| In language contact, strong language influences weak language and language contact isa driving force in the evolution of language. With the promotion and popularization ofPutonghua, Hengyang dialect also undergoes various variations during language contactwhich mainly reflects in lexical variation.Being guided by language contact theory, the study adopts the research methods ofsociolinguistics. The research investigates dialect lexical variation phenomenon based on themethods of tape-recording and observation from22local youngsters who are16-25years old.Many samples are collected and466tokens are transcribed in total. Finally, with help fromthe version of the key methodological tool of variationist sociolinguistics GOLDVARB Xand office software such as Excel (2007), the distributional analysis and multivariate analysisof the data obtained will be given.It is found that under the influence of Putonghua, Hengyang dialect undergoes obviouslexical variation in youngsters’ daily communication. Though gradually approaching toPutonghua, dialect words still show strong vitality. Among five types of lexical variation,variation of lexical pronunciation approaching to Putonghua most frequently occurs, whilevariation of daily spoken language appears a little less compared with the former kind, andvariation in trait characteristics of things and human lexicons is infrequently seen, variationin address form of daily stuff is the least frequency; lexical variation is affected by factorslike gender, educational level, occupation and occasion, among which educational level andoccasion are more significant factors and gender and occupation are found to be notsignificant to the use of lexical variation. As for the social distribution affecting the use oflexical variation, females use variation forms more than males; those who receive educationof university or higher education use variation forms less frequently than high schoolstudents; those who are administrative institutions employees, the specialist technicians,teachers and students have a relatively higher proportion of using the variation forms whileyoungsters who are business workers and service workers occupy a lower frequency; lexicalvariation occurs more often in social occasions than family occasions. It is also discussed the reasons for lexical variation produced in contact between Putonghua and Hengyang dialect.On one hand, language internal factors, such as language self-adjustment mechanism,principle of least effort, etc.; On the other hand, language external factors, such as theintensity of language contact, youngsters’ language attitude toward Hengyang dialect andPutonghua, etc. |
