| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 語言學研究所 === 97 === This thesis serves as a phonological research, step by step deciphering the articulation, phonological patterns and various morphophonemic alternations of Thao. Thao, having resided around the Sun-Moon Lake regions in central Taiwan, is one of the most endangered Formosan languages. Throughout this thesis, the analyses of phonological issues will be couched within Optimality Theory.
This thesis will begin with a discussion of the general phonology of Thao. First, the phoneme inventory and the phonetic description will be provided. Then, the dispute on whether stem-initial and stem-final glottal stops stand in underlying representation will be clarified by adducing evidence of the ��-initial/final stems in prefixed/suffixed forms. Surface glides in Thao come from three sources: 1.) underlying glides, 2.) glided vowels, /VV/ �� [VG]/ [GV], and 3.) homorganic glides spread by a precedent vowel, /VV/ �� [VGV]. Two strategies of glide formation are mentioned as in 2.) and 3.), and in fact most of the possible vowel clusters will be diphthongized in response to the ranking ONSET >> INTERGRITY >> V-NUC. However, the process /ua/ �� [uwa] results from the /u/-idiosyncrasy. Regarding stress assignment, the constraint ranking RHTYPE(T) >> FTBin-σ >> Integrity will capture the alternations of glide formation strategies of some vowel clusters.
There are four voice/aspect markers in Thao, including the AV prefix /um/, the Perf prefix /in/, the LV suffix /an/ and the PV suffix /in/. To explicate whether or not the vowel of affixes is deleted in affixed form, I will propose two subgrammars under the cophonology model of a set of faithfulness constraints. Subgrammar 1 (MPARSE, DEP-μ-IO(GrWd) >> MAX-IO) accounts for AV prefixation, AV-Perf prefixation and PV suffixation. Subgrammar 1 implies that all input segments but non-stem mora will be parsed and thus result in vowel deletion of affixes. Subgrammar 2 (MPARSE, MAX-IO >> DEP-μ-IO(GrWd)) requires all input segments being parsed, applied to Perf prefixation and LV suffixation. Both subgrammars of faithfulness constraints relating to input-output segments will interact with higher-ranked markedness constraints so that various morphophonemic alternations will be induced.
To make the morphophonemic alternations more complete, many relative suffixes and enclitics will be included. The imperative /i/ has three alternations, which are syntactically driven. The completive marker /iða/ and the durative marker /uan/ exhibit mainly two different alternations: the single-stress pattern and the dual-stress pattern, resulted from the degree of difficulty in phonological parsing. The 2nd personal enclitic /u/ reported in former studies is actually the truncated form of the 2nd personal enclitic /uhu/. The 1st person singular /wak/ may historically be composed of the durative marker /uan/ and the 1st person marker; however, the phonological evidence of /wak/-encliticized words is lack and thus needs further investigation.
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