话本小说的叙事传统对现代汉语语法的影响

The Tradition of Chinese Storyteller Script and its Inheritance in Contemporary Chinese Narration and Grammar

传统小说多来自话本。作为讲述底本,话本在叙述程式和叙述视角上具有显著的现场性特点。从话语行为角度看,表现为故事讲述与言者评价交错;就叙述视角而言,表现为情节内人物视角与言者视角交错。这种叙事传统对后代叙事语体篇章的组织方式产生了重要影响。其影响主要表现在:(1)叙事语篇中有大量的为构建现场效应所采用的互动性表达。(2)体现叙述视角的语言形式不仅包括人称选择、元话语词汇选择,还包括一些具有人际互动功能的句式。(3)无论是情节的开启和转换,还是话题的建立、延续和转换,以及讲述行为与评价行为的切换等篇章框架标记,都大量来自以无主语形式呈现的小句,如言说动词小句、视觉动词小句和认识义动词小句,这种弱化的小句甚至可以理解为动词本身的虚化。

Most traditional Chinese novels are originated from the scripts for story-telling in face-to-face speech situation,which feature a salient sense of liveliness in terms of agenda and perspective of the narration. The story-telling scripts also reveal interactional natures in linguistic behaviors,such as the alternation of story-telling and assessment in terms of action,and the alternation of protagonist’s lens and speaker’s lens in terms of speaking perspective. Contemporary Chinese narration have inherited the tradition in the organization of narrative genre,which influences the following aspects. First,the interactional expressions are frequently used for constructing communication between story-teller and addressee in the narration. Second,the linguistic forms delivering speaker’s perspective are found including first person pronoun and second person pronoun alternation,meta-discourse lexical choices,and constructions for interactional communications. Third,text-frame markers largely originate from clauses without subjects,used for the start and transition of plot,for establishment,continuation and transition of topics,or for the transfer from telling to assessment. These markers include clauses with speech verbs,visual verbs,and evidential verbs. This kind of reduced clause can even be seen as a derivation of the verb in consequence of grammaticalization.