ABSTRACT
This paper aims at fleshing out the constraint of purposives in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM), based on a body of spoken data. There are three kinds of purposives in TSM to be examined: (1) purposives with lai5/khi3, (2) purposives with ti7leh4, and (3) purposives with hoo7. There are common features shared by the three types of purposives: (a) purposives are control constructions, (b) they feature temporal sequence, and (c) pre-purposive causes may denote means or instruments to fulfill the goal denoted by the purposives. We will also tackle the aspectual constraint of purposives.
