“杀”的语义演变过程和动因

The Process and Motivations of Sha(杀)'s Semantic Evolution

先秦两汉时期"杀"单独作谓语时表示"动作+结果","结果"蕴涵在动作行为之中;至宋元时期基本上只表示动作,不表示结果,并持续至今。"杀"发生了两次根本变化:1)中古汉语"X杀"、"杀Y"的出现,由于缺省状态下,"杀"表异质活动,光杆动词"杀"本身可以表达"杀死"的语义功能,所以在表示"动作"语义时有两条并行途径,即光杆"杀"和动结式的"杀Y";2)"V杀"被"V死"替代,在近代汉语中只剩下"杀Y"。由于概念结构和语义激活等因素的制约,使成式、偏正式及并列式之间能相互转化,而范域式则具有独特的句法表现。这两次变化和汉语语言类型从综合型向分析型转变,以及动补结构、体标记成熟的大背景密切相关。

Abstract The sha（杀） in archaic Chinese indicated ＂action＋result＂ and entails result naturally, acting as the predicate in a clause. It changed and meant result almost exclusively during the Song Yuan dynasties and remains the same since then. There are two major shifts： 1） the emergence of X＋ sha and shaq-Y in medieval Chinese. The sha has the default value ＂to make killed＂ because of its bet erogeneous nature, thus it has two paralleled ways of expressing action, i. e. , the bare sha and verb result clusters sha＋X. 2） Vq-sha was replaced by V＋si（死）. The causative, modifer, and coordi nate structures are interchangeable for they are restricted by the same conceptual structures and se- mantic activation. However, the control structure has special syntactic function due to sha＇s wide do main. These two shifts were closely related to the typological trend in which Chinese moved from syn- thetic to analytic. The deveploment of verb-result clusters and aspectual markers also contributed greatly to the fact.