| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,100,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥200,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 1998: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 1997: ¥1,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,900,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The present research has been carried out as an extended sequel of the previous research project on the Karen language. Applying the methodological steps established in the course of the previous project, sampling linguistic data by a kind of fieldwork, identifying the linguistic type of the language in question, and, finally, trying to find out relics of a possible creolisation in the past, to the other languages than Karen,
In spite of the often alleged "disharmonious" constellation, so-called "adsentential" particles, indicating sentential mood such as interrogativity and the like, are generally placed sentence-finally in almost all verbmedial languages in South-East Asia, irrespective of their genetic affinity to the language families. Utilising the notion of "Grammatical Gravitation" based on the idea that proposition and modality of the sentential expression should be principally kept apart from each other, it is argued that there is no need for sentential mood, often indicated by
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adsentential particles, to be structurally associated with verbal expressions which are usually conceived of as representative for the notion of proposition. By means of a number of languages of different origins, spoken in South-East Asia, it is demonstrated that the structural device of adsentential particles is related to other different syntactic phenomena, and exactly for this reason, adsentential particles can be placed in the sentencefinal position even in the verb-medial languages (of South-East Asia).
Although we are not yet sure at the present stage of discussion, the languages of South-East Asia reveal to show a number of syntactic phenomena which could be conceived of as relics of creolisation. As poited out above, the notion of "Grammatical Gravitation" turns out to play a central role in solving typological mysteries, which could not be accounted for hitherto. By carrying out a successive research project, "creolising hypothesis" of natural languages is expected to be completed. Less
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