台語句首言談標記「啊」

Sentence-Initial Ah in Taiwanese

本文旨在對台語（台灣閩南語）當中出現在句首、呼高平調且後面沒 有停頓的「啊」進行全面考察。本文認為，這個句首「啊」是一個篇章功 能上的連詞，語意上承接語境/前句，句法上則要求前後具呈現對比、具替 代成份的焦點性質（Krifka 2006，Rooth 1985）。本文在句法的製圖理論 架構下，分析句首「啊」僅只低於雙層言語行為短語殼（Haegeman 2014， Haegeman and Hill 2013，Hill 2007 及 Speas and Tenny 2003）。經由本文 的剖析，我們確認了句首「啊」並非只限於高層全面性的連接功能（比較 李櫻等人 1998）；且本分析指出句首「啊」並不中性，反之，其具有明 確的功能，雖然其對於命題內容無所更動，但並非沒有作用。本研究除了 明晰地說明了句首「啊」的功能、使用條件及使用限制，並且也解釋了句 首「啊」使用限制背後的原因。

This study aims to investigate the sentence-initial ah in Taiwanese in the framework of the Cartographic Approach, including the conditions and restrictions of its use and the possible reasons for the restrictions. The sentence-initial ah, bearing a high level tone but without a following pause, is a discoursal conjunct connecting to the context or a preceding sentence and it requires a contrastive focus between what it connects. We illustrate how the function of the sentence-initial ah works in different sentence patterns and propose that the discourse marker is only lower than the speech-act shell (Haegeman 2014, Haegeman and Hill 2013, Hill 2007, Speas and Tenny 2003). In sum, we argue that the sentence-initial ah, which connects a following sentence either with the context or a preceding sentence (cf. Li, Chen and Lin 1998), does not change the proposition at all, but serves as a discourse marker.