Typological Research On Personal Pronouns In Linyi Dialect

There are at least three speech-act roles that are involved in our daily communication,namely,the speaker,the addressee and the third party.These roles are typically fulfilled by personal pronouns in a language.Based on the main paradigms of conducting surveys and researches in Linguistic Typology,e.g.the Basic Linguistic Theory proposed by Dixon,this thesis explores the personal pronouns in Linyi dialect with regards to their forms and functions,including their morphology,syntax,possessive expressions,discourse/pragmatic properties as well as person and number features.Furthermore,it provides an explanation on the phenomenon of pronoun shift in Linyi dialect inspired by the Stance Triangle TheoryIn order to collect naturally-spoken corpus,the author conducted a series of fieldwork in the county of Linyi.Then the data were coded and labeled according to the Leipzig glossing rules.The author finds that two layers of personal pronouns exist in this dialect;one of them is“? u(?)55,? ni·55,? th(?)13”,which correspond to those personal pronouns in Standard Mandarin,and the other is“? a55,? tsa51 ? n(?)n55,? a55+PM,? n(?)n55+PM",which are used by the elder generation.There is only one established third person pronoun,"?th(?)13",in this dialect.The self-referring pronoun in Linyi is similar to the Mandarin "?? tsi31t(?)55" except for some differences in pronunciation.In the usage of other-referring pronouns,"? ie51" reaches the highest use frequency while“??phaa?51ie?51"" the lowest,and”?? ie?51t(?)i" in the middleAs for the syntactic features,all of the three-way personal pronouns can be the subject,object,attribute or pivot("Jianyu")in a sentence.Other-referring pronoun"? ie?51" is not allowed in the final object position which is in complementary distribution with "?? ie?851t(?)i".In contrast to the corresponding Mandarin forms,the pronouns in this dialect are not used as discourse makers.In terms of number,“?&?U(?)55&ni55" are singular and it requires pragmatic inference to the deixis of "??????a?55,ts?51,n(?)n55" in Linyi dialect.Meanwhile the pronouns in this dialect are used with rich variation in intonation compared with their counterparts.Two kinds of pronoun shifts exist in the system of Linyi dialect:the shift of person and number values.In view of the Stance Triangle Theory,the author finds that the speaker resorts to shifting person and number values of pronouns to position stance.The singular speaker seeks for positive alliance with the addressee or others by using plural personal pronouns.This alliance enables a support for speakers to position their own stance.In the shift of personal forms,the use of third person pronoun“? th(?)13"instead of“? u(?)55" provides a fake and neutral stance for speakers to form alliance with the addressee.