| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立新竹教育大學 === 臺灣語言與語文教育研究所 === 92 === As stated in Chapter 1, the purpose of the thesis is to give an explicit definition of serial verb construction (SVC for short) in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM for short) with respect to its scope, constituents, types, grammatical
function and syntactic representation. In particular, we will provide an in-depth analysis of related issues. On the strength of historical records Chapter 2 highlights the development of SVCs as revealed in the texts from Yin-Shang period through Qin-Han period to Tang-Song period in an attempt to uncover the traits of SVC in comparison with its counterpart in modern Chinese. We also give a literature review of previous works published at home or abroad. Chapter 3 fleshes out the characteristics of SVC in the following terms. SVC is a compound sentence denoting a special coordinate relationship.
The construction is made up of at least two predicates sharing the subject and features neither conjunction or complementizer nor syntactic relationship such as modifier-modified, verb-complement, and verb-subject/object in the pivotal construction. This chapter also teases out the grammatical features of SVC, the diagnostic principles, construction types and sentence patterns, and makes a comparison of SVC and other special constructions denoting simultaneous actions.
Chapter 4 gives a fine-grained analysis of sentential constituents that function as subject, first predicate, second predicate and object. Following a look into the syntactic aspect of SVC Chapter 5 arrives at a global and
thorough understanding of SVC in TSM by delving into its grammatical function, semantic relationship and traits of representation. Chapter 5 enlists the commonality and difference between SVC and other types of construction so that SVC becomes more clearly delineated and its status is therefore more firmly established. Chapter 7 as an extension of the above endeavor examines the SVC in TSM proverbs from which interesting phenomena appear such as the syntagmatic relationship of verb, adjective, object and complement, different sentence patterns and various kinds of semantic relationship.
Chapter 8 addresses overwhelming issues that crop up in our analysis such as deictic verbs lai5 and khi3, the definition of preposition, progressive aspect and complicated SVC. Chapter 9 summarizes the discussion of this thesis and briefly touches on the contrastive aspects of SVCs as shown in TSM and Mandarin. Furthermore, we advance some residual unsettled questions such as the thorny problems of giving a precise and comprehensive definition of preposition to pin down the dual role of words in SVCs, the juncture and tone sandhi in a sequence of predicates, the durations of predicates in SVC and other constructions, frequency of predicates and kinds of SVCs and the frequency of semantic types and dialectal divergence of SVC. All of these questions form important points of departure in our future exploration.
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