Suffix ʔɐ51 in Zhangzhou: An Interdisciplinary Explorations

This study explores how the single suffix ʔɐ51 contributes to word formation in Zhangzhou Southern Min. Semantically, this suffix is extraordinarily polysemantic, which can express a wide range of semantic meanings, including smallness, closeness, and affection; tool and equipment; people of a particular characteristic; people of a specific occupation; sense of lightless and slowness, and sense of small quantity among others. Morpho-syntactically, this suffix fulfills multiple roles as a nominalizer, nominal marker, and adverbialier, and the lexical bases that can be suffixed are cross-categorical, involving seven different types. Phonologically, the ʔɐ51 suffixation can invoke a special tone sandhi pattern on the bases, resulting in their tonal realization to be different from their regular sandhi process. Distributionally, the occurrence of this suffix is subject to several constraints involving semantics, morpho-syntax and phonology. This study strengthens our understanding of the suffixing system in this dialect and contributes important linguistic data to the typology of word formation in world’s natural languages, while shedding an important light on how Sinitic languages should be better defined from the interdisciplinary perspective.