语言的共性与差异性：国外语言学界的一场讨论(2009-2010)

A Review of the debate on universality and diversity of language in 2009-2010

共性还是差异性?这是语言学界争论已久的话题。面对越来越多的跨语言事实,功能类型学者认为,所谓共性本是子虚乌有,差异性才是语言的本质属性。生成语言学者则坚信存在普遍语法。这样的争论不仅是由于有定义的分歧,即双方对什么是语言共性有不同理解,而且获得语言共性的途径也有不同,或是在跨语言事实的基础上进行归纳或是基于个别语言进行抽象和演绎。总之,争论反映出双方对语言理论、事实、和研究方法的不同态度。本文对国际语言学界近两年关于这一问题的争论进行评述。

This paper gives a detailed introduction and discussion on a heated debate in2009-2010 among linguists from different schools and background targeting the influential paper by Evans and Levinson(2009),with a focus on universality and diversity of language.Functional typologists,with the availability of more and more cross-linguistic data,hold that languages in the world are inherently diversified,such that there are no significant universal properties shared among all languages,contrary to generative linguists' belief.Such controversy arises mainly from their different notions of what count as language universals/universal grammar,and whether and how data from different languages should be abstracted in order to derive universals from them.