英文摘要 |
Takivatan Bunun, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan, has a dedicated class of words expressing time, place, and manner. These words can occur in various positions in the clause, each of which is associated with a distinct grammatical behavior. In this article, I discuss positional and associated grammatical variation of the four roots that most commonly express temporal location in the Takivatan corpus: dip ‘then’, qabas ‘in former times’, laupa ‘now’, and haip ‘today’. I conclude that the positional variability of Takivatan time words is grammatically meaningful and not the result of random variation. Finally, I suggest that it can be best explained in terms of functional motivations and historical factors that are common to various Austronesian languages in Taiwan. |