新加坡华语中的“了” = The “le” particle in Singapore Mandarin

• Main Author: 赖怡彣 Lua, Yi Wen
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: Chinese
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Language::Chinese
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/55687
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

在现代汉语中，“了”分别有liǎo和le两种读音。“了” liǎo可作为动词，有完结、完全、明白之义。“了”le可作动态助词表达完成体（“了1”）或作句末语气助词（“了2”）。在普通话中，作为动态助词和句末语气词的“了”均读作le。但是，在新加坡华语中，却有将le读成liǎo的现象。尽管前人对此现象有所介绍，但尚还缺少以大量真实语料为基础的深入分析讨论。本文以普通话和新加坡华语的在线语料库以及新加坡电影口头语料作为研究的材料来源，系统地探讨“了”在新加坡华语中的使用概况。本文的第二章，主要探讨“了”在书面语的分布情况以及探究“了” liǎo和“了”le在电影口语语料中的分布情况及它们的语法功能。此外，本章也简要地介绍“了”多用和少用的情况。第三章主要探讨新加坡华语的“了”与新加坡闽南话的关系，并发现新加坡华语缺乏双“了”句的情况及少用“了”的情况也与闽南话有相对应之处。第四章则主要探讨“了” liǎo充“了”le的可能因素，当中发现其与闽南话有相对应之处，因而指出liǎo的读音可能来自方言的转移。同时，本文也发现这有可能是受到早期《国音字典》旧读音的影响。再来，就新一代年轻人来说，“了”liǎo充“了”le可能也受新加坡英语再影响。本文的最后，也对成文过程中的局限和不足之处做了说明。In modern Chinese, the word “了” can be pronounced as liǎo or le. The first pronunciation liǎo can be serve as verb, it means end, complete and understand. le serves as perfective aspect particle and sentence particle. In Mandarin, when the word serves as perfective aspect particle or sentence particle, its pronunciation should be le. However, in Singapore Mandarin, le is sometimes pronounced as liǎo. Although some researchers had discussed such phenomenon, it still lacks of a thorough analysis and discussion which base on real corpora. This article is using the online corpora such as CCL and South East Asia Chinese Media corpus as well as spoken corpora from Singapore Chinese movies as the sources of material for research. This article aims to explore the usage of particle le in Singapore Mandarin. The second chapter mainly approaches the usage of le in written form corpora and thoroughly investigates the usage of liǎo and le in Singapore Mandarin movies and their grammatical functions. It also briefly introduces the overuse and underuse of le in Singapore Mandarin. The third chapter discusses the relationship of le between Singapore Mandarin and Singapore MinNan dialect. The study also finds out that the lack of double le and the omission of le in Singapore Mandarin correspond with Singapore MinNan dialect. In the fourth chapter, the possible reasons of le being pronounced as liǎo are investigated and the result shows that it also corresponds with MinNan dialect. Therefore, it is believed that the pronunciation of liǎo might transform from dialect. At the same time, this article also finds out that this phenomenon might be affected by the old pronunciation that was published in “Guo Yin Zi Dian”. Furthermore, for Singapore younger generation it might be influenced by Singlish. Finally, the limitations in the writing process are discussed in the end of the project.