A Pragmatic Study On Number-Related Words In Chinese Northeast Dialect

In recent twenty years, Chinese Northeast dialect has gained great popularity throughout China due to the blossom of comedy skits and TV series performed in this dialect. Now many words or sentences in Chinese Northeast dialect have been adopted in Chinese Mandarin to become fashionable words in society. In Chinese Northeast dialect, number-related words are in large number and used widely and frequently. This group of words is one of the most important carriers of Northeast culture.This paper aims to study number-related words in Chinese Northeast dialect with the help of Adaptation Theory. It adopts a quantitative and qualitative research method to study the numbers and number-related words appearing in Chinese Northeast dialect. Based on three dictionaries on Chinese Northeast dialect, 30 episodes of a TV series called Country Love Story and 10 pieces of comedy skits, three fundamental questions are to be answered. They are what the frequency of different numbers appearing in Chinese Northeast dialect is; how many categories these different numbers can be put into; and what the pragmatic functions of the number-related words are in Chinese Northeast dialect.Based on the research, the top five numbers appearing in Chinese Northeast words in the three dictionaries occupy a large proportion of the total numbers appearing in Chinese Northeast words, respectively 79%, 79% and 81%. However, the proportions of the bottom five numbers appearing in Chinese Northeast words in the three dictionaries are less than 10%, approximately 2%, 6% and 1% respectively. These numbers can be put into five categories. They are, 1) numbers denoting specific quantity; 2) numbers meaning “many”, “much” or “large in quantity”; 3) numbers meaning “few”, “little” or “small in quantity”; 4) numbers meaning “uncertain in quantity”; 5) numbers without quantity meaning. In addition, the pragmatic functions of number-related words in Chinese Northeast dialect are discussed and analyzed. They are: 1) conciseness and vividness function, 2) emphasis function, 3) sarcasm function, 4) exaggeration function, 5) euphemism function and 6) humor function.This paper presents the frequency and categorization of numbers appearing in Chinese Northeast dialect, which has hardly been covered ever before. In addition, how number-related words function in conversations in Chinese Northeast dialect is discussed in English for the first time in the present paper, helping extend the related studies in English. This will help people gain better understanding of number-related words in Chinese Northeast dialect and make this dialect more popular among people not only in China, but also all over the world.