A Microscopic Comparison of Cross-strait Varieties: The Case of Eryi.

In former comparative researches on the Cross-strait Chinese varieties, people have tended to he more concerned with macroscopic aspects and some `big' subjects, which is understandable to some extent, but has apparent deficiencies. One of the severest is that the observation, description and interpretation at the micro level are hard to be sufficient, which hence affects the quality research. This paper presents a microscopic comparison and explains its necessity and importance. The investigation of Eryi at the two aides of the Taiwan Strait suggests that, in addition to the `difference-fusion' model, there is another one, namely, `difference' only and no fusion. That it, the micro-contrastive perspective can better reveal the difference model and its development. The paper then puts forward a concept celled `speech community characteristic word' by using `dialect characteristic word' for reference. Such characteristic words, for the present author, should be preferred for the micro-contrastive observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]