英汉动源介词语法化特征探微

A Probe into the Grammaticalization Features of Verb-rooted Prepositions in Chinese and English

介词范畴并非完全封闭,汉、英两种语言的介词都有成员来自动词。不过,汉语介词大多数来自动词,而英语介词只有一小部分来自动词,大部分来自副词。汉、英动词向介词语法化过程中的共性是两者都经历了语法关系和语音减弱等变化;差异性在于英语介词经历了句法位置以及拼写、屈折形态等的变化,汉语则没有。动、介词语法化是动词不断扩大词语搭配范围和句法使用范围而导致的,也是语言使用者在经济原则制约下发挥突显、隐喻和范畴化等基本认知能力而产生的。

The preposition category is not closed completely. There exists a phenomenon that some prepositions have evolved from verbs in both Chinese（C） and English （E） languages. While a large number of C prepositions come from verbs, only a few E prepositions do so. The majority of E prepositions have grammaticalized from adverbs. The commonality between the verb-rooted preposition grammaticalizing processes in C and E lies in the change of grammatical relationship and phonetic erosion. The difference lies in the fact that verbs in English have experienced the change of syntactic position and spelling to become prepositions. In short, verb-rooted prepositions result from the process in which verbs are getting larger collocation scope and more syntactic positions. Meanwhile, these prepositions result from language users＇ application of such cognitive abilities as prominence, metaphor and categorization.