Restructuring Taiwan Southern Min ū “HAVE” in Adjectival Predicate Constructions ()
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.
Share and Cite:
Zheng, Z. (2014) Restructuring Taiwan Southern Min
ū “HAVE” in Adjectival Predicate Constructions.
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
4, 687-700. doi:
10.4236/ojml.2014.45059.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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