Clausal Modifiers in Amis

Abstract

本文從Role and Reference Grammar（簡稱RRG，參見Van Valin and LaPolla 1997）的角度，分析阿美語中包含功能上類似所謂屬性形容詞或形容詞子句的名詞片語。本文指出這兩種修飾語均為子句的結構（文中稱為子句修飾語），亦即屬性形容詞也是一種形容詞子句。這樣的分析乃是基於這兩種修飾語均可被准情態後綴-ay所附著，而准情態詞一般所修飾的範圍為整個子句。雖然在結構上有類似之處，意思上接近屬性形容詞的子句修飾語比意思上接近形容詞子句的子句修飾語受到更多的詞序限制。本文因此為這兩種子句修飾語提出不同的句法分析與投設。

This paper investigates Amis noun phrases that contain a modifying structure functionally equivalent to the so-called attributive adjectives and relative clauses within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG, Van Valin and LaPolla 1997). It is found that these two types of modifier are both coded by a clausal structure, termed as “clausal modifiers” in the discussion. The clausal status of these modifiers is indicated by their co-occurrence with an epistemic suffix -ay designating factuality, which is a type of clausal operator according to RRG. In spite of the structural similarities, clausal modifiers with an adjectival interpretation are subject to more word order restrictions than clausal modifiers rendered like canonical relative clauses (RCs) in English. Syntactic projections based on the RRG framework are laid out for the two types of clausal modifiers (i.e. adjective-like and RC-like clausal modifiers) in this paper.