等级性、量级结构与“很+名词”结构的语义分析——兼谈名形转换的语义基础

Gradability,Scale Structure,and the Semantics of“hen+NP”Construction

文章考察和"很+名词"结构相关的几个问题:(1)名词与"很"组合的语义基础是什么?(2)为何不同名词与"很"组合的能力存在差异?(3)名词与形容词在语义上的重合与差异。文章指出名词的等级性是它们与"很"组合的语义基础。名词的等级性源自名词所指对象在各维度上和原型的平均相似度。依据平均相似度计算方式的不同,名词内部可以划分出两个次类:(1)"加法相似性"名词,这类名词范畴的确立基于个体在各维度上和原型相似度的加权和;(2)"乘法相似性"名词,这类名词范畴的确立基于个体在各维度上和原型相似度的加权积。前者比后者更容易受到量级压制,因而更容易生成可以被"很"作用的量级结构。名词和形容词对应于不同的测量尺度:名词对应于定序测量,而形容词对应于定差或定比测量。这一分析准确预测到了形容词转换为名词是无标记的,但名词转换为形容词需要通过"量级压制"等有标记手段实现。

The article investigates the"hen+NP"construction,with a view to answering three questions:(i)why nouns can be modified by the degree word hen‘very’?(ii)why certain nouns are more liable to be modified by h?n than others,and(iii)what are the semantic commonalities and differences between nouns and adjectives?We propose that gradability in the nominal domain is responsible for nouns being modified by hen.Nominal gradability is resulted from the categorization of nouns,i.e.,the averaged similarity of an entity to the prototype category along different dimensions.Two categorization processes are identified:for the nouns related to social life or human propensity,their dimensions are relatively independent,and the categorization is based on weighted sum of the set of similarities along different dimensions,while for the nouns related to natural objects,their dimensions are interrelated,and the categorization is based on weighted product.The former,but not the latter,are more liable to be coerced by scale structure,and consequently,more liable to be modified by hen.Though both nouns and adjectives denote scale structures,they are associated with different levels of measurement:nouns are associated with ordinal measurement,while adjectives are associated with interval(or ratio)measurement,which can express the difference in degrees between entities.This analysis correctly predicts that the"Adj-to-N’shift is unmarked,while the shift from a noun to adjective‘N-to-Adj’is through marked,coerced means.