汉语句首受事话题的语篇关联及其认知动因

Discoursal Associations of Clause-initial Patient Topics in Chinese and a Cognitive Interpretation

学者们普遍认为小句话题具有语篇功能。以往的研究由于没有把话题分类因素考虑在内,对话题语篇功能的阐释难以具体、深入。探讨汉语名词短语句首受事话题的语篇关联发现,受事话题的典型语篇关联方式是双侧关联。与受事话题关联的语境句出现在话题结构左侧的频率大于出现在其右侧的频率,且关联语境句的出现频率在靠近话题结构的位置上较高,在远离话题结构的位置上则较低。从认知角度,受事话题的语篇关联折射了心理表征文本中话题概念节点和与其语义相关概念节点之间激活产生扩散的方式。

Many scholars argue that clause topics serve discourse functions. Such a view, however, has not been elaborated on with topic categorization being taken into account in the previous studies. This paper investigates discoursal associations on the part of noun phrases as clause initial patient topics in spoken Chinese. It reveals that prototypically such topics are discoursally associated with contextual clauses on both sides of topic structures. The associated contextual clauses occur more frequently on the left of topic structures than on the right. Moreover, the nearer the associated contextual clauses stand to topic structures, the higher frequency of their occurrences. Cognitively, discoursal as.sociations of the topics in question mirror how activation of conceptual nodes spreads in semantic networks in mentally represented texts.