Sakizaya Syntax: With Special Reference to Negative, Interrogative, and Causative Constructions
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Wen-chi, Shen
Abstract
This thesis attempts to explore a more detailed grammatical description of Sakizaya and discusses three syntactic constructions, which are negative, interrogative and causative constructions. The Sakizaya used to be thought of as part of the Amis, and their language was claimed to have retained older characteristics of Amis (Tsuchida 1988). And it is probably for this reason that most studies concentrate on Central Amis owing to its relatively large population whereas only a few studies focus on Sakizaya. Accordingly, the aims of the thesis are three-fold. First of all, the thesis aims at providing a detailed grammatical sketch of Sakizaya; secondly, we would like to examine three syntactic constructions, which is found more different from Central Amis; thirdly, compared to Wu’s (2006b) studies on Central Amis, morphosyntactic behaviors between Central Amis and Sakizaya will be undertaken as well. The thesis is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1 provides a general geographical, historical and linguistic background of Sakizaya. And previous studies on Central Amis and Sakizaya will be reviewed in this chapter. hapter 2 investigates morphology, case markers, pronominal systems and voice markers in Sakizaya, which are found distinct from those in Central Amis. To being with, plurality of case markers does not exist in Sakizaya while it does exist in Amis. Second, 3rd personal singular pronoun ciniza ‘he/she’ and plural keheni ‘they’ are different from their corresponding pronouns in Central Amis. Third, Sakizaya takes an AV prefix mu- in place of the infix -um- attaches to less transitive action verbs. Moreover, mu- in Sakizaya can be attached to a variety of verbs whereas -um- in Central Amis is more limited. Chapter 3 focuses on negative constructions. Negators in Sakizaya are different from those in Central Amis except ca’ay that is the most commonly used in the declarative sentences. Thus, this chapter will explore all of the negators in terms of their syntactic positions and semantic functions. Afterwards, syntactic behaviors will be examined by following Sung and Yeh’s (2005) study as well. Chapter 4 probes three types of interrogative constructions, yes-no questions, alternative questions and wh- words questions. It is suggested that the former two perform in two strategies: intonation change and interrogative particles haw, saw, hani and hakia whose various semantic functions of particles will be introduced in this chapter. In addition, interrogative words will be discussed in terms of their syntactic properties and semantic interpretations. Chapter 5 discusses causative constructions in terms of their morphological and syntactic properties, case relations and voice marking systems. Morphologically, prefixation of the causative pa- results in changes of semantic meanings and syntactic properties. Syntactically, causatives are usually found to occur in UV constructions with the causer marked by the genitive case except that causative predicates affixed by the factual marker -ay are likely to occur in AV constructions. At last, causative readings will be compared with reciprocal readings in terms of valency change and case relations. To summarize, the thesis is expected to provide a comprehensive grammatical description in order to facilitate further research studies on Amis dialects and typological studies on Formosan languages and so on.
Subjects
Sakizaya
syntax
negative
interrogative
causative
Amis
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