A Study Of The Multifunctional Dummy Word "a (啊)" And Its Related Structures In Yuhang Dialect

This thesis mainly discusses the syntactic function of the multifunctional dummy word"a(啊)"in Yuhang dialect and the syntactic and semantic expressions of its related structures.The multifunctional dummy word"a(啊)"in Yuhang dialect has three syntactic functions:tone auxiliary,structural auxiliary and comparative auxiliary,and can form structures such as"V啊V"and"X煞啊X".The modal particle "a(啊)" can be used as a modal and interrogative verb,and also as a state of affairs verb,and a tentative verb can appear after transitive clauses,verbs and adverbs,in addition to marking the subject position.The structural auxiliary"a(啊)"has the function of linking and marking subjective quantity,and can also form the structure of"X煞啊X",and the"a(啊)"with the function of linking can be used as a definite marker and gerund marker.The"a(啊)"with the function of linking can be used as a definite marker and gerund marker,and the"a(啊)"with the function of marking subjective quantity can be used as a subjective approximate quantity marker and subjective mass marker.The structure and semantics of the contextual phrase "a(啊)" are similar to those of Mandarin,and its semantic types can be divided into three categories:metaphorical,comparative and speculative,each of which can be further subdivided into two or three subcategories.The syntactic position of the phrase affects the implication of the subsequent "嗰".The dummy word "a(啊)" in Yuhang dialect can perform all three functions at the same time,but we have not found similar phenomenon in other dialects and Mandarin.In addition,the above three functions of the dummy word "a(啊)" in Yuhang dialect differ somewhat from the syntactic functions of the corresponding tone auxiliaries,structural auxiliaries and comparative auxiliaries in Mandarin.