GANGOU CHINESE DIALECT - A COMPARATIVE-STUDY OF A STRONGLY ALTAICIZEDCHINESE DIALECT AND ITS MONGOLIC NEIGHBOR

The Chinese dialect spoken in Gangou Hui Township, Minhe Hui and Mongu or County, Qinghai, China is analyzed. An introduction to the local li nguistic and ethnic situation and a discussion of structural points of similarity between Gangou Chinese Dialect and Minhe Monguor in the co ntext of a folktale narrative, originally told in Gangou Chinese Diale ct, with a sentence-by-sentence translation into Minhe Monguor and Eng lish are provided. The degree of correspondence between Gangou Chinese Dialect and Minhe Monguor is striking: even to the level of order of morphemes, morphosyntactic structures are virtually identical. The nee d for further studies of how non-Sinitic languages influence Chinese i s stressed.