抽象回指的指称内容与可及性研究——以“这”和“这件事”为例

A study on the referential contents and accessibility of abstract anaphora:Using zhe and zhe jian shi as illustrations

抽象回指是先行语为句子性成分的一种回指现象。汉语中常见的抽象回指形式包括指示代词和名词短语。本文以“这”和“这件事”为例,讨论抽象回指的先行语确认策略、不同回指形式的指称差异及其可及性规律表现。抽象回指的先行语范围具有一定的模糊性,但管领词可作为一种有效的语言形式线索帮助确认其范围。在此基础上,通过分析先行语的语义类型与不同回指形式出现的句法环境,发现“这”偏好指称纯抽象类和状态类的先行语,而“这件事”倾向于指称个体性更强的事件类先行语。这种选择限制倾向使“这”和“这件事”并不符合基于个体回指提出的可及性规律,这是由于可及性的高低会受到先行语语义类型的影响:语义内容越抽象,可及性越低,但为了减轻认知负担,又需要使用可及性更高的回指形式尽快完成指称。

anaphora,a specific discourse anaphora phenomenon,has received much attention in the literature.Common forms of abstract anaphora in Mandarin Chinese include demonstrative pronouns and noun phrases.Taking zhe(这)and zhe jian shi(这件事)as examples,this study focuses on the antecedent recognition strategy of abstract anaphora,as well as the referential differences and the accessibility of different anaphora forms.It is found that although the antecedent boundary of abstract anaphora is fuzzy,the governors can function as effective clues of linguistic forms,which can facilitate the identification of the scope of the antecedents.Regarding the selection of anaphora form,a comprehensive analysis of the semantic types of the anaphora and the syntactic environment in which anaphora forms appear suggests that zhe tends to refer to pure abstract and state-based antecedents,while zhe jian shi prefers to refer to events.This strong tendency of selective restriction means zhe and zhe jian shi do not conform to the accessibility rules in discourse distance,anaphor forms and syntactic salience.A variety of statistical analyses of anaphora performance further reveal that evaluation indexes of accessibility are affected by the semantic types of antecedents.Since the more semantically abstract antecedent has lower accessibility,it needs to be referred back as soon as possible in order to reduce the cognitive burden of anaphora process and,hence,requires the anaphora form with higher accessibility.