距离象似性——句法结构最基本的性质

Distance iconicity:A fundamental attribute of syntactic formation

本文侧重考察“距离象似性”原则在决定语言形式中所起的塑造或制约作用。文章对“距离象似性”及相关理论概念的起源、发展和表现形式作了全面的梳理,提出“距离象似性”是语言单位“组块”的基础,在大量跟形态、句法和话语结构相关的语言表现形式上起着重要的塑造和制约作用。本文考察的语言形式包括语法虚词(如汉语“的”)及英语有关介词的用法、词缀与词根的距离远近及两者关系的疏密、多项式状语和定语组成部分的相对顺序、句子成分之间关系的松紧等等,其中涉及的语言意义,既有语义、语用和认知意义,也有体现话语信息流特征的信息结构意义。结论是,语言成分形式上的紧密程度和意义上的紧密程度两者之间,存在高度的正相关。本文揭示的语言规律表明,在语言成分的意义与形式两者关系的问题上,象似性原则具有强大的解释能力,能概括、说明和预测许多重要的语言现象。

This article investigates the role of“distance iconicity”and the constraints it induced in the formation of linguistic forms.After reviewing the occurrence,development and features of the concept of“distance iconicity”and other related theoretical concepts,this article demonstrates how the principle of iconicity underlies the“chunking”of linguistic units,and plays a determinative role in the formation of morphological,syntactic and discourse structures.The linguistic phenomena under scrutiny in this article include uses of common grammatical words like de的in Chinese,prepositions in English,linear distance between lexical roots and affixes,the order of adjuncts and attributives in relation to their heads,and affinity between components of a sentence.The iconicity in relation with semantics,pragmatics,cognition and information structure is also discussed.Patterns and regularities revealed in this paper demonstrate that,there is a positive correlation between the closeness in meaning and the closeness in form.This indicates that the principle of iconicity can effectively explain and predict the formation of linguistic structures.