无定式把字句在近、现代汉语中的地位问题及其理论意义

The status of indefinite Ba (把)-constructions in modern and contemporary Chinese and its implications

本文探讨无定式把字句从近代汉语到现代汉语的变化。各类无定把字式在现代汉语中都是受限的格式,数量上远远少于近代汉语;"把个+不及物动词"在近代汉语晚期为常见格式,其功用是描写外在事物导致人物的心理情绪变化,现代汉语中基本不存在;"把一个+及物动词"格式的比率在现代汉语中较高,不过语义和语用特征不完全等同于近代汉语,主要用于表示通指意义,其次用于引进偶现新信息。基于上述认识,我们提出,1)无定式把字句在现代汉语中的地位应该重新审视;2)句法研究必须借助于话语分析和语料库语言学方法。

Descriptive and formal approaches to the Ba-construction in Chinese generally make a distinction between two kinds of Ba-constructions,based on the semantic relationship of the object noun phrase of Ba with the main verb(s) of the utterance:1) those in which the object is a patient,and 2) those in which the object is an agent.In the latter case,very often the noun phrase denoting the agent takes an indefi- nite grammatical form,usually marked with yi-ge ‘one + CLASSIFIER ’ or simply ge ‘CLASSIFIER’. One of the problems with previous studies is that these types of Ba-constructions are treated implicitly or explicitly as two varieties of equal status.In this paper we investigate the status of the indefinite,agentive Ba-constructions based on large corpora of modern (over two million words) and contemporary (over twelve million words) Chinese.We show that indefinite,agentive Ba-constructions are actually a minor type in contemporary Chinese,with restricted grammatical functions (marking a generic proposition or introducing a trivial referent into discourse).A comparison with modern (14th- 19th century)Chinese shows that there is profound historical change from modern Chinese to contemporary Chinese.These findings are taken as significant and in support of a theoretical proposal that structural analysis must be aided with contextualized,quantitative evidence.