Sub-syllabic morphemes in Taiwanese
台语里的次音节词素
Robert L. Cheng 郑良伟

Abstract 摘要
It is a well-known fact that Chinese morphemes are overwhelmingly monosyllabic. As a variety of Chinese, Taiwanese also shares this characteristic. There are two types of exceptions to this general rule, exemplified in Mandarin by the polysyllabic morphemes húdie 'butterfly' and bōli 'glass', and by the subsyllabic béng 'don't', a contraction of the disyllabic expression búyòng, It is the purpose of this paper to investigate this second type of exception to the otherwise monosyllabic nature of morphemes in Taiwanese, viz, morphemes that are subsyllabic. For it will be seen that in Taiwanese there are single syllables that contain more than one morpheme.

汉语的词素绝大多数是单音节。多音节词素（如玻璃）和次音节词素（指一个词素只构成一个音节的一部分，如‘甭’中‘不’和‘用’）应算是这个通则的例外情形。本文分类收集台语里的一百多个次音节词素。并讨论可以导致两音节合音成单音节的句法上语音上的条件和合音后如何发音。在语音上第一音节的需要零韵尾，第二音节需要零声母零介母，才能导致合音。第二音节如不是零声母或零介母，似需先变成零声母，零介母。声母当中浊声母比轻声母容易变成零声母。在句法上合音所涉及的词绝大多数是虚词。实词的合音似乎没有。又有些词要求双音节。如叫称的 a-î （阿姨）虽然合乎语音上的合音条件，但从未有合音的情形。至于合音后的发音：声调决定于未合音前第一音节的头一部分和第二音节的后一部分的调值。声母采用第一音节的声母。韵尾即采用第二音节的韵尾。至于主要元音可能是第一音节的，或是第二音节的主要元音，也可能是两者的合音。

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