寄生范畴:源于语法库藏限制条件的语义范畴

Parasitic categories: Semantic categories resulting from constraints on the use of grammatical forms

"寄生范畴"是在语言库藏类型学框架下库藏手段和语义范畴的一种非直接对应现象,即由于表达甲范畴的库藏手段在使用中存在语义条件乙的限制,因此语义乙也在该手段中得到隐性表达,成为寄生于甲范畴的语义范畴。本文先简述古今汉语中的三个寄生范畴实例:现代汉语复数标记"们"寄生生命度范畴,析取连词"或者"和"还是"寄生陈述—疑问的语气范畴,先秦汉语情态动词"可"寄生表被动的态范畴。文章主体着重考察了在多种方式类副词、表时间起点的介词连词和相对时间域名词寄生事态或时态范畴的情况,并比较了其他语言中的某些类似情况。论文最后总结了寄生范畴区别于语法库藏的目标范畴的一些特点,并讨论了寄生范畴现象的理论意义和对语言库藏类型学的推动。

Parasitic category, a term within the framework of Linguistic Inventory Typology, refers to a type of phenomenon characterized by an indirect match between form and meaning. That is, a grammatical form used for one certain semantic category is incidentally susceptible to another seemingly irrelevant condition, and thus implicitly expresses the latter in a parasitic manner. In other words, it lodges itself on the former syntactic-semantic category as its host.First, the paper presents three cases of parasitic categories in contemporary and classical Chinese: the plural marker-men with animacy lodged, the disjunctive conjunctions huozhe and haishi( for declarative and interrogative clauses respectively) with mood( speech acts) lodged, and the modal verb ke in archaic Chinese with passive voice lodged.Then it discusses in detail the tense-aspect-mood category lodged in several classes of functional words, including manner adverbs denoting increment, frequency and speed, temporal source adpositions and conjunctions, and relative time nouns, and then compares them with some parallel phenomena in other languages. Last, the paper summarizes some characteristics of parasitic categories as different from target categories denoted by grammatical inventory, and illustrates the theoretical significance of the parasitic categories and their implications to Linguistic Inventory Typology.