| dc.description.abstract | Interrogatives in Hakka vary according to different accents, which is therefore worth further investigation. In this study field methods accompanied with data analysis have been adopted as the key research methods. It is highly expected to have a better knowledge of how Hakka interrogatives work on the basis of the Hakka spoken in Wanluan area.
Four types of interrogatives have been focused, namely, specific questions, alternative interrogatives, A-not-A questions, and the tag questions. The basic findings are as follows. First of all, specific questions are found to have four subtypes, which are based on ma, na, I, and gi. Interesting enough they are by and large mono-syllabic words. In terms of alternative questions, it turned out to be based on subjective, objective, predicative, and any two of the above. However, we also found that the A-not-A type of questions are quite different between Hakka and Mandarin. In Hakka, sentences with VP＋mo11 are the main type, though there were three others referred. Finally, the function syllables like mo (Hakka negation) are, among others like ma, no, a, ba, and ma, mostly used in daily conversation.
The findings of this study are not so sharply different from those reported in the literature. However, they shed light in the empirical data based insights and the significant difference between Mandarin and Hakka in the formation of interrogatives. They are highly expected to be beneficial to the further research in one way or another, which might serve as the most significant contribution of this thesis. | en_US |