集盖说一定必要吗?——谈集盖说在语义研究中的应用及其局限性

Is the Notion of Cover Necessary:Another Look at the Application of Cover in Semantic Studies and Its Potential Problems

本文对集盖说的形成动因及其实际应用时的问题进行梳理,指出集盖说可能允准实际不存在的解读,且无法准确刻画句子的所有可能解读。基于这些问题,本文进一步以"都1"为着眼点提出替代方案"隐形论元说",即适用集盖的"都"字句皆涉及非典型集合性谓语,此类谓语语义包含隐形论元x。据此,相关的语言现象仍可视作基于个体的分配,且通过调节x的取值可以得到相关句子的所有可能解读。相比集盖说,运用隐形论元说得到的语义解释更精确、更全面。

This article discusses the theoretical and empirical problems induced by the notion of cover. Based on the data of English and Chinese, it is argued that covers can bring forth contextually possible yet actually unavailable readings and cannot countenance all the accessible readings of certain sentences. Instead, the implicit argument approach is proposed as a better alternative to covers. Through the postulation of an implicit argument, cover-based distribution is converted into atom-based distribution, which thus renders the cover-based approach unnecessary. Moreover, by adjusting the value assignment of the implicit argument, all the possible readings of distributive dou-sentences （ including the intermediate readings） can be successfully derived. In Chinese, dou is argued in Lin （1998） to be the overt instantiation of a generalized distributive operator over covers. However, language facts show that dou primarily distributes over atoms, and that in some cases, cover-based distribution is inaccessible even with strong contextual support. Moreover, we observe that cover-based distribution only applies to a limited set of predicates.