An Ergative View of Thao Syntax
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UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI" LIBRARY AN ERGATIVE VIEW OF THAO SYNTAX A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS MAY 2004 By Shan-Shan Wang Dissertation Committee: Lawrence A. Reid, Chairperson Byron W. Bender Robert A. Blust William D. O'Grady Chin-Tang Lo © Copyright 2004 by Shan-Shan Wang 111 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to acknowledge the unstinting assistance that I received from my Thao assistants during the fieldwork that I undertook for this dissertation. I was especially privileged to have worked with Mr. A-Song Shi, Mr. Chang-Feng Kao and Ms. Qiu-Xiang Mao-Liu, who were my primary Thao consultants. To them I offer my warmest thanks. The completion ofthis dissertation is due to the great generosity ofmany individuals. I wish to thank Prof. Lawrence Reid, my dissertation committee chair for first stimulating my interest in Formosan languages, and for teaching me how to go about the task of doing fieldwork. He has provided me with endless encouragement, emotional support, and wise guidance throughout the process ofdissertation writing. I feel that I have been greatly blessed for having him as my advisor, and for the hours we spent together, discussing the many analytical problems that needed to be resolved before the dissertation could be completed. His extensive detailed comments on earlier drafts ofthis dissertation were extremely insightful and beneficial to my later revisions. lowe a debt to my advisor that can never be properly expressed or repaid. I extend the deepest gratitude to my committee members. I have profited immensely from Prof. William O'Grady, from whom I acquired my understanding ofsyntax. He has shown me the way toward a better understanding ofthe subject by challenging my ideas, providing a wide range ofreferences, and kindly giving me valuable comments as well as suggestions that led to significant revisions. I thank Prof. Robert Blust for introducing the Thao language and Thao friends to me in Sun-Moon Lake, for generously providing his Thao data for me before it was published, and for being an excellent scholar as well as IV a teacher. I am equally thankful to Prof. Byron Bender, for his supporting and encouraging me to live up to my full potential. He is a superb role model and an amazing teacher. My sincere gratitude goes also to my outside committee member, Prof. Chin-Tang Lo, a wonderful and hard-working Chinese scholar, who has shared with me his confidence in my ability to complete this dissertation. Accordingly, to the chair and all members ofmy dissertation committee, I am deeply indebted for their invaluable scholarly direction through this final stage ofmy academic career at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. lowe a deep debt to Prof. Ann Peters. Her patience and warm encouragement, her willingness to spend hours going over my problems or discussing ideas, and her steadfast friendship has buoyed me on the sometimes turbulent waters ofgraduate student life. My special thanks go to Dr. Amy Schafer, for giving me invaluable comments and assistance in statistical analyses, which lead to significant revisions ofparts ofthe dissertation. Prof. Ying-Che Li ofthe East Asian Language and Literature Department at UH also deserves my heartfelt thanks for his kind attention and continuing encouragement throughout my graduate student days. My sincere gratitude also goes to Dr. Elizabeth Zeitoun at Academic Sinica in Taiwan for her scholarly sharing, friendship and encouragement in the past. The friendship and encouragement ofthe UHM linguistics graduate students kept me going and made life fun. I especially owe a deep debt to Dr. Hsiu-chuan Liao, for her willingness to spend many hours discussing my questions, giving perceptive and useful comments on my earlier drafts, and mentally supporting me through to the completion of v the dissertation. My special thanks also go to my fellow graduate students in linguistics, Dr. Te-Fang Hua, Hui-Hua Hwang, Dr. Derek Chang ofthe National Chung-Cheng University, Dr. Soo-Ok Kwan, Cathy Kawahata, Dr. Min Sun Song, Dr. Moriyo Shimabukoro ofthe University ofthe Ryukyus, and Dr. Sarka Stivarova, who were always giving me encouragement throughout the various stages ofthis dissertation research, and making my graduate student life unforgettable. They are special friends and companions in linguistics and in real life. My special thanks go to Wendy Onishi, the retired former secretary ofthe Department ofLinguistics, and Jennifer Kanda, the present secretary, and to Caroline Paet, now secretary at the Department ofSecond Language Studies, for their professional assistance on administration issues. For the following Chinese friends, words ofthanks are never enough. In their own generous ways through the years, Hu Che, Shu-Ching Liang, Chen-Ling Chou, Pei-Ru Chen, Jing-Min Qiu, and Susan Wu in Honolulu have been unfailing helping hands during times oftrouble. Without their kind help, the completion ofmy Ph.D. program at UH might have remained a dream. My deepest thanks go to the Wang family, my father, my mother, and my brothers for having provided endless mental support and love for me. Finally, to Alex Chu and Shin-Vi, my husband and my son, to whom this dissertation is dedicated, I give my most sincere gratitude for their endless love, patience, support and understanding while I have been painstakingly trying to reach the finish line. VI Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to various unnamed individuals who have helped me toward the completion ofthis dissertation but whose help has been just as important as the contributions ofthe others mentioned above. Vll ABSTRACT Previous works on Thao syntax, whether descriptive or theoretical, recognized the fundamental distinction drawn by Tsuchida (1976) between actor-focus (AF: -um-/m verbs) and non-actor focus (NAF: -in/-an verbs, i.e., patient-focus, goal-focus, instrument-focus, etc.) verbs. However, they failed to recognize that the distinction between AF and NAF is actually one oftransitivity: NAF verbs are syntactically transitive and AF verbs are syntactically intransitive. As a result, Thao has been analyzed as an accusative or split-ergative language. This study considers the notion oftransitivity to be crucial to the determination ofthe actancy system ofthe language. Transitivity is considered to be a combination ofthe morphological, semantic and syntactic properties that a clause exhibits. This dissertation demonstrates that although there are two distinct dyadic clause patterns in Thao, only one ofthem (i.e., the major class of-in/-an verbs) is a canonical transitive construction and the other is an extended intransitive construction (i.e., m- verbs). Consequently, Thao turns out to be neither accusative, nor split-ergative, but exhibits a pure ergative system. The ergativity ofThao is manifested in its grammatical relation coding strategies such as word order and cross-referencing system, as well as in syntactic phenomena with respect to relativization, quantifier association, topicalization, nominalization, clefting, and coordination. A sketch ofThao grammar is also provided in this study. It includes predicational constructions, word order, and the pronominal system ofThao. The study suggests that a transitive verb may carry actor agreement forms, namely, the first and second person singular -k and -nu, the remnants ofergative clitic pronouns that probably existed in the Vlll prehistory ofthe language. In addition, different types ofconstructions are also examined such as dynamic agentless intransitives, imperative, existential, possessive, negative, causative constructions, and wh-questions, with attention also being paid to some special classes ofverbs. Finally the structure ofnoun phrases is looked into. The influence from Taiwanese appears to be obvious, particularly with reference to the neutralization ofthe distinction between the marking ofrelative clauses and genitive/possessive constructions. IX TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iv Abstract viii List ofTables xv List ofFigures xvii List ofAbbreviations xx Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1.1 General Background ; 1 1.2 Linguistic Studies ofThao 1 1.2.1 The Linguistic Position ofThao 2 1.2.1.1 The traditional period 2 1.2.1.2 The modem period 3 1.2.1.2.1 Li's early classification ofThao 3 1.2.1.2.2 Blust's classification ofThao 4 1.2.1.2.3 Li's revision ofthe classification ofThao 8 1.2.2 Literature Review 10 1.2.2.1 Pioneering work 10 1.2.2.2 Phonological and/or morphological studies 11 1.2.2.3 Syntactic studies 13 1.2.2.4 Lexicography 14 1.2.2.5 Educational materials 14 1.3 Goal ofthe Dissertation 14 1.4 Data Sources and Language Consultants 16 1.5 Thao Phoneme Inventory and Orthography 16 1.6 Outline ofthis Dissertation 18 Chapter 2: Transitivity and Actancy Structure 19 2.1 Introduction 19 2.2 Transitivity 19 2.2.1 Theoretical Orientation 20 2.2.2 Determination ofTransitivity 24 2.2.2.1 Morphological transitivity 25 2.2.2.2 Semantic transitivity 31 2.2.2.3 Syntactic transitivity 38 2.2.2.4 Discourse grounding transitivity 46 2.2.2.5 Textual frequency tests 50 2.2.2.6 Summary 52 2.3 Actancy Structure 53 2.3.1 Accusative vs. Ergative Actancy Structure 54 2.3.2 Split Actancy Structure 60 2.3.3 Syntactic Accusativity/Ergativity 70 2.3.3.1 "Morphologically ergative" languages 71 2.3.3.2 "Syntactically ergative" languages 73 x 2.3.4 Active Actancy Structure 87 2.3.5 Three-way Actancy Structure 93 2.3.6 Summary 94 Chapter 3: Transitivity in Thao 96 3.1 Introduction 96 3.2 Thao Verbal Clause Patterns 97 3.2.1 Verb Morphology and "Focus" 97 3.2.2 Thao Alternative Word Orders 100 3.3 Three Possible Analyses ofThao Transitivity 110 3.4 An Evaluation ofthe Passive and Split-Ergative Analyses 113 3.4.1 Fundamental Problems ofPrevious Analyses 114 3.4.2 An Evaluation ofthe Passive Analysis 118 3.4.2.1 Problem 1: The grammatical status ofsa and tu 118 3.4.2.2 Problem 2: Unanswered questions ofa syntactic nature 121 3.4.2.3 Problem 3: The passive analysis and verbal agreement.