汉语不及物动词论元句法性质比较的fMRI研究

An fMRI Study on the Comparison of Argument Syntactic Properties of Mandarin Intransitive Verbs

汉语不及物动词在论元句法性质层面有无二分存在理论分歧。本文借助fMRI技术,在多角度优化Wang等(2021)实验设计的基础上,比较汉语隐性非宾格结构和非作格结构加工时的脑区激活情况。汉语受事主语结构是被实验证实了的句法移位派生结构,将其与其他两种结构比较,能有效说明汉语非宾格动词和非作格动词论元句法性质是否存在差异。实验结果表明,汉语受事主语结构与其他两种结构相比,在左脑额下回和左脑顶下叶引起了更强激活;汉语隐性非宾格和非作格结构互相比较无显著性差异。左脑额下回反映了汉语受事主语结构的句法移位操作,左脑顶下叶反映了受事题元与主语句法位置对应关系的再分析过程。上述实验结果表明,汉语隐性非宾格结构不是与受事主语结构类似的派生结构,而是与非作格结构类似的基础生成结构;汉语非宾格动词的客体论元不是与受事论元类似的内论元,而是与施事论元类似的外论元。从fMRI实验结果提供的证据看,汉语不及物动词在论元句法性质层面可能不存在二分。

It has been argued by most previous theoretical and empirical studies that there is a dichotomy between intransitive verbs in the syntactic properties of argument in several languages,but debate has arisen regarding whether this is the case in Mandarin,a language with relatively poor morphology and has two word orders for unaccusative verbs.Some studies(Shen 2006,2018) hold that the syntactic features of Mandarin unaccusative verbs and unergative verbs are similar,and there is no dichotomy between these two kinds of Mandarin intransitive verbs in terms of argument syntactic properties.However,other studies(Han 2019) hold that Mandarin intransitive verbs are divided into unaccusative verbs and unergative verbs in terms of argument syntactic properties.The argument of Mandarin unaccusative verbs is the internal argument,and the argument of Mandarin unergative verbs is the external argument.Although the surface forms are all NP-V,the argument in the deep structures has undergone a syntactic movement from the internal argument,as opposed to the Mandarin unergative structures of unaccusative verbs.In the face of these theoretical disagreements mentioned above,this paper compares the activation of brain regions during the processing of deep unaccusative structure and unergative structure in Mandarin with the help of fMRI,optimizing the experimental design of Wang et al.(2021) from multiple perspectives.The patient-subject structure is a derived structure experiencing a movement,which has been proved by empirical research.It is effective to compare it with the other two structures when exploring whether there is a dichotomy between Mandarin unaccusative and unergative verbs in the argument syntactic property.The results of the present research showed that the patient-subject structure induced stronger activation significantly in the left inferior frontal gyrus and left inferior parietal lobe compared with the other two structures.There is no significant difference between deep unaccusative and unergative constructions in Mandarin.The left inferior frontal gyrus reflects the syntactic movement of the patient-subject structure,and the left parietal inferior lobe reflects the reanalysis of the correspondence between patient thematic role and the syntactic position of external argument.The above experimental results and analysis show that the Mandarin deep unaccusative structure is not a derivative structure similar to the patient-subject structure,but a base-generated structure similar to the unergative structure.The theme argument of Mandarin unaccusative verbs is not an internal argument similar to the patient one,but an external argument similar to the agent one.The evidence provided by the fMRI experimental results suggests that there might not be a dichotomy between Mandarin intransitive verbs in the syntactic property of argument.