关于“主语”性质的理论思考——“主语”系列研究之一

Theoretical Reflections on the Nature of “Subject”

主语的性质是至今未解决的难题,汉语句子主语问题尤甚。本文通过讨论已有的关于"主-谓"的观点,提出区分"语句主语"和"句子主语",认为前者是言语使用层面的概念,而后者是语言分析层面的概念;两者可以一致,也可以不同,取决于语言交际的目的。其中,本文不仅强调说话人的言语编码,更着重强调听话人的逻辑解码作用。本文使用例句对此划分进行了初步的说明。

The nature of subject is a question presently unanswered satisfactorily, which is especially the case with the subject in Chi- nese sentences. After a review on the ideas currently available concerning the ＂subject-predicate＂ issue, this paper has proposed a distinction between ＂sentence subject＂ and ＂utterance subject＂, with the former being a concept at the level of speech event and the latter at the level of language analysis. The two subjects may or may not be the same, depending on the purpose of lan- guage communication. This paper attends to the speech encoding on the part of the speaker, but emphasizes even more the role of the hearer in decoding the logical relations of components in the utterance. Examples have been used for illustration of the distinc- tion made by the author.