Wh-words as Interrogatives and Indefinites in Rukai

• Main Authors: Chen Cheng-fu, 陳承甫
• Other Authors: Sung Li-May
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/75166937277375051388

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 語言學研究所 === 87 === The usage of wh-words of the Formosan languages is one of the important issues which have been dealt with in recent years. Huang et al. (1999) is the first systematic study of the wh-words of some Formosan languages, in which a discussion of Rukai is also included. Because it is a cross-language study, the discussion of the wh-words of Rukai is limited. And according to several schloars, Rukai exhibits tremendous dialectal distinctions. Based on these considerations, we choose Kucapungan Rukai, which belongs to the Budai Rukai dialect, for our study. This thesis is mainly of descriptive analysis, and the theoretical framework is based on Government and Binding Theory, and Principle and Parameter Theory. This thesis consists of two main parts: the study of wh-words as interrogatives and wh-words as indefinites. As for wh-words as interrogatives, we follow Huang et al. (1999) to put wh-words of Rukai into three types: (i) nominal; (ii) adverbial; and (iii) verbal. Each type has its own grammatical behavior. From a morphological perspective, some of the verbal wh-words exhibit a close relation morphologically. In comparison with some other Formosan languages, wh-words of Rukai also behave quite differently in that they can be grammatical subjects staying in-situ. In the second part of our discussion, we emphasize the indefinite usage of the wh-words of Rukai. Based on Tsai’s observation of Kavalan, Tsou and Seediq, we discuss the indefinite usage on three grammatical levels. On the syntactic level, five syntactic constructions are examined, and we conclude that Rukai is similar to Mandarin Chinese. On the morphological and phrasal levels, Rukai is detected to behave like English and Japanese in that it uses affixation, reduplication and universal quantification words to ensure the wh-words as indeifnites. In comparison with Kavalan, Tsou and Seediq, Rukai exhibits interesting grammatical phenomena.