Linguistic Representations of Benefaction and Malefaction in Kanakanavu
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Yang, Chia-Ying
Abstract
The present thesis aims to explore benefaction and adversity (or malefaction) in Kanakanavu, an indigenous language spoken in the mountain areas of southern Taiwan. The two notions express affectedness because both involve a participant that is acted on in some way by an event (Smith, 2005). Based on Van Valin & LaPolla (1997), Kanakanavu benefaction can be categorized into three types including reason, substitution, and reception. For benefaction of reason, the beneficiary is an indirect cause of the event and benefited by obtaining satisfaction or enjoyment from it. The second type is benefaction of substitution. The benefited participant is exempted from the duty to carry out an action since someone substitutes as the actor. The third type concerns reception. The benefaction lies in that the beneficiary can receive a thing as the possessor. Intriguingly, we also observe an integrated type that comprises substitution and reception—recipient-benefaction. A recipient-benefactive event is composed of a creating scene followed by a transfer scene. The recipient is absent from the creating event and only partakes in the second event as a recipient that can engage with the given object. The research also includes the causative as a type of benefaction in that it relates to the expression of affectedness. In terms of the benefactive-causative, the beneficiary is usually the causer though it can be the causee. The causer is benefited by having the causee perform an action for himself/herself. On the other hand, the adversative-causative describes that the causer could have prevented a negative event from taking place but failed to. As opposed to benefaction, adversity or malefaction depicts an event the relevant participant (maleficiary) evaluates as bad. In Kanakanavu, three grammatical means are deployed for encoding—(1) (verb) lexical semantics, (2) the PV marker –ee, and (3) the causative. It is found that the maleficiary often holds possessive control over the object that is directly affected. In sum, the thesis endeavors to document the grammatical peculiarities of Kanakanvu through the specific topic of benefaction and adversity, hoping that the efforts will make contribution to preserving the linguistic treasure in Taiwan.
Subjects
Kanakanavu
affectedness
adversity
benefaction
causative
transfer verb
Type
thesis
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