A Research On Vocabulary Of Jianshi Dialect In Hubei Province

The thesis chooses the vocabulary of the dialect of Jianshi county, Hubei Province as the object of study. After carrying out a field research, the author lists a relatively complete and systematic word list of Jianshi dialect, based on which the author makes a comparison between Mandarin and Jianshi dialect and among words within the dialect from the synchronic perspective, and explores the inherited words in Jianshi dialect from the diachronic perspective. Then, the thesis probes several types of significant’cultural words’ in the dialect including specialty words, folk custom words and concept words. In addition, the author analyzes the appellations and geographical names in Jianshi dialect. The thesis consists of ten chapters as follows:Chapter one is the introduction, starting with the basic information of Jianshi county including its geographical location, administrative division, population and ethnic groups, and historical development. It is followed by the illuminations of the internal partition, general characteristics, attribution and research status of Jianshi dialect, and gives a description of its phonetic system. At the end of this chapter, the author introduces the research purpose, task significance, objects and research scope, theory and methods applied, and finally sources of the corpus.Chapter two is the word list of the Categorized Vocabulary of Jianshi Dialect. In line with the stylistic rules and layout of the List of Items for the Lexical Investigation of Chinese Dialects, the glossary records the frequently-used words of Jianshi dialect in thirty categories, laying a corpus foundation for the following research and discussion.Chapter three is the comparisons of the external and internal differences of Jianshi dialect. On the basis of the categorized word list, firstly the author makes an overall comparison between the dialect and mandarin, concluding their differences in four aspects, namely syllable, word-formation, meaning and value, and then the author compares words inside the dialect system and lists the internal vocabulary differences by charts.Chapter four is the exploration of the inherited words. Through consulting the ancient literature, the author extracts a portion of inherited words which are rarely seen or non-existent in mandarin but commonly used in the dialect, and puts them into three categories-depictive, active and nominal words. For each word the author confirms their pronunciations, sources, original characters, lexical meanings and applications in the dialect so as to present the diachronic features and development evolution of Jianshi dialect.From chapter five to seven, the thesis looks into three kinds of typical’cultural words’of Jianshi dialect from various aspects. Chapter five is the discussion of specialty words, which demonstrates a great many vocabulary concerning people’s production and daily life, depicting a vivid picture of the local traditions and material culture. Chapter six is the analysis of folk custom words, which primarily introduces the festival and etiquette words of this kind and analyzes the folk cultural implications of these custom words. Chapter seven is the exploration of concept words with emphasis on the concept words of nature and culture, of which the latter is subdivided into Confucian culture words, countryside culture words, ethnic culture words and taboo words, reflecting the influences and penetration of the local conceptions of nature and society onto the dialect.Chapter eight is the study of the appellations of Jianshi dialect, which summarizes the characteristics of relative appellations and the types of social appellations, and enumerates personage appellations featuring local specialties.Chapter nine is the research of the relationship among the geographic names, dialect and folk culture of Jianshi. Specifically, the author analyzes the composition of place names including the characteristics of the general and specialized place names, and then unveils the cultural connotation and its origin of those geographic names.The last chapter is the conclusion which makes a summary of the general ideas of the thesis and comes up with the questions needed to be studied in the future research.Generally speaking, the thesis is a systematic study of the vocabulary system of Jianshi dialect where a couple of research methods are applied:field investigation, comparative method and the combination of synchronic and diachronic researches, with references to theories such as cultural linguistics theory and two’triangles’syntax theory. The thesis focuses on the revelation of the vocabulary characteristics of Jianshi dialect, portrays and taps into its cultural connotation, as well as reviews the impacts the local society, manners and customs, people’s concept and social etiquettes have exerted on the vocabulary. It is expected that this thesis could further the lexical study of dialects and facilitate the in-depth exploration of the relationship between dialect and culture.