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- Title
Durative Complements in the Hakka Verb Copying Construction.
- Authors
Jui-Chuan Yeh
- Abstract
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.
- Subjects
TAIWAN; VERBS; LINGUISTICS; HAKKA dialects; POLYSEMY; SENTENCES (Grammar); THEORY of knowledge; SEMANTICS; TAIWAN languages
- Publication
Concentric: Studies in Linguistics, 2011, Vol 37, Issue 2, p259
- ISSN
1810-7478
- Publication type
Article