叙实性及其漂移:来自三类汉语动词的证据

Factivity and its floating:Evidence from three types of Mandarin verbs

本文以真值预设来界定“叙实性”,在厘清叙实性概念的基础上,讨论叙实性与真实性、现实性、将来时、情态、虚拟等范畴的关系。按照是否预设其补足语命题为真或假,动词可分为叙实和非叙实两类,其中的叙实动词又有预设真值“为真”与“为假”之别,为真者称为正叙实,为假者称为反叙实。然而,正叙实、反叙实、非叙实这三类动词中都存在一些例外,本文称之为“漂移”。漂移与动词所带补足语的句法复杂度有关。本文以“忘记”“怀疑”“假装”这三个汉语动词为例进行分析,发现动词在表现出正叙实/反叙实性(即存在真值预设)时,其补足语的句法结构较为复杂;在表现出非叙实性(即不存在真值预设)时,其补足语的句法结构相对简单。该发现得到英语相关现象的验证。

This paper defines"factivity"in terms of truth presupposition and discusses the relationship between factivity and truth,reality,future tense,modality,and subjunctive mood based on the clarification of the concept of factivity.Verbs can be classified as factive and non-factive according to whether they presuppose their complement propositions to be true or false;one that presupposes the complement proposition to be true is a factive verb,while one that presupposes it to be false is anti-factive.However,there are exceptions,which are called"floating"in this paper,among all three types of verbs:factive,non-factive,and anti-factive.Floating relates to the syntactic complexity of the verb's complement.This study analyses three Mandarin verbs,wangji‘forget’,huaiyi‘doubt/suspect’,and jiazhuang pretend',and finds that when the verb is factive/anti-factive(i.e.having a truth presupposition),the syntactic structure of its complement is complex;when it is non-factive(i.e.having no truth presupposition),the syntactic structure of its complement is simple.This observation is also supported by related phenomena in English.