鄒語與賽德克語焦點系統的語用研究

The Pragmatics of Focus in Tsou and Seediq

台灣南島語言的焦點系統其語用現象如何表現？與語法關係又是如何？跟其他南島語有何異同？這些一直是個有趣但未真正受到重視的議題。本文利用言談分析理論及實際的口語語料研究台灣南島語中分屬兩個不同語支的鄒語及賽德克語的焦點語用現象，指出這兩種語言之焦點系統在語用層面上的表現大異其趣。鄒語焦點系統的語用表現相當類似熟知的菲律賓語言，但賽德克語的焦點語用現象與這些語言有頗大的出入，尤其是表現於會話語料中者。細言之，賽德克語中主事焦點句與非主事焦點句在許多語用方面（諸如及物性、前後景、指涉距離等）幾乎不見有任何顯著上的不同。而鄒語的主事焦點句與非主事焦點句則在上述幾個語用方面都有顯著的差異。這些研究結果說明焦點系統在語用層次上的複雜性。有些南島語的焦點系統已經流失（如印尼的Sasak語或台灣的魯凱語）。其流失的歷程如何是另一個有趣的研究題目。

The discourse pragmatics of the focus systems of Seediq and Tsou, two Formosan languages spoken in the central highlands of Taiwan, which belong to two different primary branches of the Austronesian family, are investigated within the framework of quantitative discourse analysis. It is shown that although both Tsou and Seediq share a Philippine-style focus system, the ways their respective focus systems are deployed in discourse contexts are radically different. While the pragmatics of the focus system in Tsou behaves much more like what is known about Tagalog and other languages of the Philippines, the discourse properties of focus in Seediq show considerable difference, with the conversational data in particular showing even greater divergence from the ‘expected’ behavior. Specifically, it is shown that no pragmatic difference appears to underlie the choice between agent focus and non-agent focus clauses in the language. Neither discourse transitivity nor grounding can be shown to be a significant determinant for the choice of focus. Furthermore, the deployment of NAF in Seediq correlates with neither referential distance nor topic persistence. These and other results in the literature suggest that the focus systems in Western Austronesian languages may be seen to form a continuum and that the notion of focus contains no category-wide properties and must be best understood as a term with family resemblance properties. Finally, a plausible scenario of the diachronic development from a transitivity-dominated language like Tsou or Tagalog to a thematicity-dominated language like Modern Malay or Sasak is suggested.