黔東苗語ab和ghab的功能

The Functions of Proclitic Ab and Ghab in Hmub

本文試圖對黔東苗語名詞或名詞短語的前附著詞ab和ghab進行詳細的描寫。Ab附著於人名、親屬稱謂和形容詞的前面，是一個專司於人的有定標記。與ghab結合的結構展現一系列相互關聯的語義相似特徵：空間有定指、有語義描述內涵的地名（有定指）、實體的空間部位劃分、根據事物特性進行的抽象分類和數量的有界化。附加ghab的名詞和非附加ghab的名詞具有區別：前者的所指往往是整體的一個部份，隱含一種部份－－整體的語義關係；後者的所指沒有必要是整體的一個部份。帶ghab的名詞往往是有指稱的，不帶ghab的名詞則是無指稱的，類似英語短語go to the school（去學校）／the hospital（去醫院）和go to school（上學）／ hospital（去看病）之區別。

This paper aims to present a syntactic description for two cognate proclitics ab and ghab in Hmub, a Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao) language spoken in Southeast Guizhou of China. These two proclitics exhibit striking syntactic behaviors and semantic properties. Ab precedes an animate (human) nominal such as a personal name, a kinship term, an adjective or an adjective phrase, and encodes definiteness; ghab, on the other hand, exhibits a variety of functions-from spatial definiteness to relative positioning, subcategory marking to numeral partitive expression. Some host-clitic-combined groups have undergone a process of lexicalization. Hmub shows a distinction between a ghab-nominal and a common nominal. The former refers to an entity which is a part of a whole, but the latter does not. A ghab-noun is referential while a bare noun is non-referential.