A Cognitive-semantic Study Of Locatives In Tujia Language

The Tujia language is one of the most important minority languages in China and its speakers are mostly distributed in the mountain ous regions of Central South China.The Tujia language shows different characteristics from other ethnic minority languages in the construal of many semantic domains.One of the most fundamental domains in human language and cognition---Space---is no exception.Due to the lack of an indigenous writing system,and with the gradual acceleration of economic and social development and the process of urbanization,the use of the Tujia language has been waning rapidly and its transmission to the younger generations also becomes more and more difficult.As a resu lt,Tujia has become a severely endangered language.Motivated both by curiosity about Tujia language itself and by concern for the protection of the language and culture,this thesis aim s to investigate the semantics and usage of Tujia locatives in order to interpret the conceptualization and representation of space and motion by Tujia people.This thesis uses the northern Tujia dialect as the research object.Fieldwork was conducted in Dianfang Town,Longshan County,Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Hunan province to collect an inventory of Tujia expressions of space and motion by means of an elicitation task.For one thing,this thesis aims to discuss what image schemas Tujia locatives represent.For another,this thesis aims to study the semantic and structural features of the Tujia locative system in conceptualizing dynamic spatial relations.Through the classification and analysis of the collected data,combined with the use of dictionaries,it is found that Tujia locatives are usually po stposed,and are N-derived.The most frequently-used locatives in Tujia language vary in their related image schemas due to the phenomenon of polysemy.In terms of the expression of spatial motion,path is usually encoded in a locative and manner the motion in the main verb.This encoding model is consistent with the construction pattern of a satellite-framed language.Moreover,Tujia locatives are not random in the ir usage,which is motivated by the embodied experience of the local social culture and Tujia people’s kinesthetic perception.Finally,it is hoped that the preliminary research reported in this thesis on the conceptualization and representation of the space and motion in Tujia language,informed by cognitive linguistic theories,can enrich the scientific knowledge of this endangered language,with a view of providing a new perspective for future related research.