A Study Of Prepositions In Dalang Miao Language

Miao language belongs to isolating language and SVO language.It mainly uses function words and word order to express grammatical relations and grammatical meaning.Previous studies have preliminarily discussed the word order and function words of Miao language.Among them,the study of function words in Miao language is mainly a simple description and introduction,which has not been fully described and discussed.Taking Dalang Miao language,which belongs to the southern branch of Miao language in eastern Guizhou,as an example,this paper mainly studies the prepositions in its function words.Based on the three plane theory,this paper systematically studies the semantic,syntactic and pragmatic functions of prepositions in Dalang Miao language.First of all,this paper defines the preposition of Dalang Miao language.We find that there are 21 typical prepositions in Dalang Miao language.Meanwhile,we explore the source of some prepositions in Dalang Miao language and find that most prepositions are grammaticalized from verbs,but the degree of grammaticalization is different.Specifically,some verbs have been grammaticalized completely and only have the usage of preposition,while some verbs have not been grammaticalized completely and have both the usage of verb and preposition.Secondly,according to the semantic features of prepositions,they can be divided into temporal prepositions,spatial prepositions,object prepositions,cause-purpose prepositions and manner prepositions.On the basis of these five categories,prepositions can be further divided into 14 sub categories.This paper describes the semantic features of these prepositions in turn.Thirdly,we describe the syntactic and pragmatic functions of prepositional phrases.It is found that the syntactic function of prepositional phrases in Dalang Miao language is mainly to act as adverbials and complements of sentences.At the same time,there are also subtle differences in the syntactic function of different prepositional phrases.Specifically,it is mainly manifested in the following three aspects:1)some prepositional phrases can be used as both adverbial and complement;2)some prepositional phrases can only be used as adverbial of a sentence;3)some prepositional phrases can only be used as complement of a sentence.Compared with syntactic function,pragmatic function is the secondary function of prepositional phrases,mainly including the function of discourse management and cohesion.In the past,most of the researches on Miao language focused on the northern dialects of Miao language in eastern Guizhou,but not on the southern dialects.This paper discusses the prepositions of Dalang Miao language in the southern branch of Miao language in eastern Guizhou,which enriches the research object of Miao language.At the same time,by collecting the original corpus of Dalang Miao language and analyzing the semantic,syntactic and pragmatic functions of its prepositions,this paper deepens the research of Miao prepositions.