Browsing by Author "Jui-chuan Yeh"

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    Durative Complements in the Hakka Verb Copying Construction
    (英語學系, 2011-07-??) 葉瑞娟; Jui-chuan Yeh
    This paper provides an analysis of the ambiguous interpretations of the durative complements in the Hakka verb copying construction, schematically represented as“NP1 V-NP2 V C3”, in terms of the constructional approach and the cognitive approach. This study has the following proposals. First, the interpretation of the durative complement hinges crucially on the aspectual properties of the V-NP2 unit. Second, contrary to what is generally assumed, a verb copying sentence may be ambiguous between the continuity reading and the repetition reading and can be viewed as a case of constructional polysemy. Third, such ambiguities arise due to the interaction between the episodic/generic duality of the V-NP2 unit and the duration/lapse of time duality of the durative complement and are a natural consequence of the gestalt effect. Finally, the varying degrees of markedness of such a sentence, influenced by world knowledge, depend mainly on the compatibility of the V-NP2 unit and the durative complement.