A Research On The Variation And Change Of First Person Pronouns/uan/and/uan ηan/in Changde Dialect

Changde dialect belongs to southwest region of GuanHua dialect of the northern dialect though Changde is located in Hunan province.The first person pronouns/uan/and/uanηan/are representatives in terms of phonetics and grammar.As the close contact between Changde dialect and modern Chinese,the variation and change of first person pronouns have occurred in Changde dialect.Under the guidance of variation theory and paradigmatic structure of person markers,this study chooses 100 participants with observation and interview in methodology.This study adopts GOLDVARB X and Praat 5.1.08 to analyze data.This thesis mainly deals with three questions.What are the variation and change in first person pronouns in Changde dialect?What are the linguistic and social factors leading to the variation and change in Changde dialect?What are the paradigmatic structures of person markers in Changde dialect?The results show that/uan/and/uanηan/are the traditional forms of first person pronoun while with the contact with modem Chinese,the new variations,/uo/and/uo mηn/,appear in Changde dialect./uo/has slight difference with the corresponding person pronoun while/uo man/has no significant difference with that person pronoun in modern Chinese by spectrum.Generally speaking,there is a dramatic increase in the new forms of first person pronoun.The overall frequency of new forms dwarfs that of both old forms/uan/,/uanηan/.With respect to linguistic factors,the old form/uan/features singularization of plural forms while those new forms,/uo/and/uo man/,have a distinctive role in number;the object position in a sentence almost is shown by the new from while the old forms have high frequency to use as a determiner.As for social factors,the frequency of new forms of male is slightly higher than that of female;a U-shaped pattern is shown in the distribution of new forms of first person pronoun across generations;a person in rural area is more inclined to use the new forms of first person pronoun;compared to farmer and teacher,student and businessman show higher possibility to use the new forms;in formal conversation setting,people hardly use the old forms;but,the frequency of new form is still higher than the old form in informal conversational setting.There are three paradigmatic structures of person markers in Changde dialect,whose variation and change support the tendency that paradigmatic structures become more and more detailed in Chinese dialect.The new structures of Changde dialect may be influenced by both Xiang dialect and modern Chinese.By studying the variation and change of first person pronoun in Changde dialect,the study helps further understanding of singularization on plural forms,and provides some evidence for study on person pronoun of dialect and protection for local dialect.