Evidence of Language Contact: Source Prepositional Phrases in Taiwanese Southern Min

Evidence of Language Contact: Data from source Prepositional Phrases in Taiwanese Southern Min This paper presents a new corpus-based study on the distributional pattern of source Prepositional Phrases (source PPs) in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM), as evidence of contact with Austronesian languages. Literature on language contact suggests that while contact-induced changes affect the less powerful/prestigious language, effects also occur in the inverse direction due to imperfect second language acquisition (LaPolla 2001, Chappell 2006). Due to its geographical proximity to the Austronesian language territory, Taiwan serves as a linguistic laboratory for studying language contact. Unlike other Chinese spoken varieties, TSM has contact with Austronesian languages. Evidence & Explanation: A TSM concordance (Iunn 2003) used as a database, captures the dominant pattern of source PPs, marked by an ‘from/via’ and tui/ui ‘from/via/towards’. The preposition an ‘from/via’ is commonly shared by Southern Min dialects. The source PP an to-uī ‘ from/via where’ either precedes the verb kiânn ‘to go’in (1a), or follows in (1b), with the same interpretation. Despite its flexible order, the an -phrases display a strong [PP-V] tendency (94% of tokens). The [V-PP] order in (1b), which is not reported historically in any other Southern Min dialect or Sinitic language, is distinctively rare, suggesting possible contact with Austronesian languages. (1a) (1b) li 2sg an to-uī from/via where kiânn go lâi/khi ? come/go li 2sg kiânn go an to-uī from/via where lâi/khi ? come/go ‘Where are you from/via?’ Another preposition, tui/ui ‘from/via/towards’, dating back to the historical text Li Jing Ji (1566) in Southeast China, has only been observed in TSM. (2a) instantiates a [PP-V] pattern, while (2b) displays a new [V-PP] pattern. Tui -phrases occur more frequently with [PP-V] order (about 65%), and with [V-PP], the spatial NPs are classified as source in 8% of the instances. (There were not morphological selection properties inherent to the verbs which did not trigger the variation, with different verbs selecting for PP-V and some verb selecting for V-PP). (2a) (2b) lin 2pl tui too-su-kuan from/via/towards library kiânn go lâi/khi come/go lin 2pl kiânn go tui too-su-kuan from/via/towards library lâi/khi come/go ‘You (pl.) walked from/via/towards the library.’ The emergence of this [V-PP] order may be attributed to contact with Austronesian languages based on their distributional pattern and contact history in Taiwan. The Austronesian languages, Atayal, Rukai, Puyuma, and Siraya exhibit a [V-PP] pattern (Adelaar 2011; Dryer, personal communication). Starting from the 16 th century, sinocization through education and intermarriage with Chinese men had accelerated the acquisition of Southern Min by native speakers of Austronesian languages (Shepherd 1993). Theoretical Implications: The positional variation of source PPs in TSM demonstrates an unusual typological pattern within its own language family, and provides evidence for additional contact. It also provides evidence for a process of contact-induced change during which the structure of the target language may be changed due to imperfect second language acquisition. Finally, the empirical investigation in the corpus supports the perspective that both an areal and a diachronic explanation may account for diversity in the synchronic data (Dryer 2003, 2006).