2008 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Typological studies on universals and variations of Formosan languages

Research Project

Project/Area Number	18520317
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Linguistics
Research Institution	Okayama University
Principal Investigator	KATAGIRI Masumi Okayama University, 大学院・社会文化科学研究科, 准教授 (80294388)
Project Period (FY)	2006 – 2008
Keywords	台湾原住民諸語 / ヴォイス / 能格性 / フィリピン・タイプ
Research Abstract	In this typological studies of Formosan languages, spoken by aboriginal peoples of Taiwan which belong to Austronesian family, I conducted research on the morphosyntactic variations of these languages, as well as those in related languages such as Philippine languages and Indonesian languages. In particular, I focused my studies on their voice systems and ergativity, and observed that there was an apparent contrast between languages with a rich voice system called "Philippine-type" and strong ergative tendency and those with limited voice and accusative characteristics. In spite of the apparent contrast, however, I showed that it is possible to give a unified account of the variations in terms of voice attrition.

(2 results)