多语种汉外对比视角下的汉语“们”

A multi-lingual contrastive study of the Chinese-men

关于汉语“们”是否为复数标记,其研究通常以默认的方式参照英语复数标记-s,但学界目前对-s的分布和语义描写尚欠全面,且忽略了汉语是量词语言这一基本事实。通过汉英对比以及汉语与世界上其他六种量词语言的对比,本研究发现主要有二:1)英语中复数语义与复数形态并非严格对应,不应以-s作为标准参照物为汉语的“们”定性;2)虽与英语-s存在本质性差异,但“们”却符合量词语言中复数标记的基本特征。本研究旨在拓展“们”的研究视野,加深对汉英复数共性与差异的了解,明晰对“们”语法属性的认识,揭示其他六种量词语言中复数标记的基本特征。

Previous studies investigating whether or not the Chinese-men is a plural marker usually take the English plural suffix-s as the reference by default.However,descriptions of the distribution and the semantics of-s are not sufficient in these studies,and a basic fact that is not taken into consideration is that Chinese is a classifier language.By contrasting Chinese with English and other 6 classifier languages in the world,the present study found that:1)plural morphology is not always associated with plural meaning in English,thus-s should not be considered to be a standard reference in deciding whether or not-men is a plural marker;and 2)though essentially different from the English-s,the Chinese-men shares many features with plural markers in other classifier languages.This study intends to provide a wider perspective for the further discussion of-men,a deeper examination of the similarities and differences between the Chinese-men and the English-s,a clearer identification of the grammatical role of the Chinese-men,and a better understanding of the basic features of plural markers existing in the other 6 classifier languages.