The am Construction in Yami

• Main Authors: Chun-Jan Young, 楊淳然
• Other Authors: Li-May Sung
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/jr4b57

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 語言學研究所 === 107 === This thesis investigates the am-construction in Yami, a Batanic (Philippine) language indigenous to Orchid Island, Taiwan. The am-construction has been previously identified as a topic construction, and although topic has been traditionally used in the realm of Philippine languages to refer to the nominative-marked noun phrase of the Philippine-type voice system, we take topic to be an information structural notion that is given in relation to its counterpart of focus/comment. This topic-comment structure is manifested through syntactic constructions in which topics are overtly expressed in sentence-initial position and optionally followed by a morphological topic marker. This particular construction in Yami, distinguished by the topic marker am, is identified as our object of study. Loosely based on a dichotomy first established by Chafe (1976), two usages of the am-construction are recognized: namely, as a topic construction and as a subordinating construction. Morphosyntactically, it is found that topics (nominal core arguments) must take nominative case, although genitive agents and possessors may also be admitted, and these restrictions apply to nominal and pronominal arguments as well as relative clauses and pseudoclefts. On the other hand, subordinate clauses in the am-construction are comprised of adjunct and adverbial clauses, and therefore exhibit a wide diversity of forms; these include aboutness, locative, temporal, conditional, and quotative clauses. The topic-marking function of the am-construction is then examined in further depth using naturalistic data in order to determine that the constituents expressed using the construction are, indeed, topics. Using Gundel et al.’s Givenness Hierarchy (1993), topics are analyzed and discussed in terms of their cognitive status, which represents the strength of their referential givenness. The vast majority of topics are found to correspond to the highest four levels of referential givenness, providing evidence of the construction’s topic-marking properties. However, two outlying tokens of low status are also discussed; while one is suggested to be an unplanned error, the other is identified as a generic topic, which is a recognized valid topic and therefore poses a problem for the Givenness Hierarchy.