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Conjunctive reduction and its origin: a comparative study of Tsou, Amis, and Squliq Atayal.(Report)
- Article from:
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Oceanic Linguistics
- Article date:
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December 1, 2007
- Author:
- Tsai, Wei-tien Dylan
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Copyright informationCOPYRIGHT 2007 University of Hawaii Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This paper discusses the issue of how coordinate structures evolve into subordinate structures in both syntactic and semantic terms. I call this type of process "conjunctive reduction." It is well established in the literature on Chinese historical syntax that some modifier-head and verb-complement compounds actually derive from coordinate structures in Ancient Chinese. Based on this finding, I suggest that a similar process is also at work in Formosan languages, but on a quite different scale. That is, while Chinese encodes conjunctive reduction in compounding morphology, the same process involves full-fledged syntactic operations in Formosan languages. I propose that there ...