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Article published In: Language and Linguistics
Vol. 19:2 (2018) ► pp.209–230

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Benefactive and malefactive constructions in Taiwan Southern Min

 | National Chung Cheng University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

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Published online: 15 April 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00008.lin
Abstract
This paper aims to investigate both Fagerli, Ole Torfinn. 2001. Malefactive by means of GIVE . In Simonsen, Hanne Gram & Endresen, Rolf Theil (eds.), A cognitive approach to the verb: Morphological and constructional perspectives (Cognitive Linguistics Research 16), 203–222. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar proposal that in serializing languages benefactive and malefactive constructions often involve the morpheme denoting ‘give’, and Radetzky, Paula & Smith, Tomoko Yamashita. 2010. An areal and cross-linguistic study of benefactive and malefactive constructions. In Zúñiga, Fernando & Kittilä, Seppo (eds.), Benefactives and malefactives: Typological perspectives and case studies (Typological Studies in Language 92), 97–120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar proposal that East and South Asian languages often involve different morphemes or structures in expressing benefaction or malefaction. Checking the proposals against benefactive and malefactive constructions in Taiwan Southern Min (TSM) which involve optional benefactee and malefactee, this paper shows that both proposals find only partial support from TSM data. TSM uses the morpheme denoting ‘give’, i.e. hoo, in the malefactive construction involving optional malefactee, but not the benefactive construction involving optional benefactee, which involves the use of ka. Moreover, ka can also be used for introducing the malefactive. Even though the hoo malefactive construction and the ka benefactive construction have different structures, the constructions involving ka, no matter whether denoting benefaction or malefaction, have the same syntactic structure.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Semantics of benefactive/malefactive
      • 2.1.1Types of benefactive
      • 2.1.2Types of malefactive
    • 2.2Benefactive/malefactive morphemes/constructions
      • 2.2.1Languages of Europe
      • 2.2.2Languages of Asia
    • 2.3On hoo
    • 2.4On ka
  • 3.Benefactive constructions in Taiwan Southern Min
  • 4.Malefactive constructions in Taiwan Southern Min
  • 5.The proposal
    • 5.1Malefactive
      • 5.1.1Malefactive ka-construction
      • 5.1.2Malefactive hoo-construction
    • 5.2Benefactive ka-construction
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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