TITLE:
Restructuring Taiwan Southern Min ū “HAVE” in Adjectival Predicate Constructions
AUTHORS:
Zhiren Zheng
KEYWORDS:
Taiwan Southern Min, Syntax, Dialect, Adjectival Predicate, Restriction, Degree Words
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.4 No.5,
December
18,
2014
ABSTRACT: It has been widely
discussed that Taiwan Southern Min ū “HAVE”
(hereafter TSM ū “HAVE”) allows adjectival
predicates as its complements, such as Kaka
ū suí “Kaka is beautiful”. Besides, TSM ū “HAVE” in this kind of construction is analysed as an emphatic-assertive
marker; however, there are quite few studies concerning whether it can select
any adjectival predicates as its complements or has any restrictions. I hence
investigate whether TSM ū “HAVE” has
any restrictions by five tests: (a) mono/disyllabic adjectives, (b)
reduplicated adjectives, (c) degree adverbs, (d) comparative morpheme khah “COMP/more”
and (e) measure phrases with adjective phrases. Finally, I claim that TSM ū “HAVE” cannot select closed-scale
adjectives, non-predicative adjectives and the reduplicated adjectives as its
complements. Also, TSM ū “HAVE” is
incompatible with degree words, which express the intensified readings, whereas
the comparative morpheme khah “COMP/more” can repair those ungrammatical
sentences by means of denoting a comparative reading. Finally, the adjectival
predicates can be modified by measure phrases like Mandarin Chinese. In
conclusion, TSM ū “HAVE” actually
cannot select any types of adjectives and it does have the restriction
incompatible with the intensified degree adverbs.