英汉语否定的句法探析

A Syntactic Study of Negation in English and Mandarin Chinese

本研究引入Rizzi(1990)的"空范畴原则",在Pollock(1989)所设想的"否定短语假说"理论框架下对英汉否定的句法表现做了考察。研究发现,英汉语否定的句法存在较大差异。英语的否定词not位于否定短语的中心语位置,而汉语的否定词"不"则位于否定短语的标志语位置。上述句法差异导致两种语言的否定句中时体与否定词的共现表现出一定的特殊性:英语否定句中,由于T无法降落,采用do-支撑来援救被搁浅的T;汉语否定句中则由于其否定短语(NegP)的中心语为空,体标记降落所留下的语迹无法得到恰当中心语管辖,以致"不"与(降落的)体标记无法共现。本研究不仅可以较好地处理英汉语否定相关的语言事实,而且还可以更好地解释两者之间的差异问题。

While introducing Rizzi(1990)’s revision of Empty Category Principle,this article explores the syntax of negation in both English and Chinese under the framework of the NegP Hypothesis formulated in Pollock(1989).The analysis indicates that the two languages differ from each other with respect to the position of negators:the negator not in English is base-generated in the head of NegP whereas its Chinese counterpart bu occupies the specifier of NegP.This difference gives rise to the language-specific behaviors concerning the co-occurrence of negator with tense and aspect markers.In English,due to the blocking effect of the Neg head not,the affixal tense markers cannot be lowered to the lexical verbs and do-support is thus applied to save the stranded tense.In Chinese,however,the head of NegP is empty and the Asp lowers to the verb,but the trace left by Asp-lowering cannot be properly governed by the Neg head then.Consequently,the negative marker bu is incompatible with the(lowered)Asp marker.It is concluded that this study offers a better empirical coverage of the negation facts in both languages and captures the cross-linguistic differences in the meantime.