语言库藏类型学构想

Linguistic inventory typology:A proposal for a new approach of linguistic typology

本文倡议建立语言类型学的新分支——语言库藏类型学。本文指出,一种语言拥有哪些语言手段,哪些范畴在语言形式中成为显赫范畴并扩展至其他范畴的表达,哪些范畴在语言中缺乏专用手段,要靠其他手段来表达,这些库藏方面的语种差异使跨语言的形—义关系更加复杂,是语言类型的重要成因。类型学传统上主要从语义、语用范畴出发,看它们在语言形式中如何表达。语言库藏类型学关注语义语用范畴和形式手段的双向互动,尤其关注形式手段及其显赫性的差异对范畴表达的影响,并关注语言库藏差异中表现出来的语言共性。

This paper proposes linguistic inventory typology as an approach to linguistic typology.The proposed approach attempts to show how linguistic inventory shapes typological features of languages.It is argued that inventory diversities among languages,such as what kinds of means a language possesses,which semantic and pragmatic categories are prominent and powerful so that their formal means can expand to the denotation of other categories,and which categories are lacking special means and have to appeal to means for other categories to express,make the cross-linguistic form-meaning correspondence more complicated than it appears.Such differences among languages are important factors underlying language types.The current approaches in typology mainly begin with semantic and pragmatic categories and focus on the examination of how these categories are denoted with formal means.Linguistic inventory typology will pay more attention to the bidirectional interaction between semantic/pragmatic categories and formal means.The impact on denotation of categories imposed by the differences in inventory and category prominence among languages will be examined.In the meantime,attention also will be paid to universals behind the inventory diversity and the relationships between category expansion and the semantic map approach.