Abstract:
Benefaction and benefactive construction have received much attention in linguistic study. However, there is little research thoroughly conducted by examining benefactive construction in Thai. This current research therefore has three specific purposes: to investigate and compare syntactic as well as semantic properties of two benefactive markers, namely phuea and hai in Thai and to analyze a factor contributing to those differences. The researcher collected data from Thai National Corpus (TNC) under the Patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Mahachakri Sirindhorn. The study revealed that although similar in marking beneficiary, phuea and hai were both syntactically and semantically different. The two markers were syntactically different in four following facets: (1) beneficiary omission, (2) beneficiary preposing, (3) co-occurrence with other prepositions and (4) co-occurrence with negative marker. Semantically, the benefactive markers were different in three main aspects: (1) co-occurrence with beneficiary considered from inherent semantic properties, (2) co-occurrence with subtypes of beneficiary and (3) verbal types co-occurring with each benefactive marker. Dissimilarity in original meaning of each marker contributes to differences in syntactic and semantic properties, that is to say CAUSE is an original meaning of benefactive marker phuea whereas TRANSFERRING POSSESSION is an original meaning of benefactive marker hai. Due to this, the patterns of semantic and functional extension of the two forms are dissimilar. This renders the differences in semantic and syntactic properties of both markers.