A Study Of Nanning Gejia Yuan Pinghua Dialects: In A Language Contact Background

Located in an alley on the Qixing Road in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Gejia Yuan is the birthplace of the Chinese family name-Ge, with a history of over 900 years. The elder generation here takes the Pinghua dialect as their mother tongue that is surrounded by the Nanning Yue dialects and Mandarin; as a result, the Gejia Yuan has evolved into a "multilingual community". Similar phenomenon prevails in many Pinghua dialects in Nannning city. For that reason, Gejia Yuan is a research target of great value and significance and serves as a good example for the contact research on Pinghua and other languages or dialects.This thesis consists of nine chapters. The first five chapters introduces relevant background information and adopts horizontal and vertical comparative analysis to explore the language system of the Pinghua dialects of Gejia Yuan. With emphasis on phonetic description, Chapter â…¥ employs the historical linguistics theory to sort out its historical layers and seeks the rules of the development of the Pinghua dialects. Chapter â…¦ gives a general discussion on contact evolution of the dialect. Based on the observation on the development trend of the dialect, the author finds that the dialect has become increasingly similar to the Nanning Yue dialects and shown of the sign of gradual decline. In Chapter â…§, the author tries finding out the non-lingual factors that have resulted in the decline of the dialect with such theories as the endangered language and the social linguistics. For the last chapter, the author draws a conclusion.Through rounds of exploration, the author aims to enrich the research achievements of the Pinghua dialects in Nanning and provide reference materials for the further study on the complexity of the Chinese dialects in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Meanwhile, the author aspires to make contribution to the improvement of endangered dialects on the basis of a comprehensive command of language features.