• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.163-172
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• 2007

This paper examines some syntactic and semantic properties of the negative construction V+bo NP (VbN) in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM). It finds out that there are ambiguities between an episode reading and a generic reading in VbN construction which require further investigations and explanations. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to account for the ambiguities lying in the negative VbN construction.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
• /
• 2007.11a
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• pp.522-530
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• 2007

This article investigates the use of distal demonstrative Hitlo in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM) from a discourse-pragmatic perspective. The analysis is based on a 5-hour corpus of spoken data, including daily conversations, radio interviews, TV drama series, and some random examples. A total of 172 tokens of Hitlos are identified in the data. They can be divided into six categories according to their functions: firstly, exophoric usage, those Hitlos which refer to an object non-linguistically which can be identified in the immediate situation; secondly, endophoric usage, those which refer to an element textually; thirdly, referent introducing function, those which can be used to introduce a new but identifiable referent into the conversation (the referent usually has topical importance); fourthly, hedging expression, those which serve as a marker of imprecision; fifthly, a condition introducing marker, those which function as an indicator of the coming of a conditional sentence; finally, pause fillers, those which help speakers to manage speech turn or indicate the mental states In addition, an interactive function which Hitlo is found to serve will be discussed. Moreover, a grammaticalizational process involving semantic bleaching which Hitlo is probably undergoing is revealed in general. Finally, a filled demonstrative principle, stating that it may be a universal phenomenon to use demonstratives as filled pause will be proposed.