情态与非情态

Modality and Non-Modality

在语言学的情态研究中,一些学者认为语言中存在情态与非情态意义的区别。然而,也有学者认为,语言中每一个句子都是情态句,实际上否定了非情态范畴的存在。本文将从传统与功能情态观多维视角,结合英、汉双语实例分析,对否定非情态的观点提出质疑,并论证在英语和汉语中区分情态与非情态句的合理性。本文指出:情态与非情态是两个彼此依存并相互补充的语义—语法范畴,构成了一个由现实至非现实的语义连续统。情态与非情态之间的语义对比,区分了说话人对现实情境的客观陈述与对非现实情境的主观判断,而两者之间的语义转化与融合,可以解释诸如"否定"、"习惯"、"将来"等混合情态意义,甚至还能构建出像"现实情境的非现实性"或"非现实情境的现实性"这样复杂的矛盾概念。然而,每句皆情态的情态泛化观只会使情态陷入无法有效界定的混乱之中。

in the studies of linguistic modality, some scholars draw a distinction between modal and non-modal meanings, but there are also some scholars who consider every sentence to be modal, and thus disprove the existence of non-modality. From a multi-dimensional perspective of the traditional and functional theories of modality and also through an analysis of both Eng- lish and Chinese language data,this paper contests the point that there is no non-modality and attempts to justify the distinction between modal and non-modal sentences. The paper suggests that modality and non-modality are two interdependent and mutu- ally complementary semantic-grammatical categories and together constitute a reality-irreality cline. The contrast between mo- dal and non-modal meanings distinguishes a speaker＇ s objective statement of a factual event from his or her subjective judge- ment of a non-factual event, and the meaning transfer or overlap between modal and non-modal sentences can shed light on such hybrid modality as ＂habit＂, ＂future＂ ,＂ negation＂, etc ,and can even express some very contradictory meanings like＂ irre- ality involved in a factual event＂ or ＂reality involved in a non-factual event＂. However, the viewpoint that every sentence is modal can only make modality too confusing to be effectively defined.