Interrogatives in Squliq Atayal

• Main Authors: Chiao-chun Beryl Lin, 林姣君
• Other Authors: Wei-tien Dylan Tsai
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/02317589164712466017

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 語言學研究所 === 94 === The paper studies wh-words as interrogatives and indefinites, and further the left periphery of the interrogative clauses in Squliq Atayal, a Formosan language spoken in Chian-shin, Hsinchu County. This thesis begins with the introduction for a sketch of Squliq Atayal and literature review. We divide the interrogatives in Squliq Atayal into three types, namely, nominal, adverbial, and verbal interrogatives. All of the three types can function as the sentence-initial predicates. Among them, adverbial interrogative knwan occurs with the freest distribution, and Tsai’s (2004a) T feature hypothesis seems to offer a plausible explanation. We also discuss adjectival wh-words which can serve as either heads or modifiers, such as ima ‘whose’, kenu ‘which’, ktwa ‘how, how many/much’, pira ‘how many’, and mhananu ‘how’. Furthermore, we discuss indefinite wh’s occurring in typical contexts for negative polarity items, including negation, yes-no questions, conditionals, modality sentences, declaratives and donkey sentences. There exists an overt or covert sentential operator which licenses wh-words to be interpreted as indefinites in these syntactic constructions. Based on Tsai’s (1997b) analysis, we give a comparison of wh-indefinites between Kavalan, Seediq, Tsou, Rukai and Atayal, and find that the indefinite Wh construals of Squliq is endowed with the mixed characteristics of Japanese-type and Chinese-type Languages. Besides, we analyze the base-generation of two verbal interrogatives: hmswa/swa ‘why’ and swa m’lu ‘how come’, and further discover that swa m’lu occupies the higher position than hmswa/swa. Moreover, we also observe that syntactic distribution affects semantic interpretations of hmswa/swa ‘why’ and mhananu ‘how’.