Substantive verb “leda”, “ledoŋ”, “lehaŋ” in Shaoxing dialect

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the meaning of the substantive verb “leda”, “ledoŋ” and “lehaŋ” in Shaoxing dialect from the view of evidentiality and modality. The conclusions are as follows: “leda” presents the entities visible to the speaker. “Ledoŋ” presents the entities invisible to the speaker. And “lehaŋ” presents the entities which are out of the speaker and hearer’s range of visibility. When the utterance is based on non-visual evidences, the usage of “leda”, “ledoŋ” and “lehaŋ” depends on how confident the speaker is about the location of the entity.