Recapitulation

This study focuses on the explanation of how kinship terms of Taiwan Mandarin generalized and their performance, three questions are proposed:

1. Can all kinship terms of Taiwan Mandarin be generalized? If not, which terms are candidates for generalization?

2. What is the similarity/dissimilarity between generalized disyllabic kinship terms and monosyllabic kinship terms?

3. How the generalization and its combination construed in native speakers’ mind?

In order to find the answers, the current work employs generally-accepted kinship terms of Taiwan Mandarin (either disyllabic and monosyllabic) and Taiwan Southern Min (viz., āgōng (阿公) ‘father/mother’s father’, āmà (阿媽/阿嬤) ‘father/mother’s mother’, āpeh (阿伯) ‘father’s elder brother’, and āyí (阿姨) ‘mother’s elder/younger sister’) as keywords, searching them in the AS Corpus and the PTT Corpus and selecting the written and spoken generalized usages of each kinship term. Further, the data is retrieved for detailed analyzation. Besides, some generalized usages on news reports are also included.

After analyzing all qualified materials, we find that in the group of disyllabic kinship terms, yéyé (爺爺) ‘father’s father’, āgōng, nǎinǎi (奶奶) ‘father’s mother’, āmà, bàbà (爸爸) ‘father’, māmā (媽媽) ‘mother’, bófù (伯父) ‘father’s elder brother’, bóbó (伯伯) ‘father’s elder brother’, āpeh, bómǔ (伯母) ‘wife of father’s elder brother’, shúshú (叔叔) ‘father’s younger brother’, yímā (姨媽) ‘mother’s elder/younger sister’, āyí, gēgē (哥哥) ‘elder brother’, dìdì (弟弟) ‘younger brother’, jiějiě (姊姊) ‘elder

sister’, jiějiě (姐姐) ‘elder sister’, mèimèi (妹妹) ‘younger sister’, and érzǐ (兒子) ‘son’

can be generalized, which is a small portion of the whole disyllabic kinship terms.

In the group of monosyllabic kinship terms, fù (父) ‘father’, bó (伯) ‘father’s elder brother’, shú (叔) ‘father’s younger brother’, shěn (嬸) ‘wife of father’s younger brother’, yí (姨) ‘mother’s elder/younger sister’, xiōng (兄) ‘elder brother’, gē (哥)

‘elder brother’, sǎo (嫂) ‘wife of elder brother’, dì (弟) ‘younger brother’, jiě (姊) ‘elder sister’, jiě ( 姐 ) ‘elder sister’, and mèi ( 妹 ) ‘younger sister’ are candidates for generalization. All kinship terms of the younger generation cannot be generalized. In either group, non-generalized kinship terms are more than those that can be generalized.

There are eighteen generalizable disyllabic kinship terms and eleven generalizable monosyllabic kinship terms. Generally speaking, the amount of generalized kinship terms of older generation is the most between all disyllabic terms, and āyí is the predominant one in them. Between generalized monosyllabic kinship terms, kinship terms of peer generation are dominators, and mèi is the one that with more combinations;

however, if we take all the combinations of xiōng and gē into consideration (both of them refer to ‘elder brother’), the sum of them occupies the most prominent part in peer generation.

We further categorize generalized kinship term in our data into five types— bare form, degree modifier as prefix, modified by surname/name, metonymic theme preceded, and metaphorical/idiomatic usage— in terms of their forms and meanings.

Each type is divided into a disyllabic subtype and a monosyllabic subtype for detailed observation.

This research explains the process of how the generalization formed in speakers’

mind by adopting the Conceptual Blending Theory (Fauconnier and Turner 2002) and Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006), arguing that there is a

“Head-Generalized kinship term” construction. Also, this research further discusses the phenomena such as referential uniqueness, viewpoint shifting, politeness and impoliteness, and factors of generalization. It is found that the generalization process

can omit the consideration of nationality, alive status, or matched gender feature of the subject.

Moreover, the usage preferences of generalized kinship terms are explored: firstly, āmà (阿嬤) may be more often used than nǎinǎi between native speakers while referring to an older female. Secondly, speakers tend to address non-relative males with paternal kinship terms of the older generation, but do not always address non-relative females with paternal kinship terms. There are three choices for non-relative females:

nǎinǎi, bómǔ, and āyí, and āyí is the predominant term. The reason of āyí becomes dominant could be attributed to the life of modern society, many married women have to work and temporarily live in their original family with husband and children (Tsao 1993), and mother’s sisters might become the caretakers of children. Hence, āyí is the one that children interact most and feel closer to, and this kinship term is very possible to be generalized.

In addition, the author observes that among monosyllabic kinship terms, there is only a couple of generalized kinship terms of “dà-shú-dà-shěn pair” in older generation;

also, there are some usage differences between xiōng and gē. The author argues that xiōng and gē are competing against each other in the domain of generalized usage, so to decide which one is more dominant is a challenging task at present.

Besides, it is found that in speakers’ cognition, meanings of separate degree modifiers tend to alter on ‘their own scale’ in a seamlessly-combined word cluster (such as lǎo (老) ‘old’ and dà (大) ‘big’ in lǎo-dà-gē (老大哥) ‘old-big-elder brother’, and xiǎo (小) ‘little’ and lǎo in xiǎo-lǎo-dì (小老弟) ‘little-old-younger brother’), rather than enhance the same meaning together at the same time. These meanings of degree modifiers must not be the same simultaneously, in order to avoid the possible redundancy and to convey subtler attitudes or emotions.

Also, some tendencies of using generalized kinship terms that refer to oneself are observed, including:

1. to shorten the mental distance between interlocutors (but not too close);

2. the speaker’s intention determines an older/younger kinship term;

3. xiōng less appears in verbal communication due to its nature of written form;

4. some speakers address themselves as younger siblings and ‘loser’ at the same time, in order to display more respect to addressees.

Furthermore, the author explained the syllable preference of some early-established

“Head-Generalized kinship term” combination, namely, “police-generalized kinship term”, “nurse-generalized kinship term”, “journalist-generalized kinship term”, and

“driver-generalized kinship term” persist their preference of preceding a disyllabic kinship term, and keep attracting adequate candidates to fit in the combination. Some recurred head parts of the “Head-Generalized kinship terms”, such as xué-shēng, xué, and shī can be followed by a group that contains kinship terms of a nuclear family. In the final, we propose an argument of the meaning change from referential uniqueness to referential randomness by observing two distinct cases in the data.

This study concludes that the generalization of kinship terms is mainly processed through conceptual blending, prominent effective factors are viewpoint shifting, profiling, metaphor, metonymy, politeness and impoliteness expression, and also ironical attitude, they collaborate in native speakers’ concept and produce the output.

The combination of “Head-Generalized kinship term” behaves as a construction:

monosyllabic kinship terms are more productive than disyllabic terms owing to its easily-compatible structure, and this attribute makes monosyllabic kinship terms generalized in a significant amount, especially in the category of metonymic themes preceded. Also, the “Head-Generalized kinship term” construction is highly productive, as long as a suitable context exists, novel usages of generalized kinship terms will always be allowed to create.