Linguistic Features of Gaozhou Dialect

Grammatically, Gaozhou dialect has some grammatical features, such as the modifier is located after the modified word, and the expression of comparative relationship is the same or similar to that of Guyue dialect. For example, adverbs are used as supplementary components after verbs, such as: go first, buy more, etc. Adjectives are used as modifiers after nouns, such as: guest (guest), rooster (rooster) and dried vegetables (dried vegetables). It was called "dry railing" in Sui and Tang Dynasties, but now it is called "railing" in Gaozhou dialect, but the order has changed. These features are different from Chinese, but they are the same as those of Guyue and its related Zhuang and Dong languages. Yue Jue Shu has been published for eight years. "The rest, mostly salt officer. The Vietnamese call salt' jade'. This is a famous example of "inverted sentence" in ancient Vietnamese. There are many similar examples in Zhuang and Dong languages. For example, "pig" (pork) and "brother" in Zhuang language, "laying hens" (eggs) and "boiled water" (boiled water) in aquarium and so on. Another example is the expression of comparative relationship. Gaozhou vernacular generally uses the form of "A+ adjective+'Guo' +B", and the ancient Vietnamese also has such a comparative form. Such as Gaozhou vernacular: I walk faster than you, and I am older than you. Zhuang language: This is higher than that. Li Yu: You are taller than me. Water language: Brother Gao and Sister Duo.

The word formation ability of "er" and "tou" is stronger than that of Guangzhou dialect. The suffixes of "er" and "tou" in Guangzhou dialect are limited to a few words such as "beggar", "shoulder" and "paving the head". It is common for Gaozhou to use "er" and "tou" to form new words, and even words such as "zi" tail (trafficker, kidnapper, mosquito, pine nut (pine cone), chestnut) which are rare in Guangzhou dialect have appeared, such as Mandarin: bird, duck, pig excrement, little finger Guangzhou: sparrow, duck, pig excrement, and finger tail Gaozhou: sparrow, chestnut.

Many words in Guangzhou dialect do not use "head" or "tail", such as "stone", "brick", "tongue" and "bone" (nouns). Gaozhou often uses "head", such as "stone", "brick", "head", "bone" and "lock"

The suffix of animal sex is different from that of Guangzhou. In most Cantonese, animal suffixes are "male" and "female"; But Gaozhou uses "Wen" and "Yan" as suffixes. For example, Mandarin: stallion-mare bull-cow Guangzhou: stallion-cow-cow Gaozhou: mare-cow-cow.

Some things in Gaozhou dialect are expressed by gender suffixes, which may reflect the local people's understanding of natural phenomena. For example, the word "shrimp" in Guangzhou dialect is "Xiagong" in Gaozhou, and "Lei" is called "Leigong". There are many ancient Vietnamese words in Gaozhou vernacular, which has been recognized by academic circles. The pronunciation of the ancient Yue language has three characteristics: first, the initials have a group of lip-shaped initials, such as [kw] [kw'], but generally there is no [u-] intermediate sound; The palatalized initials, such as [TSJ] [TSJ'] [SJ], generally have no [i-] intermediate sound. Second, vowels are generally opposite to long vowels, such as [a:] and [a], [i:] and so on. Third, there are many tones, usually six to nine or ten tones. Modern Gaozhou vernacular also has these characteristics. "Nickname Tone sandhi" is an interesting phonetic change. In Gaozhou, the word "pig" with nasal sounds has different meanings from the word "pig" without nasal sounds. The "pig" without nasal sound is a pig in the general sense, and the "pig" with nasal sound refers to a pig, indicating intimacy and affection. For another example, words such as "flower", "melon", "duck" and "car" can also express additional meanings such as "small" and "cute" by adding nasal sounds, such as: pig flower (pig); Huanong (children) and so on. Besides adding nasal sounds, the rising tone has also changed. The words "pig", "flower", "melon", "duck" and "car" all take into account nasal and rising tone changes, such as lotus. Some words, such as "female", "cat", "shoe", "mother" and "father", can also express the additional meaning of intimacy and affection. More interestingly, the different positions of tone sandhi have different meanings, such as: red, if it is in front of the "red", it means that the degree is high and the color of things is "very red"; If it is the later "red", it is even lower, that is, "red is just right" and "red makes people love".

This phonetic phenomenon of Gaozhou dialect is the "another name tone sandhi" in linguistics. Physiologically, it is because "high-frequency sound means small size". Linguistically speaking, it is closely related to children's language. Children like to speak in a high tone, which makes people feel "sad" and innocent and lovely. This linguistic feature permeates the language of daily life and has a relatively common linguistic phenomenon.

In addition to expressing intimacy, it can also mean "whispering". For example, in the group of words "primary school, junior high school, senior high school and university", we usually tone sandhi the three words "primary school, junior high school and senior high school", but generally we don't tone sandhi the word "university". Because "university" is the highest learning stage in this group of words, "primary school, junior high school and senior high school" are all lower than "university", so we can make them small and low. For another example, we usually change the tone of "student", but we usually don't change the tone of "teacher" because "teacher" is in a relative position and should not be said to be small and low, while "student" should respect the teacher and be young, so it is changed to a primary school. 1, "spear" (Gaozhou dialect is close to Mandarin pronunciation máo), the antonym of "you". In spoken Cantonese (Guangzhou dialect), "Tongyou" is generally used, while "spear" is directly used in Gaozhou dialect, which is the most obvious difference between Gaozhou dialect and spoken Cantonese. "spear" is equivalent to the negative word "no" in modern Chinese, which can be directly translated from Mandarin into Gaozhou dialect and can replace the word "no" in Mandarin in most cases. For example, "I don't like it" is translated into "I like it", and "go or not" can be translated into "go to the spear". Moreover, unlike Guangzhou dialect, and similar to Mandarin, the "spear" of Gaozhou dialect can be postpositioned. For example, say in Mandarin, "Are you going?" Guangzhou said, "Are you going?" Gaozhou said, "Are you going to spear?" . In the pronunciation of written language, Gaozhou dialect and Cantonese are mostly the same.

2. "day" (the meaning of knowing. This is not English, but the pronunciation is the same as English. The pronunciation of the word "Zhi" in Gaozhou dialect is the same as that in English, which is quite different from that in Mandarin. In fact, this has something to do with the ancient sound. According to experts' research, there was no supralingual sound in ancient times, that is to say, there was no retrolingual sound in ancient times, that is, the initials zh, ch and sh in Mandarin. In ancient times, these sounds were often in the middle of the tip of the tongue, that is, D, T, N and L in Mandarin today. For example, people used to say "pig", not Zhu, but Du. The ancient usage of the initial d is only reserved in a few dialects, Chaoshan dialect and western Guangdong dialect are two of them. The word "zhi" in Gaozhou dialect retains the initial d and reflects the ancient sound, which is a precious historical material for the study of ancient words. At the same time, knowledge can also reflect ancient grammar. In ancient grammar, monosyllabic words (words containing one word) were the main words, while today's Putonghua mostly uses polysyllabic words (words containing two or more words). In Cantonese, monosyllabic words are more reserved, such as "food". As a branch of Guangzhou dialect, Gaozhou dialect also retains many monosyllabic words. When we say "do you know", we can say "know", but we can't say "know" in Mandarin.

3. Gaozhou accent does not distinguish between "buying" and "selling", while Huazhou accent does not distinguish between "shoes", "children" and "crabs", which is a very interesting phenomenon. Friends from other places want to distinguish Huazhou sound from Gaozhou sound, so let's start with these words.

It doesn't mean that Gaozhou people don't know the meaning of these words. Gaozhou people also know the meaning of buying and selling, but their pronunciation is inseparable. In Maoming area, the only person who can split the business is the people in Maoming city. If Gaozhou people say they want to buy (sell) rice, I don't know from the accent whether he wants to buy it back or sell it in the market.

4. the word "carving". Some words, especially the nouns of reproductive organs, are both male and female. When describing happiness, some Gaozhou people will say "good carving"; Delicious means "good carving is delicious", and the word "carving" has become the onomatopoeic word of Gaozhou people. People in Gaozhou don't say much about the term female reproductive organs, but people in Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong say a lot. Calling men "outsiders" and putting female reproductive organs on men seems to be more than the shemale in the Pearl River Delta.

The above phenomena are just a few streams of Gaozhou dialect river. Gaozhou dialect is rich in modal particles, special adverbs and ancient words "Yan" and "Chao", which record the customs of Gaozhou in the past dynasties. It has rich cultural and linguistic research value and is a treasure of western Guangdong dialect. We should love and protect local dialects, seriously explore their value, and inject fresh and energetic blood into our language and culture. Gaozhou dialect of Guangzhou dialect shows many characteristics different from northern Chinese in pronunciation, vocabulary and even grammar, many of which reflect the remains of ancient Baiyue language, which can be summarized as follows:

As for 1. initials, there are a group of insulting initials [kw] and [kw'] due to the lack of intermediate sounds of I and u, which are very similar to those of Zhuang-Dong and Miao Yao dialects.

2. Phonologically, Gaozhou dialect can be divided into long and short vowels [a] and [e]. Dialects with obvious differences between long and short vowels are rarely seen in Chinese dialects, but they are common in Zhuang and Dong languages.

3. In word formation, tone sandhi is frequently used, which has a catalytic effect on tone differentiation, which is also suitable for the large language environment in the south.

4. Lexically, many words are obviously from non-Chinese, which shows that ancient Cantonese is closely related to other minority languages. For example, Mark (Yang, Zhuang, Buyi, Dong, Li, Village), Dan (Gai, Zhuang, Dai, Li,), Shu (Shuan, Zhuang), Jie (Hou, Zhuang), Gu (back,

5. The word order of "head+modifier" is common, such as "rooster" (rooster), "hen" (hen), "go first" (go first) and "eat more" (eat more). And the word order with Zhuang, Dong and Li. In addition, the characteristics of double-object sentences expressing meaning are that the object refers to the front object and the object refers to the back person, all of which are related to the contact with national languages.

6. Some grammatical features are also related to the influence of national languages. For example, demonstrative pronouns in Gaozhou vernacular can be divided into near reference and far reference, with the near reference being [nei/ 1i55] and the far reference being "? ? "Actually, it is a quantifier in ancient Chinese, just a general term (such as" tasting it "or" white hair and three thousands of feet, sorrow is like a beard "). Then, how to use "ge" as a far reference in Gaozhou vernacular? It turns out that in early Cantonese, there was no distinction between near finger and far finger. However, in the special language environment of Guangdong, due to the erosion of Baiyue language, a near-reference [neix/ 1i55] (a near-reference pronoun from Zhuang and Dong languages) appeared. Here used to be a universal "one", which naturally assumed the function of far finger. Gaozhou dialect, a Cantonese dialect, has developed. Due to the underdeveloped transportation in the early days, the linguistic features of ancient Chinese have been preserved to some extent, such as the complete ending of ancient rhyme and the tone of entering tone. There are also many "fossils" of ancient Chinese in the vocabulary of Gaozhou vernacular, which are reflected in the following four points, from which some characteristics of Chinese can be observed.

1, monosyllabic words are abundant, many of which come from ancient Chinese. Such as "neck" (neck), "wing" (wing), "shirt" (clothes), "face" (night), "wear" and "want" (most).

2. Some archaic words are commonly used in daily life and are active in spoken English. Unlike those archaic words in Mandarin, archaic words in Mandarin are mostly used in written language. Such as "drinking" (drinking, comparing "diet"), "degree" (quantity, comparing "measurement"), "walking" (walking, comparing "action"), "death" (finally), "coincidence" and "or" (stillness).

3. The word order of some disyllabic words is different from that of Mandarin, but they are consistent with that of ancient Chinese, such as "neat" (Book of Jin: Seeing Soldiers in Order), "urgent" (urgent) and "crowded" (read couplets: "After dinner, sign people, sign people.

4. Dialect idioms retain ancient Chinese vocabulary. There are some vulgar terms in Gaozhou vernacular, but in fact, they retain the words or usage of ancient Chinese, which most people do not abide by. For example, the proverb "smash a clay pot and ask about it" means "Wen" (Dialect: "Playing a musical instrument without leaving it"), and "Du" means "dolphin" (Guang Yun: "Ding Mu chop, tail also opens"); There is an idiom in Gaozhou dialect to describe panic. Among them, "panic" also comes from the spoken language of the Tang Dynasty, such as the notes of the Tang Dynasty, "Scared General Left".