片浡慭楴惯楬慺楴汤椠煓汵烦慴慹-ConcentricStudiesin.doc

Grammaticalization in Squliq Atayal＊ Lillian M. Huang Shih Chien University Atayal is an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan. This paper presents a descriptive study of the grammaticalization in Squliq Atayal, one of the two major dialects of the language. Several examples of grammaticalization in the named dialect are examined, including (i) verbs like musa’/mosa’, wal/wayal, nyux/cyux being grammaticalized into auxiliaries designating tense/aspect/mood; (ii) the locative focus (LF) form of the verb malax as used in negative and/or imperative constructions, i.e. laxi, serving as a negator; (iii) the ‘saying’ verb mha being treated as a complementizer and an evidential marker; (iv) the 3rd person singular pronoun hiya’ serving as an emphatic marker; and (v) the interrogative word nanu’ functioning as a pause filler. The original meanings of the above-mentioned words are relatively concrete, and the new meanings are more abstract and have more grammatical functions. It is also noticed that these words are all polysemous; that is, their original meanings/functions co-exist with later developed ones. Key words: Atayal, Austronesian, auxiliary, complementizer, emphatic 1. Introduction Grammaticalization has recently attracted much interest and attention. It generally refers to a linguistic process ‘whereby lexical items and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions, and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions…’ (Hopper Traugott 1993:253). The phenomenon of grammaticalization appears to be rather universal; a wide number of languages around the world illustrate examples of grammaticalization. For instance, in Mandarin Chinese, as Yang Wang (1992) states, the locative verb za(i ‘be at’ and the motion verb guo( ‘cross; pass’ may serve as aspectual markers as well as foreground-background indicators; that is, in addition to serving as verbs, za(i may serve as an on-going aspect marker an