Comparative Constructions in Amis
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Kuo, Cheng-chuen
Abstract
This thesis explores comparative constructions in Amis, as well as the related linguistic issues concerning comparison.he comparative construction has long aroused scholars’ interests for it touches upon various aspects of linguistics. In addition to semantics, syntax, as well as their interface, there are also typological surveys which attempt to establish the criterion for cross-linguistic classification of comparatives. Among these cross-linguistic studies, due to the absence of documentation, comparatives from the Formosan family are excluded from the language sample. The primary goal of this research, thus, is to collect the Amis usages concerning comparison. mis has a variety of constructions for comparison. Based on their unique morphosyntactic characteristics, four major constructions are identified: 1) Juxtaposition Comparatives, which employ parallel clauses with contrastive propositions; 2) Nominal Comparatives, whose comparee occupies the nominal predicate position by means of the equational construction; 3) -ki- Comparatives, which employ a specific morpheme -ki-, denoting the ‘exceed’ sense, and for its transitivity, permit different ‘focus’ expressions (i.e. AF and PF). 4) ikaka/isafa Comparatives, whose construction derives from a pair of kinship terms. In addition to entity-comparison, event-comparison in Amis is also incorporated in the thesis. It is discovered that the action words responsible for the compared events must undergo a deverbalization process in all comparative constructions, except the juxtaposition comparatives. mis data are used to explore some syntactic and typological issues regarding comparatives. For example, Stassen (1985) proposed a typological framework of comparatives, and established a criterion based on the case marking of the standard of comparison. The criterion has its syntactic significance in that it reflects cross-linguistically the possible syntactic relations between the two compared objects. However, Amis, as well as some other languages, suggests that Stassen’s model has some empirical concern: synchronic data show that the syntactic relations between the two compared objects might be ambiguous or vague in many comparative constructions. For this phenomenon, we provide a possible account from a cognitive perspective. In some comparative constructions, the syntactic relations might be ambiguous, since the function as comparatives remains consistent with the aid of certain morphosyntactic device. he thesis also investigates Klein (1991), who employed two sets of syntactic features ‘paratactic/hypotactic’, ‘clausal/phrasal’ altogether as typological characteristics of comparative expressions. By applying this model to English and Amis comparatives, we argue that the parts-of-speech system might serve as a determinant factor for Klein’s cross-linguistic classification: languages with an independent adjective category allow their comparative expressions to have Paratactic Phrasal (PAP) and Hypotactic Clausal (HYC) patterns. Amis is a language without an independent adjective category. This parts-of-speech inventory prohibits PAP and HYC comparative expressions, since the property of comparison must occupy the predicate position. This is verified by the previous observation: in Amis, the action words responsible for the compared events must undergo a deverbalization process.
Subjects
comparative construction
typology
deverbalization
parts-of-speech system
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