Grammar
Jin readily employs prefixes such as 圪 /kəʔ/, 忽 /xəʔ/, and 入 /zəʔ/, in a variety of derivational constructions. For example:
入鬼 "fool around" < 鬼 "ghost, devil"
In addition, there are a number of words in Jin that evolved, evidently, by splitting a mono-syllabic word into two. For example:
/pəʔ ləŋ/ < 蹦 pəŋ "hop"
/tʰəʔ luɤ/ < 拖 tʰuɤ "drag"
/kuəʔ la/ < 刮 kua "scrape"
/xəʔ lɒ̃/ < 巷 xɒ̃ "street"
A similar process can in fact be found in most Mandarin dialects (e.g. 窟窿 kulong < 孔 kong), but it is especially common in Jin.
Read more about this topic: Jin Chinese
Famous quotes containing the word grammar:
“I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on the simple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.”
—Bernadette Devlin (b. 1947)
“All the facts of nature are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a double, treble or centuple use and meaning.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.”
—Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886)