The Study Of Verbs In Bouyei Language

The existential verb is a special subcategory under the verb,which mainly represents the existential states and existential forms of people or things.The existential states include existence,appearance and disappearance.The existential forms depend on the semantic features of the existential verbs.This paper conducts a preliminary study on the types,semantic characteristics,syntactic features,and pragmatic functions of Baisang Buyi language existential verbs through field investigation and documentary method.On this basis,it investigates the distribution of typical existential verbs of nine different sites in three dialects of the Buyi language.It also makes a systematic comparison of the usage and development of the typical existential verbs and atypical existential verbs in the three dialects.The existential verbs in Buyi language can be divided into two types:typical existential verbs and atypical existential verbs.There are three typical existential verbs,including li4(have),?ju5(in)and ci24(is).Atypical existential verbs refer to other verbs that are temporarily used to express the meaning of "existence",such as sitting,standing,hanging,heaping,arranging and so on.On the syntactic level,the Buyi language existential verbs act as predicates in the sentence,and generally cannot serve as attributive,object and complement.In addition,existential verbs can be independent sentences,also can accept the modification of adverbs,and some can be modified by adjectives.However,they cannot be overlapped or complemented.The existential verbs in Buyi language can not only reflect the obvious space-time cognitive meaning,but also embody the hidden space-time cognitive meaning.In the analysis of its spatial cognitive meaning,this paper finds that different existential verbs show different relations between the existential subject and the existential place,especially "have" and "is".For instance,when the existential subject and the existential place are connected by "have",it means that the existential subject cannot wholly own the described place;however,in case of "is",the existential subject can wholly own the described place.It is worth noting that the expression of the obvious space-time cognitive meaning and the hidden space-time cognitive meaning has different requirements for the existential verbs.The expression of hidden space-time cognitive meaning can only be seen in affirmative existential sentences.When negating existential verbs,the expression of hidden space-time cognitive meaning can hardly be seen.The Buyi language existential verbs have three types of pragmatic functions:narrating type,judging type and describing type.The existential sentence has the function of introducing important topics,partial topics,participants,backgrounds,or follow-up events into the text.At the same time,the usage of existential sentences is also restricted by literary forms,text's content,textual factors,and subjective emotional attitudes of the user in some cases.The distribution of three typical existential verbs in Buyi language has two major characteristics:one is that "have/in" has same forms and "is" is the inherent words;the second is that "have/in" has different forms,and "is" has two situations�inherent words and native Chinese loanwords.The first case mainly appears in the third dialect area,and the second is found in the first dialect and second dialect area respectively.Although the three typical existential verbs have certain differences in phonetic forms,the syntactic meaning is basically the same.The development of the existential verbs in the three dialects is relatively balanced,but there are also inconsistencies.For example,there is a tendency to develop "in" in the second dialect area to show that "actions are ongoing",but not in the other two dialects.This may be related to the external environment and its own internal mechanism.