格（形态）序列的构建与解读

The hierarchy of case and its interpretation

格是标记名词与动词、另一名词或附置词之间关系的语法范畴。本文旨在描写跨语言情境下不同类型格的优先程度。首先,研究在Blake(2001:1)定义的基础上确定了五条用于判定格与非格的标准,并依此标准调查了141种现代语言的格系统,得出了新的蕴涵等级:主格﹥宾格/施格﹥属格﹥与格﹥地点格/离格﹥工具格﹥向格﹥伴随格﹥其他。随后,文章对格序列进行了解读,认为格序列至少反映了格的三方面特征,即格标记的语法化程度、格自身的实义程度以及某一种格所常标记的句法成分与主动词之间的语义紧密度。最后,文章从频率和替换策略两个角度阐释了格序列共时与历时的对应。

Case is a grammatical category marking the relationship of a noun to a verb or a noun to an adposition.This paper aims at describing the prominence of cases.First,five criteria are set up to determine whether a case is‘case’by Blake’s(2001:1)definition.Case systems of 141 languages have been investigated under these criteria and a new hierarchy of cases is proposed:NOM>ACC/ERG>GEN>DAT>LOC/ABL>INST>ALLA>COM>others.Then the paper interprets the case hierarchy in three ways:1)It shows the degree of grammaticalization of case markers;2)It implies the degree of concreteness of cases;3)It indicates the semantic closeness between the typical syntactic component encoded by one case and the main verb.In the meantime,the article also explains the correspondence between the case hierarchy and the order of case decay from two perspectives:frequency of appearance and alternative strategies.