“你吃了没”及语言变化

"Have you eaten?"and language change

陈融(Chen 2019a)将陕西某郊县方言中的招呼语“你吃了没”分析为构式(Goldberg 1995,2006)。张韧(2020)不同意我的构式说,认为“你吃了没”是语言在语境中增容的结果。本文首先讨论两者之间的分歧,指出张文使用了不同的语料,并对Chen(2019a)的概念进行了转换。在此基础上,本文对构式说和增容说的优劣进一步梳理,然后对语言变化的宏观进程提出新的看法,认为增容和构式不是相反的概念,而是语言变化渐变连续体的起点和终点。

Chen(2019a)proposed that the greeting utterance"Have you eaten?"(nichilemei)is a construction per Gold-berg(1995,2006).Zhang Ren(2020)disputes my analysis,arguing instead that the utterance is the result of semantic augmentation.In this article,I revisit the issue,demonstrating that the construction analysis provides a more plausible account than the augmentation analysis.Crucially,I further propose that augmentation and construction are not opposing notions.They are better seen as the beginning and end points of a language change continuum.A language unit gets aug-mented in use,some of which is entrenched,leading the unit to become a construction.