| Summary: | 博士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語研究所 === 91 === This dissertation seeks to explore the interaction between syntax and semantics through a study of the relationship between form and meaning (including grammatical meaning) exhibited by Saisiyat verbs. Under the framework of cognitive-functional grammar adopted in this dissertation, efforts are made to trace the relationship between multiple meanings conveyed by one form as well as to find out the subtle difference for one meaning expressed in different forms.
First, forms and meanings of focus affixes in Saisiyat are examined. An asymmetry in form-meaning mismatch between AF and NAF constructions is observed. The mismatch manifested in AF constructions belongs to one function/meaning in different forms — at least four AF prefixes are found to serve the function of marking the Agent/Actor as the subject, and it is argued that they imply some differences pertaining to transitivity. In NAF constructions, I/BF marks a variety of thematic roles as the subject. These thematic roles are shown to be cognitive contiguous and resulted from semantic extensions.
Then, form-meaning mismatches exhibited in reduplication, morphological causativization and reciprocality are discussed. It is found that multiple meanings/functions expressed by the same reduplication pattern can be related in some way. For example, the two functions of Ca- reduplication — Ca- verb forms and Ca- instrumental nouns, which are regarded as unrelated (Blust 1998), are shown to bear connection of some sort. For morphological causativization and reciprocality, which manifest the mismatch of one meaning/function in different forms, it is found that different forms appear in different contexts and imply subtle differences.
Finally, the relationship between focus and nominalization and the question on the viability of noun-verb distinction in Saisiyat are discussed. At first glance, Saisiyat appears to have a marker ka- for nominalization. However, taking into consideration of the whole verbal paradigm in Saisiyat, we find that lexical nominalizations are identical in form to the future verb forms. The same form is also found to function in purpose clauses (a kind of syntactic nominalization). In other words, the future verb form, syntactic nominalization and lexical nominalization are morphologically identical. A grammaticalization from verb forms to syntactic nominalization to lexicalization is proposed to account for the morphological identity of the three. Besides, it is argued that ka- is a functional equivalent of Ca- in other Formosan languages, whose function of indicating purpose has been grammaticalized and therefore its use can be extended to other focus constructions.
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