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- Volume 48, Issue 2, 2022
Concentric - Volume 48, Issue 2, 2022
Volume 48, Issue 2, 2022
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A morphosyntactic and morphosemantic analysis of the Malay fear lexeme
Author(s): Siaw-Fong Chung (鍾曉芳)pp.: 147–173 (27)More LessAbstractFor Malay, when no contextual clues are given, a lexical form can be confusing because sometimes it can have more than one meaning. We postulated that most confusing meanings can be disambiguated through observing their morphosyntactic and morphosemantic structures. We used corpus data and analyzed the possible features of takut ‘fear’ that can help decide which form of takut in Malay to choose. If a default lexical verb meaning is intended (i.e., the original meaning), the feature [Experiencer-(Stimulus)] is needed and the takut(v) form is used. If a causative meaning is intended, the men-(t)akut-kan form is used. If a passive meaning is intended, there are some possibilities, as the choice could depend on the syntax of the passive form, such as whether the [Experiencer] is a first- or second-person pronoun (e.g., benda itu saya takut-i ‘the thing feared by me’) or other pronouns (e.g., benda itu paling di-takut-i oleh-nya ‘that thing feared most by him/her’) or whether an adversative meaning is intended ([ke- -an] form). We propose that both the morphosyntactic and morphosemantic structures of takut need to be considered to better understand the use of the different meanings of Malay derived and inflected forms.
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Universality? Cross-linguistic influence?
Author(s): Chi-ting Alvan Chung (鍾季廷) and Chun-yin Doris Chen (陳純音)pp.: 174–211 (38)More LessAbstractThe present study investigated the use of apology response (AR) strategies by L1-Chinese L2-English learners and L1-English L2-Chinese learners from a cross-linguistic perspective. A total of 18 Taiwanese college students who were learning English as a foreign language and 18 foreigners in Taiwan who were learning Chinese as a second language were recruited to complete an oral discourse completion task both in Chinese and English. The major findings are as follows: First, the two groups showed no significant difference in their choice of AR strategies, both favoring Acceptance and Minimization, two face-preserving types, to show politeness. Second, cross-linguistic influence was found to affect our participants’ AR performances. Both positive and negative influences occurred. Finally, regarding the use of multiple strategies, both groups of participants tended to combine Acceptance with other strategies to maintain social relationships. The results showed both language universal and language-specific features in the AR realizations in Chinese and English. The dominant use of positive response strategies, namely Acceptance and Minimization, highlights the profound influence of politeness principles.
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democracy in Taiwanese presidential inaugural addresses
Author(s): Hsiao-Ling Hsu (許筱翎), Huei-ling Lai (賴惠玲) and Jyi-Shane Liu (劉吉軒)pp.: 212–248 (37)More LessAbstractThis study explored metaphorical expressions related to democracy in 15 Taiwanese presidential inaugural addresses. The source domain concepts mapped to understand democracy were examined and the relationship between these metaphorical expressions and ideologies was teased out by employing the discourse-historical approach. Our analysis demonstrates that various source domain concepts were utilized to discuss democracy, and most newly-emerged types occurred after the success of the first direct presidential election in 1996. A more detailed analysis of the source domain elements showed that different scenarios were highlighted, reflecting specific ideologies embedded along with the social, historical and political situation.
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Expressing the existence of an event with ‘you (to have) + VP’ in Taiwan Mandarin
Author(s): Aymeric Collart (理克) and Hung-Kuan Su (蘇洪寬)pp.: 249–284 (36)More LessAbstractThe verb you ‘to have’ in standard Mandarin is typically followed by a noun. You can also take a VP as its complement (‘you + VP’) in several varieties of Mandarin. However, the function associated with it is still under debate: ‘you + VP’ has been analyzed as expressing past tense, perfective aspect, perfect aspect, or realis mood. This paper assesses these analyses by conducting a corpus-based investigation of ‘you + VP’ on the PTT platform and by looking at different morphosyntactic environments in which it is used. The data favor analyzing ‘you + VP’ as expressing an assertive modality meaning (the situation is considered true in the real world by the speaker). This analysis corroborates with the high frequency of ‘you + VP’ in assertive environments (e.g., after factual verbs in embedded clauses, with attitudinal adverbs of truth value, among others). Conversely, taking ‘you + VP’ as indicating past tense or perfective aspect is challenged by the present data, and the perfect aspect analysis cannot explain all the environments in which ‘you + VP’ is used. This paper provides new insights regarding the morphosyntactic use of ‘you + VP’ and sheds light on the meaning this construction encodes.
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Degree adverbs in spoken Mandarin
Author(s): Pei-Wen Huang (黃姵文) and Alvin Cheng-Hsien Chen (陳正賢)pp.: 285–322 (38)More LessAbstractManaging near-synonymous morphosyntactic constructions in language is often at the core of a speaker’s grammatical competence. This study investigates the usage patterns of four near-synonymous degree adverb constructions (i.e., hěn, tài, mán, and chāo) in the Taiwan Mandarin Corpus in TalkBank. After retrieving the concordance lines of these four constructions from the corpus, we manually annotated their co-occurring linguistic patterns/structures at multiple linguistic levels. In particular, we utilized a corpus-based behavioral profile approach to determine the interrelationship of the four constructions based on their distributional patterns and identified their distinctive behavioral patterns, producing a comprehensive delineation of their functional differences. Our analysis suggests that these four constructions fall into two super-clusters, i.e., chāo-mán and tài-hěn. Chāo and mán differ mainly in the pragmatic sentiments of their associated predicates, their co-occurrences with the nominalization structure, and their productivity in lexicalization. Tài and hěn differ mainly in their co-occurrences with the final particle -le, the semantic and pragmatic functions of their associated predicates, and the semantics of their associated head nouns. We have also connected these corpus-based distributional patterns to previous research findings, demonstrating the effectiveness and applicability of the behavioral profile approach for the analysis of near-synonymous morphosyntactic alternations in language.
Most Read This Month

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Degree adverbs in spoken Mandarin
Author(s): Pei-Wen Huang (黃姵文) and Alvin Cheng-Hsien Chen (陳正賢)
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Conceptualization of containment in Chinese
Author(s): Hung-Kuan Su (蘇洪寬) and Alvin Cheng-Hsien Chen (陳正賢)
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Indirect tone-prominence interaction in Kunming tone sandhi
Author(s): Hui-shan Lin (林蕙珊)
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Lagi in Standard Malaysian Malay
Author(s): Siaw-Fong Chung (鍾曉芳)
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Identity construction in advertising
Author(s): Korapat Pruekchaikul (格拉帕・普瑞克采古)
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On locative alternation verbs in Mandarin Chinese
Author(s): Pei-Jung Kuo (郭珮蓉)
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