新加坡华语 “谓词 + ‘掉’ ” 结构初探 = AN INVESTIGATION ON THE "VERBAL ITEM + '-diao'" STRUCTURE IN SINGAPORE MANDARIN

Abstract

The Singapore Mandarin is an overseas Modern Chinese variety. Its system of phonetics, vocabulary and syntax is unique in its own way. One of the interesting features in Singapore Mandarin is the functional word "diao" (‘"掉’"). In the Xian dai han yu ba bai ci ( 《现 代汉语八百词》）, the unique usage of Singapore Mandarin's "-diao" like “照顾掉”，“煮掉" and “静掉” could not be found. Nevertheless, there were hardly any studies conducted on the “-diao'’ of Singapore Mandarin. Thus, this paper seeks to discover the uniqueness of "-diao" in Singapore Mandarin. The focus will be on the the semantic functions of Singapore Mandarin's "-diao". To date, there are a number of research findings on the "-diao" of Modern Chinese. While these findings are useful as references to understand the "-diao" of Singapore Mandarin, a fundamental problem was found: the investigation methods used were unable to identify the semantic functions of "-diao" accurately. In view of this, a set of improved investigation methods is used in this paper. The core method used is the comparative analysis.

On the other hand, the corpus for this investigation is restricted to the Singapore colloquial Mandarin. Besides, only perfective declarative sentences in the form of intransitive sentence structure will be used. These restrictions are imposed to ensure uniformity of the corpus so that accurate conclusions can be drawn. According to our investigation, the “-diao" of Singapore Mandarin is normally used to express the meaning of "completion" (“完结”） . “Completion” is defined as "to do something thoroughly and completely", whereby the patient/object involved is ‘‘totally affected, consumed, or destroyed". Besides, "-diao" is also found to contain negative connotations, whereby this particular characteristic greatly restricts "-diao" in its choices of verbal items, patients/objects as well as contexts. This paper is a relatively basic investigation. However, if conducted using the right methods, it would certainly serve as a strong foundation for other semantic function-based investigations like the grammaticalisation of “-diao” and the origins of Singapore Mandarin's "-diao". Before discussing these topics, it is essential to analyse accurately the semantic functions of “-diao” and have a precise answer to it. Only with this can other related investigations make accurate deductions and draw explicit conclusions.