A Study On The Typology Of Taiwanese Relative Clauses

This thesis focuses on the relative clause structure in Tai branch of Kam-Tai Languages as the research object. From the view of language typology, we mainly make a preliminary study on its structure types, typologic features, grammatical functions and its evolution.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction. In this part, we introduce the researching background and its significance in this paper. The subject was chosen for two reasons:first, the relative clause is one of the important parameters in language typology and it has the value of research; second, scholars have not been given enough attention on the relative clause of Tai languages so far, there is still some researching space.The second chapter is to give a basic classification and analysis for the relative clause of Tai languages. According to the relative position between the clause and the head-noun, we divide the relative clause structure into two types:the post-nominal type (post-RC) and the pre-nominal one (pre-RC). The relative clause structure is one of the modifiers of nominal phrases. It has the features of general modifiers in common and also has its own characteristics as a relative clause.The third chapter mainly makes a detailed analysis and description of the typologic features of the relative clause in Tai languages. We discussed its typologic features from the demonstrative, restrictions of complexity level of the nominal phrases, types of the relative clause markers, relativization strategies etc.In the fourth chapter, we describe the evolution of the relative clauses in Tai branch of Kam-Tai Languages. Using the theory of language geographic typology and word order typology, we illustrate the native of the post-RC. And then we analyze the generation mechanism of pre RC structure, which we think it’s mainly due to the result of language contact.The fifth chapter is the conclusion. In this part we summarizes the main ideas of the thesis, put forward some problems and shortcomings and the direction of further research on the issue. On the whole, the relative clause structure of Tai Languages is relatively simple. Post-RC is the main type of the relative clause structure, and has a tendency of less use of relative clause markers. Questions as the origin of the relative clause markers in Tai Languages remain to do some special discussion.