先秦汉语的话题标记和主语-话题之别

Topic Markers in Classic Chinese and Distinctions between Subject and Topic

本文以《论语》《左传》二书的穷尽性统计分析为基本语料,考察先秦汉语最常用的话题标记"也",兼及"者",以此进一步探讨主语和话题的关系。经考察,先秦汉语话题标记的各类用法符合话题的指称和信息属性,但话题标记几乎从不用于典型事件性谓语的施事,这一点跟日、韩、彝、景颇等语言和现代汉语及其方言等话题标记发达的语言都不同,这些语言方言都有施事带话题标记的现象。而主语恰恰以事件的施事为最原型的语义角色,很多语言中话题性强的成分因为施事性不够而不能充句法上的主语。本文借鉴判断类型理论和信息结构理论,说明以施事为原型的主语跟事件性谓语是无标记匹配;而作为已知信息的话题跟属性谓语是更自然的匹配。主语和话题可以交叉,但也常相互分离。先秦汉语话题标记将话题这一普遍倾向强化为对事件谓语的排斥,比其他语言更加凸显主语和话题的区别。

Mainly based on data of the full texts of Lunyu(《论语》The Confusion Analects)and Zuozhuan(《左传》), this paper examines the use of ye(也), the most frequent topic marker in Pre-Qin classic Chinese, supplemented with a brief touch on zhe(者), another topic marker in classic Chinese. The paper then revisits theoretical issues concerning the subject-topic relations. A major observation is that various usages of topic markers are well in accordance with the referential and information status of topics whereas Pre-Qin topic markers almost never applied to the semantic role of agent in the subject slot, unlike the case of Japanese, Korean, Yi and Jingpo, in which no such a constraint is found on the agenthood of subject, and agent-subjects with topic markers can be readily attested. By contrast, the agent of an event is the prototypical semantic role of subject. In many languages, elements with strong topicality but poor agenthood are inhibited from occurring as a syntactic subject. In the light of the theories of judgment types and information structure, the paper makes the generalization that subject, with agent as its proto-typical role, and stage-level predicate, together constitute an unmarked match, so do the topic as given information and an individual-level predicate. Subject and topic can overlap with each other, but often separate as well. The universal tendency of topic is particularly strong in Pre-Qin Chinese as to rule out the stage-level predicate in sentences with a topic marker. Therefore, Pre-Qin Chinese exhibits the distinctions between subject and topic more explicitly than most of other languages.