语法惊异——论语言戏剧化的认知情感机制

Grammatical Surprise:On the Cognitive-affective Mechanism of Linguistic Dramaticity

在日常生活中,戏剧化的语言呈现令人惊的事件、表达强烈的情感体验。那么戏剧化的语言有哪些特征?其戏剧性又从何而来呢?继“戏剧化语言”这一概念提出以来,汉语语言学界对相关现象的研究不断深入,不仅分析了语言戏剧性在汉语词汇句法上的表现,而且从戏曲审美和戏剧语言的角度发掘、论述了汉语特有的戏剧化模式与手段。这些研究成果进一步深化拓展了语言主观性研究的理论视野。同时,戏剧化语言作为一个理论构建还有待进一步界定和锤炼。本文拟从信息的情感认知层面探讨语言的戏剧性和戏剧化机制,提出“语法惊异”这一理论构建,即创造性的语法逾矩所产生的惊异情感认知体验在语言体系中的凝结、更新、再创造。我们认为,语法惊异作为戏剧性语言的心理基础,在理论上补充了先前提出的以认知显著性和情感表达力为标志的戏剧化语言命题。文章以汉语、英语和德语为例,从语法惊异的视角阐释语言戏剧性的具身性,并探讨语言类型学特征对语法惊异编码的制约。

In everyday communication,dramatized language represents striking events and expresses intense emotions.Since the introduction of the concept of"dramatized discourse",research on drama and dramaticity in the Chinese language has advanced significantly.Scholars have not only identified and analyzed various lexical grammatical devices of linguistic dramaticity in Chinese,but have also uncovered and explained a unique isomorphic connection between theatrical forms in traditional Chinese performing art and grammatical structures used to depict dramatic events.These novel insights have expanded the theoretical scope of research on linguistic subjectivity and prompted new inquiries into dramatized language as a theoretical construct.This article delves deeper into the cognitive-affective mechanisms of linguistic dramaticity.We introduce the concept of"grammatical surprise",which refers to the experience of surprise resulting from the creative and often intentional violation of linguistic conventions within a language community.These conventions encompassg grammatical rules,co-occurrence norms pragmatic habits,and more.The concept of grammatical surprise draws from the psychology of surprise,a basic emotion arising from"prediction error"in information processing whereby incoming information clashes with our established cognitive schemas that shape our expectations and assumptions about the world.Linguistic conventions are integral to our cognitive schemas,governing our linguistic behavior and establishing expectations for how we process others'linguistic behavior.Unexpected encounters with rule-violating expressions in language use prompt processing errors and take us by surprise.We argue that grammatical surprise forms the experiential and embodied foundation of linguistic dramaticity and dramatization.Grammatical surprise enhances our understanding of linguistic dramaticity in terms of cognitive salience and emotive expressiveness-two previously articulated features of linguistic dramaticity.Using examples from Chinese,English,and German,we demonstrate that in Chinese,and to some extent in English as well,grammatical constructions crystalized as devices of dramaticity through grammatical surprise exploit the typological characteristic of the grammar not being strictly bound by morphosyntactic constraints.To be specific,linguistic dramaticity is achieved by pushing the limits of local syntactic rules and collocational conventions.By contrast,German,a language with limited morphosyntactic flexibility,prioritizes syntactic transparency over grammatical surprise and is less tolerant of its occurrence.The article also discusses diachronic aspects of linguistic dramaticity as seen in the conventionalization of grammatical surprise and concludes with suggestions of future directions.