汉语发言语序差异的成因 = THE CAUSES OF WORD ORDER VARIATIONS ACROSS CHINESE DIALECTS

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the main causes of the word order variations across Chinese dialects. Four types of causes are addressed from the perspectives of common morphosyntactic changes, sources of grammatical forms, representation of meanings, and language contact. This dissertation presents a number of important empirical and theoretical advances in Chinese linguistics. Empirically, this analysis, based on data from nearly 200 dialects, gives a diachronic explanation on the most outstanding word order variations across Chinese dialects. Theoretically, it is a diachronic approach to account for the grammatical variations in Chinese dialects. The four perspectives proposed are also applicable to the wider investigation into the evolution of Chinese dialectal grammars.