英语论文网

Introduction

Research Background
Almost every language is under contact with other languages in different formsand degrees, which leads to inevitable influence on each other, especially theinfluence from the dominant languages such as Putonghua to weak languages such asmost local dialects. As the impetus to language variation, the stronger the contact is,the more obvious the influence will be. With the economic globalization, urban-ruralintegration and the promotion of Putonghua, people speak Putonghua more frequentlyin daily life, which brings various variations in their local dialects. Xiangtan dialect isno exception.Xiangtan, a city of Chair Mao’s hometown, is one of major industrial cities inChina. Located in the east-central part of Hunan province at the lower reach of XiangRiver (27°21’~28°05’ N, 111°58’~113°05’ E), it is also one of the central cities ofChang-Zhu-Tan urban cluster with a land area of 5015 square km and a permanentpopulation of about 2.7 million. Xiangtan dialect is a patch of New Xiang dialect ofXiang dialect. In its narrow sense, it refers to dialect in Xiangtan urban area which isdifferent from that of Xiangtan county; In its wide sense, it includes dialect ofXiangtan urban area, Xiangtan county and Xiangxiang dialect. Dialect here refers tothe common local dialect used by local Xiangtan natives. Xiangtan dialect is therepresentative Xiang dialect. The pronunciation of Xiangtan dialects differ within tenli area, the dialect situation is rather complicated. Generally speaking, it can bedivided into two kinds: with Xiangtan city dialect belonging to Changheng patch ofXiang dialect as one, having entering tone, part of the ancient total voiced initialconsonants at present becoming devoiced; and Xiangxiang dialect belonging toLoushao patch of Xiang dialect as the other, without entering tone, the ancient totalvoiced initial consonant remaining the same (Zeng Yumei 295). In recent years, withthe development of the whole society and the promotion of Putonghua, the contactbetween Xiangtan dialect and Putonghua become intensified and naturally results inlanguage variations in Xiangtan dialect, especially in its nouns.
.........

Objectives and Research Questions
Based mainly on empirical foundation, the thesis aims to investigate the nounvariation in Xiangtan dialect within the framework of variation theory. It tends toexplore how the noun variation are correlated with different social variables, like age,gender, educational background, occupation, occasion and so on and the possiblefactors that leads to the variation.The author attempts to address the following questions:1) What is the present situation of Xiangtan dialect under the contact withPutonghua? How does the Xiangtan dialect change in terms of noun?2) How is the noun variation in Xiangtan dialect correlated with different socialfactors like age, gender, occasion, occupation and educational level?
.........

Chapter One Literature Review

Being the major focus in recent sociolinguistic studies, language contact hasattracted much attention from many linguists. With the contact between twolanguages become intensified, its effects will be shown gradually in terms of thephonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of each language. Language contactcan be a kind of source of linguistic change. More and more people change theirauthentic dialect handed down from older generation to