词库应该是什么样的?——基于生物语言学的思考

What Should the Lexicon Be Like?——A Biolinguistic Perspective

本文认为,包括最简方案在内的主流理论有关词库的观念与生物语言学有所背离,尤其不符合语言作为一个晚出而且突发的系统所应有的特性。本文从生物语言学角度对词库应该具有的内容和形式进行了反思,认为它应该是非生成性的,为此应该把句法推导的起点前移到没有内部结构的语素上,通过句法推导得出词的主要特性,并通过句法后的形态规则派生出词与短语的差异部分,同时还应大力压缩词库所规定的内容,包括词根的语类特征,谓词的论元结构,以及各种屈折变化形式,等等。

The present paper argues that mainstream theories in contemporary linguistics, including the dominant Minimalist Program, are flawed in their conceptions of the lexicon, especially in view of the perceived fact that language is a recent and emergent system. We provide an alternative anti-lexicalist view, as in Distributed Morphology （ DM）, on the content and form of the lexicon, such that it should not be generative, but rather should consist of a static list of morphemes accessible to syntactic computation; morphology in the traditional sense should be post-syntactic instead of pre-syntactic. Many stipulated features and categories should be purged from the lexicon, such as categorial features, argument structure, and the inventory of the inflected forms of the lexical verb.