The predicate inflection in yancheng dialect

This article discusses the conditions, functions and possible suffixes of the predicate inflection from a semantic and grammatical point of view in Yancheng dialect, spoken in Central China Henan province. The predicates in Yancheng undergo rime change depending on time frame and grammatical constraints. Based on the comparison between the distribution of the rime-changing verbs and corresponding non-rime-changing verbs, three functions of the predicate rime allomorphy are concluded: (1) to express the event realized, (2) to state a static condition lasting, (3) to denote the direction of an action. Each of the functions can be traced to the fusion of the preceding predicates and different grammatical elements, lei and le₂, zhe _dand dao or zai respectively. Furthermore, this article is also trying to address some general issues on predicate inflection, such as the motivation, mechanism and developmental tendency, in Chinese dialects.