Journal directory listing - Volume 31-41 (1986-1996) - Volume 41 (1996)

Interrogative Constructions in Mayrinax Atayal Author: Lillian M. Huang(Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University)

Abstract:

The present paper attempts to investigate the interrogative constructions in Atayal, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan which consists of two major subgroups: Squliq and Culi. The dialectal variant examined here is that of Mayrinax, a Culi dialect spoken in Chinshui Village, Taian Hsiang, Miaoli Prefecture. In Mayrinax, the yes-no questions are formed with their corresponding statements and the question parti-cle quw, without changing the intonation pattern. The alternative questions are charac-terized by the presence of both the question particle quw and the Topic marker Ya. Yet the structures of alternative questions vary; they can either be nominal/equational or verbal/non-equational sentences. As for special questions (or so-called wh-questions) in Mayrinax Atayal, there are two kinds of construction, namely, nominal/equational and verbal/non-equational. Concerning the wh-words appearing hi special questions, they can be categorized into three types: (i) interrogative nouns like ima 'who', nanuwan/nanu 'what', ainu 'which' and humicuwa 'what kind' (i.e. wh-words manifesting participants and functioning as pronouns/nouns which can be preceded by case markers, and thus can be further catergorized into common and per-sonal proper nouns); (ii) interrogative verbs like humicuwa 'how', micuwa 'why', hanu an 'why' and piya 'how many; how much' (i.e. wh-words functioning as verbs which can be affixed with focus and/or tense/aspect markers, or partially reduplicated); and (iii) interrogative adverbs like humicuwa 'when', kanuwan 'when', makapia 'how often' and inu 'where' (i.e. wh-words designating adjuncts and functioning as ad-verbs).

Keywords:Austronesian, Atayal, Mayrinax, interrogative, yes-no, alternative, information

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