Title

Passives and Causatives in a Specific Taiwanese Construction

Author

Lee, Hui-chi  

Genre

Article  

Pages

169-189  

Download

PDF

Language

English  

Key words

hoo ... ka construction, passive, causative, transitivity, Taiwan Southern Min  

Abstract

        The present study explores the syntactic and semantic properties of the construction featuring the hoo ... ka configuration. The two words, hoo and ka, can perform multiple functions, and their interactions have various interpretations. The study collected data from Taiwanese corpora and observed that the hoo ... ka sentences can express passives and causatives. The word hoo provides the passive and causative attributes, while the word ka contributes to the transitivity. The repetition of the object argument and the occurrence of the resultative complement are assumed to be mechanisms to facilitate the transitivity of the hoo ... ka sentences.