A Research On The Diminutive Of Xiangbei Mandarin

The cross-language studies indicate that the diminutive is a grammatical category in many languages.And the diminutive is a might category in Chinese dialects.The diminutive of Xiangbei Mandarin has rich grammatical functions and various grammatical forms.Studying it deeply,it is not only useful to have a comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of Xiangbei Mandarin,but also useful to enrich the research achievements of Chinese dialect diminutive.What's more,it can also provide some help for promoting the typology study of Chinese dialect diminutive.On the basis of field investigation,this paper synthetically uses the methods of investigating,comparison,combination methods not only of synchronic and diachronic but also of description and interpretation,and methods of historical documents.By using these methods,this paper does a comprehensive description and analysis to the nominal diminutive,quantifier diminutive,adjective diminutive of Xiangbei Mandarin,and explores the weakening and renewal relationships among the forms of noun diminutives of Xiangbei Mandarin.Besides the introduction and conclusion,the full text is constituted by 5chapters:The introduction part briefly introduces the domestic and foreign research situation about the diminutive,and the main contents,research significance,and the methods employed.It also gives an explanation of the investigation information such as the selecting of survey areas,corpus sources,and the interviewers for pronunciation data.Chapter1 describes and explains the definition,form,function,classification and other related concepts of diminutive,and introduces the concept of quantity related to the diminutive.From Chapter 2 to Chapter 4,the paper describes and analyzes the synchronic current situation of all types of the diminutive of XiangbeiMandarin.Chapter 2 discusses the nominal diminutive of Xiangbei Mandarin.This chapter first introduces the research situation of the nominal diminutive,and points out the definition standard of nominal objective diminutive,nominal subjective diminutive and nominal meta-linguistic diminutive,and then studies the specific performances of these types of nominal diminutive in six dialects(Wuling District,Hanshou County,Taoyuan County,Lixian County,Anxiang County,Shimen County)of Xiangbei Mandarin.The research methods of the study of the nominal objective diminutive and the nominal subjective diminutive are similar.Firstly,the corpus of each dialect are classified according to the forms of diminutive.Secondly the corpus with each form are classified according to the semantic field of the noun.On the basis of this classification,the data are described and analyzed.Finally,a comparative analysis of several forms is made on the three aspects in each dialect,including the application of the semantic field,the number of the nouns and the specific semantic(pragmatic)function.The analysis of the nominal meta-linguistic diminutive is carried out according to different interlocutors,and on the basis of this classification,we investigate specific function of meta-linguistic diminutive in different speech act.In addition,this chapter also made a preliminary exploration of phonetic features in nominal diminutive of Xiangbei Mandarin.Chapter 3 discusses the quantifier diminutive of Xiangbei Mandarin.This chapter first introduces the research situation of the quantifier diminutive,and points out the definition standards of quantifier diminutive.Secondly,the forms and functions of quantifier objective diminutive,quantifier subjective diminutive,quantifier meta-linguistic diminutive of Xiangbei Mandarin are analyzed separately.At the end of this part,it summarizes the limit of the numeral and the quantifier of the diminutive structure.Chapter 4 discusses the adjective diminutive of Xiangbei Mandarin.This chapter first introduces the research situation of the adjective diminutive,and points out the definition standards of adjective diminutive.Secondly,the forms and functions of adjective subjective diminutive,overlaying adjective meta-linguistic and adjective subjective diminutive of Xiangbei Mandarin are analyzed separately.At the end of this part,it summarizes the limit of the adjective of the diminutive structure.Chapter 5 explores and combs the origin and development of the forms of Xiangbei Mandarin diminutive.This chapter first detects the concept of origin and geographical origin of diminutive of Xiangbei Mandarin.and then introduces the concept of "weakening" and "renewal" about the function of indicating smallness,and also discusses the relationship between weakening and renewal,summarizes the time series of the forms of Xiangbei Mandarin diminutive in six dialect districts,and at last sort out the new and old competitive relationship among these forms.The conclusion part summarizes the main points of this paper and innovation,and explaines the lack of this paper and the issues to be further studied.