“怀疑”及“有人”:试论香港粤语新闻语篇中语法和语用之间的两种冲突

‘Waai4 ji4' and ‘jau5 jan4': Two Conflicts between Syntax and Pragmatics in Hong Kong Cantonese News Discourse

本文讨论了香港地区中文媒体在新闻报道中使用粤语高级变体时存在的两种句法和语用冲突。第一种是关于动词／形容词“怀疑”（waai4j4，suspect）的用法。此用法具有英文表达式“ItissuspectedthatNP…”的相同功能，旨在淡化报道行为的实施者。若动词前的NP指人时，则可能产生语义分歧。因为主语位置上的NP在语义上既可以是行为人，也可以是受施或不便指明身份的任何人。第二种冲突是关于不定指称“有人”（jau5jan4）（someone）的用法。“有人”通常被用来模糊地指代某些刑事案件或政治冲突中的“首要嫌疑人”，而这些嫌疑人一般通过上下文就可以轻易地推断出来。上述的两种冲突现象表明香港新闻报道中影射当事人，暗涉其话语或行为的作法是一个极其敏感的问题。本文将详细展示这两种冲突。

The attribution of words or deeds to newsmakers by journalists is a most sensitive issue in news media,espeCially in the West. In his study on news discourse as mediated action, Ron Scollon (1998) demonstratesclearly that journalists of print and broadcast media alike are socially POsitioned to delegate responsibility, or'Principalship' (Goffman 1981), to a newsmaker or some ambiguous source. Any form of delegahon ofPrincipalship in news stories, or attribution in brief, is primarily motivated by journalists who perceive a needto Protect themselves and the media institution they work for from POtential allegations of ndsinfoffoation,espeCially when attribution of what is said or done entails legal resPOnsibilities and consequences.This paper investigates two types of conflict between syntax and pragmahcs arising from the needs ofattribution in news reporting. More specifically, it examines the extent to which linguistic informationconflicts with contextual, pragmatic information in High Cantonese as used in Hong Kong news reports. Thegenre of news rePOrting discussed in this paper is mainly reportS of legally sensitive social news in the HongKong Chinese media. The data is mainly constituted by news stories from both print and electronic media.The first type of conflict concerns the usage of the word $M (waQi4 n4, 'suspect') in writtenChinese news reports as well as High Cantonese news broadcast on TV, which assumes the same function asthe English passive expression 'it is suspected that NP...' or 'NP is suspected toloL..' as a way ofbackgrounding the subject of the act of suspechng. Our focus is on the semantic role (especially agent andpatient) of the NP that precedes this verb. Semantic ambivalence sometimes allses when the preverbal NPrefers tO a human being, for the NP in the subject position may be assigned the semantic role of agent, patientor some oblique par'ticipant.It is postulated that, as a result of sustained contact with English, waai4 n4 has developed aEuropebozed syntactic pattern in Hong Kong news discourse which mirrors the English passive expression.The word suspect and its derivatives are commonly used in legally sensitive social news in English. As manynews items in the Hong Kong Chinese media are translated directly from some English sources mediated byvarious international press agencies, it is hardly surprising that the Chinese language in Hong Kongjoumallshc writing is under different degrees of influence from English. This is probably why waai4 n4 iscommonly used in contemporary Hong Kong news reports as an adjective after the English model suspected,for example, llMffi'@MA# (led pail waai4 n4 hungl bet3, 'this batch of suspected lethal weapons'), 'acM$k$(waai4 n4 zung3 foZ ngon3, 'suspected arson case'). Besides, used as a verb, waai4 n4funchonally approximates the English passive expression 'it is suspected that NP..'. Sometimes this usagemay lead to semantic ambivalence, resulting in intef'Pretative problems.The probable path of Europeanization may be schematically represented as follows:'~n4' and 'jausjan4': Two Conflicts between Syntax and Pragmatics in Hong KOng Cantonese News Discourse 57The postulate that syntactic changes associated with the verb waai4 n4 are the result of Europehozation isac grOUnded in well-attested developmentS of the Chinese passive marker bet (ffi), as in the followingexample:~s&R m$M $4$&fr$X......A school principal is suspected of embezzling school funds...As such, the use of the passive marker bet in collocahon with waa4 n4 is only baldly unnatural. MoreProblematical is the next stage in the process of syntachc change whereby bet is droPPed:?? ~8&R,raM de24Rftgr ......The main Problem here is that if waai4ji4 is preceded by a NP denoting a human being, the sentencewould ~t the interpretation 'NP suspeCtS...'. This intCrpretahon, however is often at odds with Pragmatic~, which demands that NP be interpreted as a patient ('NP is suspected...'). In other words, there issolnethes conflict between syntax and pragmatics: While the surface stl'Ucture of the sentence s