基數謂語與台灣南島語言類型特徵

CARDINAL PREDICATION AND THE TYPOLOGY OF FORMOSAN LANGUAGES

在華語和英語，基數通常充當修飾語，然而，在台灣南島語言裡，基數卻通常出現為主要謂語，所以，「他有兩個小孩」在台灣南島語言通常就說成是「他的小孩（有）兩個」。這種基數謂語的現象也擴及到與基數相關的數量形容詞、數量疑問詞，甚至是否定數量詞。本文的目的有二：一方面針對此一過去文獻較少觸及的課題提供完整語言事實之描述，並且明確指出其使用限制；另一方面，也清楚把基數、數量形容詞、數量疑問詞、否定數量詞等可充當謂語的歸類為弱數量詞，並將台灣南島語言界定為弱數量詞謂語的語言，有別於華語和英語。本文的研究成果在語言實證、語言類型和語言理論上皆有重大的意義。

In English and Chinese, cardinal numerals such as ‘two’ can occur either as a modifier or as a predicate, with the latter use less common. In contrast, in Formosan languages, cardinal numerals typically serve as a predicate, not as a modifier. This surprising predicative requirement carries over to the quantity words related to cardinal numerals, including adjectives of quantity, interrogative quantity words, and negative quantity words. The goals of this article are two-fold. On the one hand, I give a comprehensive description of this less studied phenomenon, covering how this is attested and how it is not attested across Formosan languages. On the other hand, based on the well-attested strong-weak nominal distinction (Milsark 1977; Barwise and Cooper 1981; Heim 1987; Partee 1988, among many others), I classify those which typically function as a predicate in Formosan languages as weak quantifiers and identify Formosan languages as a language type of Weak Quantifier as Predicate Language (WQAPL), as opposed to English and Chinese. The findings from this study are expected to shed new lights on linguistic typology and theory of quantifiers/determiners.