| Human languages do not exist in isolation but correlate with each other. They alwayscontact with each other on different occasions, and thus are influenced by each other. Thedevelopment of language itself and the contacts with other languages will unavoidably causelanguage variation either in phonetics, lexicon or syntax. The YOU+VP structure is just a newgrammatical structure appearing in Putonghua because of language development andinfluence from other languages and dialects.Language variation and change is in the core position of sociolinguistic studies. It isembodied in phonetics, lexicon or syntax. The study of language variation, represented by W.Labov and P. Trudgill, mainly concerns the correlation between language variation and socialvariables such as social class, gender and age. There are often certain distributional rules inthe use of linguistic variables.Taking the use of YOU+VP structure in Putonghua for example, this study analyzes thesocial stratification of language from the perspective of sociolinguistic variation. Theinformants contributing to this study are120people living or studying in Xiangtan who usePutonghua most of the time both at work and in daily life. Research methods insociolinguistics are adopted. First, by tape-recording of people’s naturalistic conversation andobservation of people’s daily speech, sentence samples of YOU+VP structure are collected.Then, a questionnaire survey on people’s attitudes towards the use of YOU+VP structure isconducted as a supplement. Finally, all the data collected are analyzed quantitatively withhelps from softwares such as GoldVarb X and SPSS(13.0).It is found that the appearance and use of YOU+VP structure in Putonghua is the resultof both language development and influence from social factors. The word YOU in YOU+VPstructure is losing its original lexical meaning and becoming functional. Among the threesentence types in which the YOU+VP structure is contained, the proportion of YOU+VPstructure in declarative sentences or in interrogative sentences is obviously higher than that inits omission forms, as the latter one is only used as the answer to the question form ofYOUMEIYOU+VP and it is mainly under the elicitation of this question form. As for thesocial variables affecting the use of YOU+VP structure and people’s attitudes towards its use,females use more proportion of it and people in the age group of15-25are more willing toaccept this structure. In addition, people who are teachers, or civil servants or managers incompany use lower proportion of YOU+VP structure due to their status awareness. Also,speakers’ educational level and English level are found to be not significant to the use of YOU+VP structure when compared with other social factors. The diffusion of YOU+VPstructure in Putonghua can be explored from linguistic causes and social causes. To bespecific, linguistic causes include grammaticalization of the word you, the need for semanticexpression and the elicitation of the question form of YOUMEIYOU+VP, and social causesare mainly under the influence of media, as well as influence from the dialect of Yue and thatin Taiwan and Hong Kong.The YOU+VP structure is a relatively new structure in Putonghua. The study of its socialstratification can on the one hand help people understand such new language phenomenon asthis structure better and hold a rational attitude towards its use, and on the other hand, providea vivid example of the correlation between language use and various social factors, thusenriching the language variation study as a whole. |
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