台灣留學生出席國際會議補助

2009年5月12日 星期二

Language Change in the Taiwanese Speech Community: The myth of hoo

論文發表人: 楊惠玲 (亞利桑那州立大學英文系語言學博士班)
http://oregonstate.edu/dept/foreign_lang/lasso/

This paper aims at providing insights into linguistic connections among the speech communities in a multi-cultural society, specifically elucidating linguistic variation and language change among three dialects spoken in Taiwan. Although a strict language policy on Mandarin was formerly implemented in Taiwan, local dialects have been passed down by immigrants from China and their offspring. Some characteristics of these dialects have been maintained in spite of intensive language contact, while others have been merged and transformed.

By utilizing dialectology in conjunction with historical linguistics, researchers have been better able to interpret linguistic variation and language change in Chinese. With a theoretical base drawn from historical linguistics and typology, this study focuses on Mandarin and two Southern Chinese dialects (Southern Min and Hakka) in terms of their causative formulation, mainly from the perspective of syntax, semantics and, to a lesser degree, phonology. This paper relies on research methods such as: literature reviews, corpus analyses, and comparative methodologies, as well as interviews with native speakers of the dialects investigated.

This research differs from others in that it looks into speech variations in the Chinese causatives from a historical perspective, mainly syntactic change and primarily grammaticalization, a linguistic event in which a morpheme changes from a lexical to functional category. The other difference in scope is that of the inclusion of more than one dialect. Most previous research on Chinese causatives has dealt with a single dialect.

 A typical causative construction in Chinese is NP1 + V1 + NP2 + V2, where V1 is the causative verb or marker. Derived from shi-yi (使役) causative verbs, the Mandarin morphemes rang and jiao can serve as V1 in causative structures (Chang, 2005). The Mandarin morpheme gei is also often used in this structure as well. These three words have been grammaticalized into causative markers in Modern Standard Chinese. The morphemes hoo in Taiwan Southern Min and bun in Hakka serve the same function in expressing causative constructions; however, hoo and bun allow other functions as well. Other constraints also vary from one language to another.

This paper's research questions are: (1) How do these two dialects differ from Mandarin in forming causative constructions? ; (2) Do they share typological characteristics? ; (3) To what extent have the two other dialects been grammaticalized, compared to Mandarin? ; (4) How do all three grammaticalization pathways compare cross-linguistically? And, (5) How does language contact account for the linguistic variation or change in the speech communities in Taiwan?

台灣多元社會中的語言變異以閩南語中的一個多功能用字hoo為例

 

本研究旨在探討台灣多語社會的語言變化。研究標的為:國語與台灣閩南語間的差異與共同性。研究理論主要為方言學、歷史語言學與類型學。研究方法為文獻比較法與語料庫分析。具體而言,本研究的焦點放在閩南語中的特殊用語hoo。由於方言尚未有統一的符號表現方式,當本研究論及該字時均以羅馬拼音表之。此字具有多種功能它既可用於使役句給予句,也存在於被動結構本研究希冀找出該字在台灣閩南語中的分歧以進一步地證明語法化在該語言中的存在與演進

根據過去的文獻,方言學與歷史語言學的結合為中文語言學者帶來相當重要的語言變異詮釋基礎。本研究以上述理論為出發點,就時間縱向而言盡可能採集相關語言學者之於歷史文獻的探討,包括中西方學界的相關討論與結論。就時間的橫剖面言,作者針對可取得的現存語言資料庫進行語料分析。資料主要來自台灣中央研究院語言所的漢語平衡語料庫、花蓮大漢科技大學的公開閩南語語料庫以及國立台灣清華大學語言所提供之閩南語電視劇語料。

本研究顯示台灣閩南語中的hoo逐漸失去其多元性。換言之,該字已歷經語法化的程序。具體而言,回應連金發(2008)對於khit-hoo逐漸取代單一hoo的在閩南語被動句的用法hoo的給予用法也顯現分歧性。現存的台灣閩南語語料庫顯示,給予句採用單一的hoo與另一種新結構共存亦即將一個動詞前綴於hoo而形成另一個複合字。此現象說明了hoo在給予句式中的弱化帶來該字一個重新方析的基礎。以上證實了歷史語言學的語法化現象。此複合字的產生為語言循環中的更新現象,在此基礎上,未來該語言的給予結構將可能產生其他新的字眼。因此,本研究預測前述hoo的原有的多功能性極可能分化為三種明顯不同的語法結構。