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- Volume 49, Issue 2, 2023
Concentric - Volume 49, Issue 2, 2023
Volume 49, Issue 2, 2023
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Loanword adaptation of Japanese consonants in Kavalan
Author(s): Hui-shan Lin (林蕙珊)pp.: 139–174 (36)More LessAbstractThis paper is a first attempt to investigate loanword adaptation of Japanese consonants in Kavalan. Based on first hand data, the paper shows that when a Japanese consonant is adapted as the closest Kavalan consonant, the manner features are of higher phonological weight and are more faithfully retained than the place and voicing features. It is shown that for adaptations involving a change in the place of articulation, the change is generally minimal and confined within the same major place feature. This is except for the [ɸ] > [h] and the [ç] > [h] mappings which involve a change from [Lab] and [Cor] to [Phar]. It is argued that although the [ɸ] > [h] and the [ç] > [h] mappings may seem to suggest that loanword adaptation in Kavalan is based on phoneme-to-phoneme mappings, the adaptations of Japanese affricates and the word-medial nasal codas suggest otherwise; the change is in fact driven by place markedness. Together with the fact that native Kavalan phonotactics also plays a role in shaping the non-native sounds perceived, this paper argues that Kavalan loanword adaptation is best accounted for by a loanword theory which takes into account both perception and phonology.
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A restructuring analysis of the non‑inferential evidential verb han in Siwkolan Amis
Author(s): Wei-Cherng Sam Jheng (鄭偉成)pp.: 175–223 (49)More LessAbstractThis work aims to investigate the morphosyntactic properties of han in Siwkolan Amis and to defend a lexical split of han, one being a lexical category with argument structure and the other a functional category merging to Voice0. I argue that the functional han cannot be analyzed as a quotative verb or a pv-inflected verb as proposed in the literature, due to novel findings that han (a) is permitted in patient, instrumental and locative voice constructions, (b) represses the presence of voice affixes, (c) must stand immediately adjacent to the lexical verb and (d) encodes the non-inferential evidentiality. I follow Cinque’s (2004) functional approach to restructuring predicates by treating han as a functional category of Voice0 and Shih & Lin’s (2011) voice Agree system where voice is a reflex of thematic relations. This analysis fares well with Wu’s (2006, 2007) proposed system of undergoer voice in Amis which subsumes patient, instrument and locative voice in general. Moreover, the [iθ] feature on Voice0 is spelt out as han surfacing as a bound affix attached to the raised lexical verb from v0. Several issues involved in dealing with the Amis voice system and implications for the evidential systems in Formosan languages are also discussed.
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Directional verb constructions in Mandarin
Author(s): Chien-hung Lin (林建宏) and Jung-hsing Chang (張榮興)pp.: 224–260 (37)More LessAbstractIn modern Chinese, a Directional Verb Construction (DVC) may contain either two or three verbs. DVCs with two verbs can be represented in three different ways, and DVCs with three verbs can be represented in four different ways. The different positions of the shared internal noun phrase (NP) argument result in divergent word orders of DVCs. Based on the Corpus of the United Daily News, this study discusses the syntax-pragmatic interface in Chinese DVCs within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) with the intention of ascertaining how NP arguments are linked to syntax in DVCs, while at the same time accounting for what pragmatic factors play a role in determining constructional schemas for argument linking. The results show that different patterns of DVCs have different focus domains, and that the differential activation state of the internal NP argument plays an essential role in determining word order. Considering the correlation between activation state and focus domain, a highly activated internal NP tends to be linked to the position following the word bǎ or immediately following V1. In contrast, a least activated NP tends to be linked to the position immediately following V2 or V3.
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On the general classifiers ge and zàg in Hakka
Author(s): Han-Chun Huang (黃漢君)pp.: 261–294 (34)More LessAbstractThis paper investigates the distribution and properties of the Hakka general classifiers ge and zàg. We focus on the [determiner/numeral + classifier + noun] construction where we observe the relations between the general classifiers and their following nouns, chosen based on their frequency in this construction. We adopt a corpus-based collostructional analysis which calculates the collocational strength values of ge and zàg with following nouns. A Hakka corpus was compiled for the study. The three-way distinction in the collostructional analysis (attractive, neutral, and repulsive) is directly mapped to acceptability of various degrees. The results show that ge is highly correlated with human-denoting nouns, whereas zàg is highly correlated with animal-denoting nouns. Nouns denoting abstract entities or concrete objects without physical properties like size or shape usually lack specific classifiers, and both ge and zàg can collocate with them, albeit with varying degrees of preference. We argue that both ge and zàg are general classifiers because both are more frequently used than specific classifiers and both exhibit disjointed semantic distribution and allow abstract nouns. While they show preferences for different nouns, requirements to qualify as general classifiers are equally met.
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Phylogenetic analyses for the origin of sortal classifiers in Mongolic, Tungusic, and Turkic languages
Author(s): Marc Allassonnière-Tang (唐威洋), Zhong-Liang Gao (高仲良), Shen-An Chen (陳甚安) and One-Soon Her (何萬順)pp.: 295–315 (21)More LessAbstractNumeral classifiers are one of the most common types of nominal classification systems. Their geographical distribution worldwide is concentrated in Asia, which infers a scheme of diffusion from a linguistic innovation. This study investigates the origin of classifier systems in the Mongolic, Tungusic, and Turkic languages in the Altaic region with a phylogenetic analysis based on data from 55 languages. The Single Origin Hypothesis suggests that Sinitic is the most probable original source of classifier systems found in Asia (Her & Li 2023). Under this hypothesis, classifiers are unlikely to be an indigenous feature of the Altaic region, and indeed their phylogenetic signal turns out to be weak. We also conduct a qualitative analysis on the classifier inventory of the studied languages to assess the robustness of phylogenetic methods. The results also indicate that classifiers are most likely a borrowed feature in the Mongolic, Tungusic, and Turkic languages.
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Factors affecting voice onset time in English stops
Author(s): Chun-yin Doris Chen (陳純音), Wei-yun Winona Liu (劉偉昀) and Tzu-Fen Nellie Yeh (葉慈芬)pp.: 316–349 (34)More LessAbstractThis study investigates the voice onset time (VOT) of L2 English stops produced by native speakers of Chinese at different L2 proficiency levels. Four factors were examined: English proficiency, gender, place of articulation, and vowel context. High and low achievers of English were recruited as the experimental groups and native speakers of English as the control group. Each group consisted of 16 participants, 8 males and 8 females. Each participant took part in a read-aloud task, in which the target words were presented in an embedded sentence.
The results showed that the effects of L2 proficiency were significant in that high achievers outperformed low achievers who were affected by L1 negative transfer more seriously when producing native-like English stops. Additionally, when producing English stops, velar stops had significantly greater VOT values than either bilabial or alveolar ones. However, no significant gender differences were found. Male and female participants produced similar VOT values in English stops. Last, the vowel context was also a significant factor. The VOT lengths differed according to the context of a following vowels. More specifically, the VOT of a stop is significantly longer when followed by a tense vowel.
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