英文摘要 |
Integrating perspectives of grammaticalization and subjectification, this study investigates the development of the modal meaning '(it's) possible that...' from the psych verb meaning or ”pa3”怕 'to fear, to be afraid of' in Taiwanese Hakka, The syntactic and semantic distribution and collocational patterns of ”pa3” construction are examined based on its actual usage drawn from Hakka Corpus. Grammaticalization processes are demonstrated to show its development from a psych verb meaning into an epistemic modal meaning denoting the uncertainty of the speaker's subjective stance. The lexicalized forms ”giang1pa3” and ”gam3pa3” are also anaIyzed as to code the speaker's belief or attitude towards a proposition. Metonymic strengthening is the key motivator behind such a development. Its use in a communication context triggers context-induced reinterpretation, giving rise to ambiguity. Pragmatic inferences are in turn conventionalized, leading to autonomous semantics. |