规约优先 兼顾能产——语言使用的搭配优先模式

Ensuring both Conventionality and Productivity:The Collocation-as-the-Default Model of Language Use

现代语言研究主要关注语言的能产性,对其规约性则关注不足,致使相关理论无法还原语言使用全貌。本研究从基于使用语言理论的基本原则出发,对搭配进行理论化,认为搭配亦为构式,与抽象语法构式并存,共建语言能力。在此基础上,本文提出搭配构式优先,兼顾语法构式的语言使用模式,旨在解释语言使用的一般情况,并为二语学习提供参考。根据该模式,语法构式是以搭配构式为核心,包含其它近义或近形词组的原型范畴;在交际需要驱动下,搭配构式受语境驱动,因加工优势率先用出,仅在缺乏现成搭配构式时,语法构式才被调用。语法构式使用遵循语义兼容原则,从而实现规约性和能产性的统一。

Modern language research primarily focuses on productivity, with conventionality largely ignored, thereby depriving relevant linguistic theories of the ability to properly account for real-life language use. On the basis of the basic principles of usage-based linguistics, the present study intends to theorize collocation, the very source of conventionality, contending that collocations are also constructions which coexist with abstract grammatical constructions to build the language ability. Language is thus argued to be so represented that grammatical constructions are prototypical categories with collocational constructions forming their core. The collocation-as-the default model is proposed accordingly, which states that collocational constructions are the default in language use with grammatical constructions being only complementary. Specifically, driven by communicative intention, collocational constructions are contextually primed and accessed due to their processing advantage. Only when collocational constructions fail are grammatical constructions set in motion by analogy. When grammatical constructions are executed, the semantic compatibility principle comes into play to ensure conventionality. In so doing, both conventionality and productivity are guaranteed in the model. Implications of the model are also discussed for L2 learning and teaching.