汉、外弱肯定性副词的词源及语义演变之比较

A Comparative Study of Weak Affirmative Adverbs in Chinese and Other Languages

考察汉语及多语种语料中的弱肯定性副词的词源以及语义演变的进程。研究显示,汉语中"能、许"和量化词"约、概"是弱肯定性副词的常见词源义,最主要的演变机制是通过重新分析和类比。多语种语料中弱肯定性情态副词主要以形容词性的"可能"语义为词源基础,影响较为广泛的演变路径主要是由包含功能性句法成分的句法结构或原本不在同一层次的相邻成分发展形成弱肯定性副词。这既反映了人类认知的共性,也揭示了不同语言在概念化和词汇化过程中的个性差异。

A comparative study is conducted to investigate the etymology and semantic evolution processes of weak affirmative adverbs in Chinese and multilingual corpus. It is claimed that while Chinese etymology involves permission and quantifiers, multilingual corpus demonstrates an overwhelming etymology of cer- tainty. It is also revealed that in the process of semantic evolution, the weak affirmative adverbs of both Chinese and foreign languages undergo the evolution path of reanalysis and analogy whereby adjacent func- tional constituents compose grammatical words. The study reflects not only the commonalities of human cognition, hut also the divergences of different languages in the process of conceptualization and lexicaliza- tion.