon by using new theories of language typology and language contact and cognitive linguistics as well; (c) As a dialect grammar description, it may help the natives better know of their mother tongue and play an active role in inheriting, developing and protecting the local cultures; (d) The model of diachronic evolvement of TAM can explain some phenomena to some extent.