Syntax and semantics of postverbal secondary predicates in Taiwan Southern Min* = 台灣閩南語動後次要謂語的句法與語意

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-103
Author(s):  
Huei-Ling Lin ◽  
林 惠玲
Keyword(s):  
Southern Min ◽  
Secondary Predicates

Acoustic cues of vowel quality to coda nasal perception in southern Min

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Chen ◽  
Vsevolod Kapatsinski ◽  
Susan Guion-Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Southern Min

Taxonomy of questions in TaiwanSouthern Min

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-299
Author(s):  
Pei-Yi Hsiao ◽  
One-Soon Her
Keyword(s):  
Information Seeking ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Southern Min ◽  
Final Question

Abstract Contra the conventional four-way distinction of syntactically-formed questions in Taiwan Southern Min (TSM): (i) yes-no, (ii) A-not-A, (iii) disjunctive, and (iv) wh-questions (e.g., Lau 2010a), we justify a more revealing dichotomy of confirmation-seeking (CS) polar questions and information-seeking (IS) constituent questions, based on a suite of semantic and syntactic tests proposed in extensive literature for Mandarin and adapted further for TSM, where A-not-A belongs to the disjunctive type, which is in turn a subcategory of IS constituent questions. Controversies over the proper status of some sentence-final question particles and kám questions are also deliberated. Dismissing some alleged polar question particles as polar or A-not-A tags, we recognize nih and honnh as interrogative polar particles. We also show that kám has two underlying forms. One is a portmanteau word of the modal kánn and the negator m̄ and thus forms a whether-or-not disjunctive question (Huang 1988a, 1991). However, when kám is short for kámkong ‘don’t tell me’, similar to the Mandarin nandao, it appears in a polar question.

Idioms in Verb-object Constructions

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-209
Author(s):  
Chinfa Lien
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationship ◽  
Intimate Relationship ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Object Construction ◽  
Southern Min ◽  
Semantic Compositionality ◽  
Personal Behavior ◽  
Semantic Distinction ◽  
Tripartite Relationship ◽  
Taiwanese Southern Min

This paper examines the issues of idioms in verb-object constructions in Taiwanese Southern Min and Mandarin. The idioms in question fall into two categories: (1) idioms that express a personal behavior, and (2) idioms that show an interpersonal relationship. The second type can be further divided into two subtypes: (2a) cases where only two parties are involved, and (2b) cases that feature a tripartite relationship. Such a semantic distinction carries its syntactic consequences. There is also a fine-grained distinction among idioms in terms of degree of semantic compositionality: (1) idioms that are characterized by an absolute non-compositionality, and (2) idioms in which the meanings of some constituents are calculatable in terms of the mechanism of metaphor. Some idioms of the former type can be analyed vis-a-vis the pivot based upon homophony. Referntiality of the object in the verb-object construction has an intimate relationship with its syntactic flexibility.

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