A Linguistic Study Of Li Fangkui’s Sui Language Text Collection

This dissertation is a linguistic description and analysis including Sui phonology, lexical-function, grammar, and sociolinguistics. The famous linguist Li Fangkui collected 119 texts of the Sui language as spoken in Guizhou province Libo county Shuili village and Shuiyan village published as "Sui Language Text Research" (Institute of History and Philology Academia Sinica, Special Publication No.73, Nankang Taipei, Taiwan,1942). There are eight chapters:Chapter one is the introduction stating the main purpose of the study and research methods, along with an introduction to the Sui language and culture and a review of previous Sui research.Chapter two explains the Sui language database (dictionary and text collection), the language of software application, and the format for linguistic research.Chapter three analyzes Sui phonology, including Sui syllable structure, phonetic differences within the Sandong dialect, oral tradition in rhyme, phrasal pattern, and tone patterns.Chapter four examines the Sui language in word-formation, grammatical categories, and lexical meanings.Chapter five describes Sui grammatical features, such as sentence structure, phrasal structure, syntactic constituents, and discourse level coherence.Chapter six includes an analysis of Li Fangkui’s Sui Language Text Collection text syles and genre, in two main categories--oral tradition in rhyme and written narrative, including the Sui religious chanting of the Sui priest.Chapter seven studies the sociolinguistics of the Sui language, which includes language use, and the importance of Li’s Sui Language Text Collection for the Sui language documentation.Chapter eight is the conclusion.This dissertation focuses on the text corpus, using the Li Fangkui’s Sui Language Text Collection to analyze the Sui language lexical function and grammar. All the example sentences are transcribed according to "the first draft of the Sui language transcription." This transcription increases the usefulness of Li Fangkui’s text collection and research. The research in this thesis combines knowledge from several...