“自然焦点”有多“自然”?——从汉语方式状语的焦点结构地位说起

Is a Natural Focus Natural Enough?

本文主要探讨方式状语在汉语句子中的焦点结构地位,并由此反思句法结构与焦点分布之间的"常规对应关系"问题。文章首先回顾了前人对于状语成分焦点地位的论争,指出用句法规则确认"自然焦点"位置的做法并不可靠;然后通过重音语感调查和焦点投射分析,讨论了方式状语在中性语境中充当句子焦点的倾向性和标记性问题,进而论证:汉语句子中既不存在语法化了的固定"自然焦点"位置,也不存在"尽量将信息焦点置于句末"的词序策略;最后,文章还分析了以往研究之所以普遍认同"句末是自然焦点位置"的可能原因。

This paper discusses the status of manner adverbials in the focus structure of sentences and tries to prove that there is no direct correlation between syntactic struc- ture and focus distribution in Chinese. The paper begins with a review of previous contro- versy about how manner adverbials influence the focus structure, and points out that it is unreliable to predict the position of focus from syntactic structure. Through as mall-scale judgment survey and a focus projection analysis, it shows that manner adverbials tend to attract focus even in a neutral context. In addition, it argues that there is no fixed position for the so-called ＂natural focus＂ in Chinese sentences, and that Chinese does not show a tendency to put information focus at the end of a sentence. Finally, it offers an account of why previous studies generally believed that ＂the end of a sentence is the default position for focus＂.