本文主要是以作者親自調查的一千六百多筆語料，重新闡述過去文獻所爭議的基本鄒語音韻議題。
在音位系統方面，作者首先整理所有可能的子音組合，突破一般認為「鄒語沒有同發音部位的子音群」的看法（董1964,邢1999）。同時，根據音韻組合策略，數字詞對照及方言對比，作者也認為：鄒語應該沒有底層介音。在長母音的議題上，作者則反覆辯證，認為：不論是重音、重疊規則、母音刪除(Wright and Ladefoged 1994,1997)、最小對偶詞或音調(蔡1999)，都不足以說明：是否有底層長母音的存在。重音方面，則針對過去具爭議性的的語料（董1964,何1976），一一向發音人確認，具體舉證說明：重音不具區別性；少數不規則的重音，則源於方言的歷史演進(李 1979)。

在音節結構方面，隨著新語料的問世，作者提出與過去全然不同的見解。首先，作者引述無「標浮現的」概念(the emergence of the unmark, McCarthy & Prince 1994a)，論證過去文獻上，認為可以支持「鄒語不能以子音結尾」的理由（董1964,邢1999），並不充分。但藉由音韻組合策略、重疊形式及語言遊戲，說明在音節劃分上，鄒語允許以子音結尾。

日語借字則是作者全新的探討。文中除詳細呈現鄒語對日語借字的修正與保留原則，也報導當借字與本土鄒語混合用時，重音會落在倒數第二音節，更說明先前「重音不具區別性」的論證正確。文中亦提及借字在本土鄒語所沒有的特殊音韻行為，包括：音節縮短、子音母音互換等現象。

最後，作者提出：顏色詞的語用問題、重疊詞的語意衍生及重疊模式、台語借字的音段、音調的保留與改變，做為未來可研究發展的議題。

This thesis aims to codify phonemic segments, define a syllable and expect to obtain further evidence for both two issues by loanwords, based on newly- collected data.
The significance of the presentation about all of the possible consonant clusters in Tsou includes the great violation of Sonority Dispersion Principle (Clements, 1990), and the plausibility of homorganic consonant clusters (Tung 1964, Hsin 1999). Due to onset phonotactics, vowel~glide alternation in numeral compounding and the dialectal correspondence, glides are excluded in the inventory. Besides, reduplication, stress assignment, alternate vowel deletion (Wright and Ladefoged 1994, 1997), minimal pairs, pitch (Tsai 1999) are proved to be insufficient evidence to clarify if there are underlying long vowels. ‘Contrasting pairs in regard to the occurrence and non- occurrence of stress and the position of stress’ (Tung 1964:40~41), which seems to imply that stress is sometimes phonemic are not found; stress assignment always predictable falls on the penultimate syllable. Irregular stress assignment of some words in the older generation results from the historical and dialectal /r/ ~ /e/ correspondence.

The evidence Tung (1964) and Hsin (1999) use to argue for non- coda assumption, namely empirical evidence, reduplication and affixation is proved to be insufficient; empirically there are content words that end with codas and (C(C))VC. CV syllabification and the C(C)V template are compatible with the constraint ranking MAX I-O >> NO-CODA >>MAX B-R (Chen 2001), under the principle of the emergence of the unmark (McCarthy & Prince 1994a). Phonotactics, the CCVC reduplication template and language games however show that Tsou is not a language that disallows codas.

Despite the fact the intention to use loanword preservation and modification to testify the issues of native inventory and plausibility of codas fails, predictable stress assignment of Japanese loanwords mixed with native words still enforces the argument that stress is not phonemic. Furthermore, truncation of loanwords in a Tsou way is newly unearthed. The observation of X- slot- based segmental preservation is also represented, although the theoretical implication is not elucidated yet.

Color terms, heavy-light redupliction, criteria for multiple reduplication templates and the segmental/ tonal preservation/ modification of Taiwanese loanwords are the suggested issues for feature research.

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