| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 語言所 === 95 === ABSTRACT
This thesis studies verbal reduplication in Taiwan Southern Min (hereafter TSM) from two perspectives: iconicity (Haiman 1980) and Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006). Three main issues are concerned in this study. First, certain meanings such as “plurality”, “attenuation”, “intensity”, “repetition”, etc. are generally associated with reduplicative forms across dialects and different language families. These different meanings are not arbitrarily associated reduplication. Rather, they are iconically motivated.
Second, we raise the question: which type of verbs in TSM can be reduplicated? According to Cheng (1988b), some verbs such as uai1 ‘crooked’, sau3 ‘cough’, chiam1mia5 ‘sign (one’s name)’ are unaccounted for in terms of his classification of verbs in TSM. Hence, following Van Valin’s (2005) system of verb classes, we provided a more explanatory verb classification of TSM than Cheng’s classification.
Third, while the verb-complement construction cannot undergo reduplication in Mandarin, yet the verb-complement type of verbal reduplication is commonly seen in TSM. This difference between the two Chinese languages can be accounted for by the inheritance motivation in Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995). This thesis proposes that the verb-complement type of reduplication XXC is inherited from the XX le0 verbal reduplicative construction in TSM. The usage-based model also accounts for the fact that XX le0 verbal reduplicative construction is the most productive prototype construction to be inherited and applied to other newly cases.
Keywords: reduplication, iconicity, Construction Grammar, Taiwan Southern Min
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