苏美尔语施通配置研究

A study of Ergativity in Sumerian

有关施格现象的研究是当今语言学一个蓬勃发展的领域。苏美尔语是迄今为止人类发现的最古老的书面语言,也是有文字记载的最古老的施通格配置语言。自从Foxvog(1975)和Michalowski(1980)的开创性工作以来,学界对苏美尔语的施通配置现象愈发关注,但基本仅限于形态的施通配置,而其是否具有句法施通配置在很大程度上仍不清楚。我们试图填补这一空白,尝试从类型学的角度证明苏美尔语虽然在形态上具有明显的施通配置,但在句法层面却并没有施通配置的结构证据。我们借助类型学研究发现的,存在于人类语言中能够证明句法施通配置的各种结构证据,证明苏美尔语缺乏句法层面的施通配置,并由此讨论关于施通配置的历时演变问题。

The study of ergativity emerges as a thriving field for linguistic research.Sumerian is the oldest written language ever discovered and the oldest ergative language ever attested to.Since the seminal work of Foxvog(1975)and Michalowski(1980),academic circles have paid increasing attention to Sumerian ergativity,but it is essentially limited to morphological ergativity,and whether there is syntactic ergativity remains largely unknown.We attempt to fill this gap and prove from the perspective of typology that Sumerian has an obvious ergative alignment in morphology,but there is no structural evidence for an ergative alignment at the syntactic level.Using various structural evidence found in human languages that can support a syntactic ergative alignment,we prove that Sumerian lacks ergative alignment at the syntactic level and further discuss the diachronic development of ergativity.