A Comparative Study On Southern Qiang Dialects In Contact Linguistics Perspective

This thesis is about the contact between the three dialects of Southern Qiang and Chinese in perspective of language contact.Based on the comparison between the three dialects of Southern Qiang,we deal with the variations that produced in the three Southern Qiang dialects,namely Luobozhai,Longxi,Lianghekou and Miansi(hereafter LB,LX and MS respectively),which have been caused by the contact between the three dialects of Southern Qiang and Chinese.This article,however,is also aimed at explaining the reasons and the contact mechanisms that induced these changes.A great number of differences have occurred between the three Qiang dialects due to independent development of a long time.Generally speaking,the differences between LB and LX are not as obvious as those between the two and MS.Phonetically,the consonants,vowels and tones of the three dialects are very consistent,with the roughly same numbers and types of consonants and correspondences between stops and affricates,some voiced and voiceless sounds,non-zero initials and zero initials.The differences of consonants mainly lie in phoneme /d?/,which exists in LB and MS but not in LX.Instead,its counterpart in LX is /?/.The relationship of vowels are mostly prominent in:(1)correspondence of [e] in LB to [a] in LX;(2)correspondence of [o] in LB to [?u] in MS;(3)correspondence of [u] in LB to [o],[?u],and [ue] in MS;(4)correspondence of [i] in LB to [e],[?] or [?] in MS.An outstanding feature of all the three dialects is their same tones,namely 55,31,213 and 53.Furthermore,the tones are not fully formed,which is represented by the characteristics of "shifting".All the three dialects have the same syllable structure.As of the lexical system,there are great consistencies among the three dialects while the differences are more obvious than those of phonetics.On common nouns,the monosyllable ones of the three dialects are roughly same with the proportion of 11.99%,10.94% and 11.41% in total nouns of LB,LX and MS respectively.As to personal pronouns,the three dialects all have pronouns of three persons,distinguishing singular and plural,with different exclusive and inclusive forms of the first person plural.But there is no dual form for all the three persons.The difference mainly lies in case shifting,i.e.,no case shifting of personal pronouns occurs in LB and LX while it remains in MS to some extent.The three dialects only have proximate and distant demonstrative pronouns.Their numerals are highly similar with obvious homogeneity.In number and type of member at verbal phrase,the three dialects are basically the same.Take the Swadesh List(200)as a sample,the Chinese borrowings have entered the core words in three dialects of Southern Qiang,and it's not a minority.Grammatically,On the form of nouns,nouns denoting females have a uniform suffix morpheme-mia,while other markers present a total chaos.The three dialects have their diminutive markers,the phonetic forms of which also show a homogeneous relation.Regarding case markers,the main difference lies in their numbers and usage.In MS,they have been well preserved,while LB has less and LX has almost none.And they vary in aspect markers,person markers and direction case markers,many of which are caused by contacts with Chinese.we can infer from the comparison of the basic word order,question sentence,negative sentence,existential sentence and comparative construction that the simple structure of the three dialects has a high extent of consistency.On structure of complex sentences,there are also consistencies only with difference in pseudo-cleft structures and subordinate clauses.The discrepancy in subordinate construction mainly embodies in relative clause changing.The three dialects of Southern Qiang are all deeply affected by the contact with Chinese.Judging from the borrowed words from Chinese,which are of great number and extensive types,we know that not only a great number of Chinese new words have been borrowed,but many daily words also come from Chinese.There are differences and similarities of borrowing markers,formation of borrowed words and phonological changes in the three dialects.The borrowing marker [t??] no longer merely functions as a supplementing syllable.It is also attach to the disyllabic words and some adjectives.Formation of borrowed words of the three dialects is basically in ways of modification,VO formation and statement,but there are differences in the specific process.As of the source of the borrowings,the Southern Qiang borrowed from both Guan-chi Dialect and Mandarin,the specific source being particularly complex;LB and LX mostly borrow from Sichuan Dialect and Mandarin;MS always borrows from Guan-chi Dialect(mainly from Dujiangyan Dialect).The phonetic changes of borrowed words in Southern Qiang happen on phoneme base with context of syllables.The consonant system,vowel system and tone system of the three dialects are affected to a certain extent by contact with Chinese,with the most obvious one being the tone.The generation of the tones in Southern Qiang was trigger by both inner and outer factors.The tone originates from phonation type;the syllable structure contributes to the inner cause.Contacts with Chinese may not be the primary cause but they triggered and accelerated the generation and development of tones,or made the tones easier to fix,in consideration of the contours 213.Contacts with Chinese have contributed to additions of /f/ and /x/ as well as disappearance of /d?/ of the consonant systems and additions of combined and nasalized vowels of different numbers,which complicated the vowel systems of Southern Qiang.Contacts with Chinese have increased the differences of the lexical categories and the order of word formation in the Southern Qiang.The formations of “modification + headword” and “headword + modification” are undergoing respective changes in the three dialects.The influence of Chinese contacts on semantic system is the division of polysemy and increase ofsememes.The influence on grammar mainly lies in thecase system,word class system and word order;the word class system in Southern Qiangborrowedconjunctions,adverbs and modal particles from Chinese;complex structures in Southern Qiang are produced,the word order in main-clause became SVO,and the subordinate clause still remains SOV.In addition,the place names in Wenchuan county also fully reflect the influence of Chinese on them,which is also caused by language contact.As of the contact mechanism between Southern Qiang and Chinese,we analyzed the code-switching,the code-alternation,second language acquisition strategy and identification mechanism,and there are more to be discovered.