My high school Chinese teacher asked me to help her translate these two abstracts from Chinese into English. I have finished, but I need to correct them into better English. Please help me. I have to give my teacher the translation. She helped me quite a lot while I encountered the most unfortunate fate in high school days, so I wish I could help her in return. Please help me check one of these two if you have time.
1. Abstract
This study aimed at the morphological comparison of Hai-Lu Hakka and Southern Min including speech sounds, morphology, grammar and culture. The following is the content of this study:
Chapter One Introduction: Presenting the research motive and research method, etc.
Chapter Two Literature Review: Revealing the importance of research in bi-dialects.
Chapter Three The Relationship of Hakka and Southern Min: This chapter presented the overview of historical background, geographical distribution and social contact of the Hakka and the Southern Min.
Chapter Four Phonological Comparison of Hakka and Southern Min: This chapter examined the rules of code-switching and the history of the phonological evolution of both dialects.
Chapter Five and Chapter Six were the morphological comparison of the classification, number of syllables, the composition and the word order regarding Hakka and Southern Min lexical words. It was the hope to find the unique feature words of Hakka and Southern Min as well as those that revealed the linkage of the two dialects.
Chapter Seven Syntax Comparisons: This chapter discussed the dynamic aspect of words as they turned into sentences, including discussions on aspectuality and sentence structure.
In addition, Chapter Eight probed further into lexical items in terms of culture, focusing on the classical words, words with “ma”, the forbidden words and the borrowed words and the way they reflected the culture.
Chapter Nine Conclusion: this chapter presents the conclusion of this study and suggestion for future research.
This study looks forward to a more rising research attention regarding the languages of Taiwan enabling the development of Hakka and Southern Min to move from the state of co-existence to the common good in this new century.
Key words: Hai-Lu Hakka, the comparison of Hakka and Southern Min, bi-dialects, the languages of Taiwan, morphology
2. The Morphology of Hakka Gender Word “ma” and the Cultural Interpretation
Abstract:
Language is the symbol of culture. When a dialect has a word that is rare or even unfound in others, this word is considered precious for it often reflects the unique culture of this dialect. Such a word was found in Hakka. It was the gender word “ma”, which was unusual in other dialects but was habitually used in Hakka as a feature word. On the basis of the research of this study, “ma” was used with at least eighty Hakka lexical words. This study examined the usage of the lexical words with “ma”; first, the semantic relationship and morphology of the word “ma” was discussed before probing into the cultural implication for its extensive use in Hakka. The goal was to uncover the various complicated semantic relationships. This study discovered that “ma” had as many as 15 lexical combinations and at least 9 extended meanings. It should be noted that in some combinations “ma” were considered affixes while in others they were only quasi-affixes. In addition to “ma”, discussions of other gender words in Hakka such as “kung”, “ku” and “po” were also included in this study.
The conclusion of this study was that Hakka had a particularly rich gender affixes and it was highly likely to be the results of general personification or deification of the Hakka. Based on the word “ma”, the unique characteristics of Hakka culture was also revealed to a certain degree.
Key words: Hakka lexical words, feature words, affixes, gender, ma
Note: “ma(old lady or granny)”, “kung(elder man)” and “po(old lady or old woman)” can be shown using the original character and transliteration such as "ma(嫲)". They are the gender affixes for words in Hakka or Southern Min such as “ginger”, “Thunder God” and “rocks”, etc.