A Comparative Study On Classifiers Of Thai Dialects And Zhuang Dialects

Classifiers of Thai dialects from central region-Bangkok and northern region Chiang Mai in Thailand and Zhuang dialects from north region-Donglan and southern region-Chongzuo in Guangxi,China are taken as the research objects of this study.Based on Aikhenvald's(2000)research theories and combined with linguistic data collected from field surveys and some more related references,the author systematically analyzed and compared the classifers in Thai and Zhuang dialects.This paper mainly discusses the semantic system and syntactic functions of classifiers in Thai and Zhuang dialects.The full paper is divided into four chapters while the second and third chapters are the main body of this paper.The first chapter-the introduction,mainly discusses the theoretical study of the classifiers,the research status of the classifiers of Zhuang and Thai dialects,the source of linguistic data,the innovation of the research topic as well as the research significance.The second chapter-The comparison of the semantic systems of classifiers between Thai and Zhuang dialects.This chapter is divided into three sections:the semantic system of Thai classifers,the semantic system of Zhuang classifiers,and the comparison of Thai and Zhuang semantic systems.The classifiers of Thai and Zhuang dialects are roughly classified according to"human","animal","botany"and "inanimate".The author systematicly illustrated the details of each category and compared the differences in the last section.The third chapter-The comparison of the syntactic functions of classifiers between Thai and Zhuang dialects.There is a total of three sections in this chapter discussing,respectively,the syntactic functions of classifiers of Donglan dialect,Chongzuo dialect,Bangkok dialect and Chiangmai dialect.And in the third section,the author did a comparative analysis of the syntactic functions of Zhuang and Thai classifiers.The fourth chapter-the conclusion,summarizes the similarities and differences of classifiers'semantic system and syntactic functions between Zhuang dialects and Thai dialects.The preliminary findings obtained in this paper are:On the semantic aspect,the classifiers of Thai and Zhuang dialects can basically be classified according to humans,animals,botany and inanimate.For the classifiers in human category,those classifiers related to disgusted emotions against the mentioned person are existing in both Zhuang and Thai dialects.In Thai dialects,due to the differences in state system from China,Thai dialects have classifiers dedicated to kings and monks in terms of human classifiers.In the animal category,animals are even classified by private breeding and royal breeding.For inanimate category,Thai dialects even have some specific classifiers for ghosts and celestial beings.On the syntactic aspect,Zhuang dialects habitually put a noun-classifier before a noun regarless of whether it plays a specific function or a nonspecific function.Moreover,Zhuang classifiers have common characteristics which are implicational universals and multi-classifications.These features are not existing in Thai dialects.Howerver,Thai and Zhuang also have some features in common:the classifiers can be used individually without a noun.And it can play a role as a prefix or a sign of a modifier.