A Study On The Pronoun Of Foshan Cantonese

Foshan city is situated in the mid-southern part of Guangdong, the central region of the Pearl River Delta, and now the districts of Chancheng, Nanhai, Shunde, Sanshui and Gaoming are under its administration. Guangfu Cantonese popular in Foshan is consistent with the standard Cantonese to a certain extent, while at the same time it preserves its local characteristics in the aspects of speech, vocabulary and syntax. The pronoun system of Foshan Cantonese is mainly discussed in this thesis. From the perspective of descriptive linguistics, the demonstrative pronouns, personal pronouns, and interrogative pronouns in five districts of Foshan city are systematically and comprehensively described, analyzed and concluded on the basis of the first-hand on-site material from 17 researching places in five districts, relevant research items as well as dialect works. Findings are as follows. First, because pronoun is a closed-class word, and it is frequently used in daily life, some pronunciations and usages of archaic Chinese are deeply rooted in the local dialects. Second, although there are various forms for different pronouns, they may originate from the same sources. Also there are two forms for the pronoun plurals, that is suffix and stem-inflection, suffix "â–¡[lεη¹³]" is exclusive to Foshan Cantonese. Third, there are more local characteristics in grammar, such as demonstrative-measure-noun Structure referring to definite pronoun, demonstrative elements unable to be omitted, the implication of pronoun case concerned with the quantity of syllables, and the third personal pronoun not being multi-demonstrative, which are all the traditional and deep-rooted grammar characters of Ancient Foshan Cantonese.Furthermore, this thesis is attached importance to the comparisons with Cantonese pronoun systems in neighborhood. It attempts to study the longitudinal source of Foshan Cantonese, while at the same time it makes a wide range of horizontal comparisons, and unveils the Foshan Cantonese tends to converge to standard Cantonese through delicate inspections to the linguistic differences of Neo-Ancient Foshan Cantonese.