对焦点敏感的结构及焦点的语义解释(上)

Focus-sensitive constructions and the interpretation of focus

“焦点”一直是国外语义学家的重点研究课题,但我国在这方面的研究较少。本文先介绍对焦点敏感的几种结构,然后讨论对焦点进行解释的五个理论框架,其中有句法的,也有语义的。句法的有焦点逻辑形式移位理论。语义的有双重表现理论、代换法、选项语义学和原位约束语义学,而这几个框架的差别在于它们在焦点的语义表达式中如何处理焦点和背景成分:双重表现理论同时对焦点和背景两个部分进行运算;代换法只对焦点进行运算;选项语义学对整个命题进行运算,既不涉及焦点,也不涉及背景;而原位约束语义学则只对背景部分进行运算。由于这些框架对焦点的解释时都有一定的问题。我们最后介绍Krifka的混合语义分析法。

This paper discusses the following two important issues in contemporary linguistics; (a) association with focus, and (b) the semantic frameworks of focus representation. We will first discuss different focus-sensitive constructions recognized in the previous literature (Dretske 1972; Hajicova 1984; Sgall, Hajicova and Panevov6 1986; Partee 1991; Rooth 1995, etc.). Then we summarize different syntactic and semantic frameworks for the interpretation of focus. The syntactic one is usually referred to as the Focus LF Movement approach (Chomsky 1977). The semantic ones, which are characterized by their different ways of accessing focus and the background, include the following four; (a) Double Access Theory (Jackendoff 1972, etc. ), operating on both focus and the background; (b) Replacive Theory (Pulman 1997), operating on focus only; (c) Alternative Semantics (Rooth 1985, 1992, 1995), operating on the entire proposition, which involves no direct access to focus or the background; and (d) In - Situ Binding Semantics (Kratzer 1991; Wold 1996), operating on the background only. Krifka (1997) shows that none of the above frameworks can assign correct interpretation to sentences involving 'only', which leads him to propose a hybrid framework of focus interpretation. Under his framework, association with focus involves two separate processes; (1) direct association of focus - sensitive operators (FO) with focus phrases, which observes the island constraints thus modeled by LF Movement; and (2) indirect association of FO' s with focus via Alternative Semantics.