Abstract
The analysis of purpose clauses in terms of semantic properties, syntactic structures, and temporal structures is the main focus of the thesis. Six types of purpose clauses including ui tioh/liao-, thang-, lai/khi-, hoo-, beh-, and bare purpose clauses will be examined to present the similar and dissimilar features involved in their constructions. Intentionality, change of state, temporal sequence, and the goal-instrument relationship are the four properties that purpose clauses generally possess. A sentence without intentionality is just a description of an event not a purpose clause. The interaction of the matrix and the purpose clauses will prompt the features change of state and instrument-goal relationship. Changes of state naturally follow the time axis which is reflected in the word order. In addition to the shared properties, individual features of each type of purpose clauses are also discussed. Those individual features are derived from the primitive meaning of the purposive markers and they will put the limitation on the scenarios in which each type of purpose clauses may come about. Taiwanese Southern Min is similar to English which permits non-finite and finite clauses being purpose clauses. Ui tioh/liao- and thang-purpose clauses are analyzed as a finite TP in which the subject position can be occupied by a lexical NP which needs the existence of a governor T. Lai/khi-, hoo-, beh- and bare purpose clauses are a non-finite TP. Because it is obligatory for the subject of the purpose clause to be a covert form and modals are forbidden to occur, PRO is the only permitted subject to fulfill the condition that the subject position is ungoverned. Tang (2000) pointed out that of the non-finite clauses, only control constructions license PRO as the subject; therefore, purpose clauses being analyzed as a non-finite TP are also a control construction. In accordance with the theory of speech time, event time and reference time proposed by Reichenbach (1947), we can draw the timeline to show the temporal relationship between the matrix event and the purpose event. Both events can occur in the past as long as the principle of temporal sequence (Tai 1985) is not violated; then the purpose event obtains the sense of future-of-the-past.