| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 西洋語文研究所 === 90 === The interviews used in this study are from Brewer''s Linguistic Atlas of Taiwan project. This study is an experiment in the processing of linguistic fieldwork data. The primary data are fourteen interviews, conducted from 1996 to 1999. The informants were asked to respond to a structured questionnaire and to tell a story. Fourteen have been chosen since they deal with two uniquely Taiwanese Southern Min legends, Liao Tianding and The Duck King. Extralinguistic factors are taken into account: age, sex, education, occupation, ethnic affiliation, language background, and geographic identity. Various linguistic levels are examined for each text, which has a phonetic transcription (IPA), Church romanization, complete parsing in the glossaries, and a free English translation. The two composite texts further have literal English glosses and free Mandarin translations (sinograms and pinyin).
The final step is an integration of the so-called Finnish Method with linguistic data. Probably most linguists are not even aware of the Aarne-Thompson system of folktale classification, which in its field is the most coherent and widely recognized tool for dealing with narrative discourse. Each text is given a plot structure and motifs are identified. Literary versions of the tales are also included in the final analysis. And lastly each legend is given for the first time a unique alphanumeric tale-type code, in accordance with international practice. This study is then a small step toward the creation of a tale-type index for all the island''s folk narratives.
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