While Taiwanese and Mandarin share a basic subject-verb-object word order, how does their syntax differ significantly enough to warrant in-depth study? (Questions about Taiwanese; part 6)

Honestly, this is a fantastic question. We need to address this for both the general public and linguists here in Taiwan.

As a syntactician, it feels like many linguists assume that understanding Chinese automatically means you understand Taiwanese. Any differences are seen as minor and not really important.

You know, it's interesting – I've noticed that linguists specializing in Mandarin seem to have a unique perspective, and I haven't seen that replicated with those studying other languages, even ones with similar structures. A lot of the misconception about Taiwanese being just a dialect really stems from past political propaganda and, honestly, a general decline in fluency among speakers.

Japanese and Korean might seem similar with their word order, but dig deeper and you'll find lots of differences. Similarly, while Taiwanese and Chinese have common ground, there are key distinctions in several areas. Let's break down four of these.

First, word formation. Here's an interesting thing about Chinese and Taiwanese: you might think they just directly translate word for word, but that's totally not the case. Take "chàngkū" in Chinese, which is like saying "sing-cry" and means someone's singing makes someone else cry. If you try to say the exact same thing using Taiwanese words, "tshiùnn-khàu," it just sounds weird and doesn't work. Taiwanese is just a bit pickier about how you put words together.

Second, subtle word order. In fact, word formation influences word order. For instance, a Taiwanese resultative verbal compound like ‘tsú-si̍k’, meaning to cook something thoroughly, requires its object to come before the compound itself. This isn't the case in Chinese. Consequently, some Taiwanese sentence structures are obligatorily subject-object-verb, differing from Chinese's subject-verb-object pattern. Also, some Taiwanese adverbs can appear in positions where their Chinese equivalents cannot, similar to English versus French. Both use subject-verb-object as their basic order, but French adverbs typically follow the verb, unlike English adverbs which precede it or appear at the end of the sentence.

Third, Languages might have the same basic word order, but they use different sentence structures. For example, English uses "be" plus "Ving" for ongoing events. French can't do that; it has its own ways. Also, Taiwanese has some unique sentence patterns, like the kám-question, evaluative verbal reduplication, and the event control construction.

Fourth, different languages use function words in distinct ways. Take Chinese and Taiwanese, for example. Both have words like bǎ and kā which seem to move an object to somewhere before the verb. But there are subtle rules. Bǎ needs the verb to have a clear result. Taiwanese kā only cares this when the object is not a living thing. Plus, kā can also include nouns that aren't objects at all, like who benefits or suffers because of the event, or who or what is the goal or source. Function words just don't translate one-to-one across languages.

All in all, we could really dive deep into comparing tons of stuff here. Honestly, what we're finding with Taiwanese syntax is super valuable and could seriously impact linguistic typology and theories.