似与不似之间:英汉语略谓结构之比较

A Comparative Study of Elided Predicate Structures in English and Chinese

本文旨在揭示英汉语略谓形式在微观句法/语义(micro-syntax/semantics)层面上的差异。Chao[1]认为谓语的各种省略形式可以根据省略谓语是否有中心语分为两大类:有中心语(H+)的省略和无中心语(H-)的省略。以该标准观察汉语谓语成分省略,我们发现汉语的略谓形式与英语的相应形式并不具有完全的对应性。按Chao[1]的分析,汉语的"也是"结构应该是H+省略形式,但当我们把"也是"结构与英语的H+省略结构(即VP省略结构)比较后却发现,"也是"结构与英语的VP省略结构并不具有相同的句法特性。相反,"也是"结构与英语的H-省略形式(即剥离结构)的句法分布却十分相似,但问题是这两个结构根据Chao[1]的分析应属于不同的略谓形式。虽然一些学者把汉语的空宾结构看作VP省略结构[1;4;5;7],但通过对英、汉语谓语成分的省略形式的描写和比较,我们发现这一结构与"也是"结构和英语的VP省略结构不仅在句法分布上不同,在语义解读和遵守平行原则方面也不相同。总之,汉语有关的略谓形式与英语的相关形式似乎是错位对应,处于似与不似之间。

In this paper, we make a comparative study of the elided.predicate structures in English and Chinese with respect to their syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation. Chao [ 1 ] classifies two types of elliptical constructions based on the presence or absence of the heads of the elided predicates： H＋/H- ellipsis. According to Chao＇ s [ 1 ] analysis, the VP ellipsis in English and the ye shi ＇ also be＇ construction in Chinese belong to the same type of ellipsis, i. e. H ＋ ellipsis. However, we find that they differ from each other in terms of their syntactic distribution： while the VP ellipsis can occur in either coordinate or subordinate clauses, the ye shi construction can only occur in the former, but not in the latter. On the contrary, the ye shi construction shares the same syntactic properties with the English stripping construction which belongs to H- ellipsis. It is claimed in the literature that the null object construction in Chinese is VP ellipsis. But we find that the null object construction differs from the ye shi construction in Chinese and the VP elliptical structure in English with respect to their syntactic distribution on the one hand, and their semantic interpretation as well as their sensitivity to the parallelism constraint on the other. In a word, the elided predicate structures in English do not have identical counterparts in Chinese.