标题中的量词省略及其理论解释

On ellipsis of measure words in headlines and its theoretical explanation

汉语新闻标题中常见省略量词的现象,形成诸如“三部门”这样的数名结构。本文发现这种省略的限制条件是:分类词可以被省略,而计量词不可以。这种限制可以由信息结构来解释,即分类词不引入额外信息,而计量词增加了额外的数信息或名词相关的信息到短语中。量词省略的动因源自作为一种语言特区的新闻标题的内在特点,即简洁干脆、凝练概括。省略分类词后形成的“数-名”结构与“数-量-名”结构在定指性上倾向不同,这为两种等义结构的并存提供了条件。其他语言也发现了标题量词省略现象,这说明语言特区是跨语言存在的。语言特区中的创新仅限于某一语言的个别语法规则,而无法突破普遍语法的要求。

It is common to omit measure words in Chinese news headlines,forming numeral-noun phrases such as san bumen“three departments”.This article finds that the restriction for this ellipsis is:classifiers can be omitted,but quantifiers cannot.This restriction can be accounted for by the information structure,that is,classifiers do not introduce additional information,while quantifiers add additional quantitative or noun-related information into phrases.The motivation for ellipsis of measure word stems from the inherent characteristics of news headline,one of special language domain,namely,conciseness and clarity.The numeral-noun phrase formed by classifier ellipsis is different from the numeral-classifier-noun phrase in definiteness,which provides conditions for the coexistence of these two semantically-equivalent structures.The ellipsis of classifiers in news headline has also been found in other languages,which shows that special language domain exists across languages.The innovation in special language domain is limited to particular grammatical rules of a language,but it cannot break through the requirements of universal grammar.