NOMINAL STRUCTURE IN LI4 ZHI1 JI4荔枝記(WANLI萬曆EDITION)
Liching Livy Chiu and Chinfa Lien
This paper explores possible structures of determiner phrases (DPs) using the corpus of Li4 Zhi1 Ji4荔枝記 (Wanli萬曆(1573-1620) Edition of Li4 Jing4 Ji4荔鏡記), the text of a colloquial Early Southern Min (1566 AD) play. First, the available structures for nominal expressions involving Demonstratives (DEM) tsi1只, Numerals (Num) chit4一, Classifiers (CL) ge5个/個, and Nominal Phrases (NP) are of the three types: Type X1 ([+DEM][+CL]), Type X2 ([+DEM][-CL]), and Type Y ([-DEM]). Second, some of the possible structures, e.g. “DEM + NP” and “Num +NP”, which do not exist in Mandarin and Southern Min, suggest different structural analyses for DPs in Early Southern Min.
Keywords: DP, demonstratives, classifiers, nouns, Southern Min
