（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）英汉语完成体语法化比较研究.pdf

ma thesis ningbo university - i - 英汉语完成体语法化比较研究 摘 要 完成体是语言学研究中一个焦点问题。在英汉两种语言学中，研究者从不同的方 面分别对英汉语言中的完成体进行过较为深入的探讨。其中，利用具体语料的跨语言 研究（comrie, 1976; dahl, 1985；smith, 1991；bhat, 1999 等）通过对各种语言中完成 体的详细描写和哲学分析，确立了完成体是语言学中的普遍性概念，这对正确描述完 成体有着重要的意义。然而，共时平面的“完成体”现象离开历时的发展往往不能得 到完整的解释。因此语言研究者试图从另一视角语法化角度对共时平面的完成体 范畴作出合理的解释（hopper heine, 1997）。但在英语和汉语中，已有 的研究着重于对这两种语言中完成体现象共时或历时语料的单纯描写，较少有人（石 毓智，2001）能够从完成体语法化的机制和动因方面进行讨论，所采用的研究方法也 较为单一。同时，对英汉语言中完成体的语法化还缺少较为系统的比较研究。两种语 言中完成体的演变是否有一些相同和不同的过程、特点，是否有相似的演变机制，尚 有待验证。 本文以语法化理论为研究的出发点，采用以语料库为主的研究方法，利用翔实的 语料尝试对英汉语中完成体的演变过程、特点进行对比研究和分析，以探究两种语言 中语法化的异同，揭示英汉两种语言中完成体语法化的机制和动因。 本文共分五章： 第一章为引言，介绍了本选题的价值以及本文的框架结构。第二章为文献综述， 介绍国内外有关于语法化、完成体的研究，以及对相关理论的评述。第三章主要利用 英语语料库、汉语语料库和相关的文献资料选用语料，运用 wordsmith4 语料库软件及 网络检索软件进行词频统计，分别从语义虚化、形态变迁、句法结构等方面描述英汉 语中完成体的语法化途径。第四章讨论英汉语两种语言中完成体语法化的异同特征， 从而揭示语法化演变的异同机制、动因、途径、语法化程度。第五章的结论部分归纳 本研究的主要观点并提出进一步的研究方向。 关键词：完成体， 语法化， have + pp， 了， 过， 语言演变 ma thesis ningbo university - ii - a comparative study on the grammaticalization of the perfect in english and chinese abstract the perfect aspect and its functional equivalents have proven to be an interesting topic and the center of attention in linguistic theory. in english and chinese, many linguists have carried out the topic from difference perspectives. among which synchronic researches on specific cross- linguistic data with detailed descriptions and philosophical analysis (comrie, 1976; dahl, 1985； smith, 1991；bhat, 1999) help confirm the perfect aspect as a universal language category. that is of great importance to the characterization of the perfect. whereas a more satisfactory analysis cannot be approached only from synchronic perspective without tracing back the development of the perfect aspect diachronically. for this reason, linguistic researchers attempt to expound on the perfect aspect from the grammaticalizational perspective. however, most existing researches in english and chinese focus on simple identification of perfect forms with synchronic or diachronic data, only a small number of studies are made in their working mechanisms and paths. in addition, methodologies applied in those studies are single. at the same time, we still lack a more systematical comparative study of the perfect aspects in english and chinese to verify whether they have some common and different features, mechanisms in the grammaticalization paths. based on predominant corpus approach and grammticalization theory, the thesis has made a comparative study on the evolution processes, the features of the perfect aspects with synchronic and diachronic analyses drawn on detailed data in order to discover the similarities and dissimilarites in the course of grammaticalization and further explore the grammaticalizaion mechanisms and motivations. the structure of the thesis is organized as follows: chapter one presents the introduction of the academic value of this research, the status quo of relevant researches and the organization of this thesis as well. chapter two covers the literature review of the historical and current researches on grammaticalization and the perfect abroad and at home with comments on relevant topic. these help determine the scope of the study. chapter three constitutes the empirical body of the thesis, devoted to the data collection from english corpora, chinese corpora and literature. based on quantitative and qualitative evidence from both historical and contemporary periods of english and chinese, the grammticalization paths of the perfect in english and chinese are investigated from semantic bleaching, morphological and syntactic change and other aspects. chapter four is the discussion section and leads up to the detailed ma thesis ningbo university - iii - linguistic analysis of the perfect, highlighting the common features and the differences of the grammaticalization of the perfect between english and chinese. conclusions can be found in chapter five, which summarizes the chief points of the thesis and delineates some ideas about the potential research for further study. key words：perfect， grammaticalization， have + pp， le， guo， language change 独 创 性 声 明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是我个人在导师指导下进行的研究工 作及取得研究成果。尽我所知，除了文中特别加以标注和致谢的地方 外，论文中不包含其他人已经发表或撰写的研究成果，也不包含为获得 宁波大学或其他教育机构的学位或证书所使用过的材料。与我一同工作 的同志对本研究所做的任何贡献均已在论文中做了明确的说明并表示了 谢意。 签名：_ 日期：_ 关于论文使用授权的声明 本人完全了解宁波大学有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，即：学校 有权保留送交论文的复印件，允许论文被查阅和借阅；学校可以公布论 文的全部或部分内容，可以采用影印、缩印或其他复制手段保存论文。 （保密的论文在解密后应遵循此规定） 签名：_ 导师签名：_ 日期：_ ma thesis ningbo university - 1 - 1 introduction the thesis is concerned with the description of the development of the perfect constructions 1 in english and chinese 2 from a comparative point of view. my purpose is to account for the diachronic and cross- linguistic phenomena, focusing on the common and different features in the course of grammaticalization of the perfect in both languages. 1.1 significance of the research grammaticalization is currently designed as a gradual process leading to the transformation of an independent lexical item into a grammatical morpheme. hopper and traugott (1993: p.95) present the following cline of structural evolution for grammaticalizing items: lexical item used in specific linguistic contextssyntaxmorphology. it has long been recognized that tense, aspect and modality are derived from lexical terms and tend to evolve along highly recurrent, predictable paths (for surveys within the framework of modern grammaticalisation studies, see bybee et al., 1994；dahl，2000). the perfect, broadly, the perfect constructions and their functional equivalents, as a grammatical category some researchers define as a kind of aspect whereas some others do doubt about its aspectual meaning, has been at the centre of attention for linguists and scholars in different areas of language research. in both english and chinese, a large number of linguistic and grammatical works have made great contribution in many ways to the understanding and analysis of the perfect (e.g., dowty，1972; comrie，1976; smith，1991; olsen，1997; 戴耀晶，1997；林璋，2004). and approaches towards the study of the perfect also diverge, with some stressing on the grammatical forms and others stressing on the lexical and semantic features of the p erfect. comrie, from a point of general linguistic theory, states that (1976: p.52) “ the perfect indicates the continuing present relevance of a past situation” and classifies it into several particular types such as “ perfect of result” , “ perfect of persistent situation” , “ perfect of recent past” and “ the experiential perfect” . for quirk et al (1985: pp.192197), the perfect is a straightforward perfective, be it present or past. however, their definitions of the perfect pose acute problems. because it is confusing to understand the “ present relevance” and quirks definition of the perfect runs counter to the perfective in the case that the former indicates a connection to the present, whereas the latter as a complete entity fails to do so(zhang，1995: p.19). in chinese, there also exist the disagreements on the existence of the category of the aspect (e.g., 朱德熙， 1982; 徐烈炯，1988), on the consideration of the perfect as a kind of aspect and on the scope 1 the perfect construction here refers to the perfect aspect in the thesis, sometimes it is written as “ the perfect” or “ the perfect aspect” . but it has to be noted that the different perfect readings in english and chinese are not a peculiarity of the present perfect despite the fact that they are primarily discussed in relation to that form. the same interpretations are available to the past, future and nonfinite perfect facts as well. 2english includes old english, middle english and contemporary english, and chinese includes both classical chinese and mandarin chinese ma thesis ningbo university - 2 - of the perfective and the perfect. nevertheless, discussions of the perfect in both english and chinese probing into the grammatical function of the perfect markers un- deliberately ignore the semantic change of the verbs and the interaction of the semantic meaning of the verbs and the whole construction of the perfect. furthermore, the linguistic phenomenon of the perfect usually studied synchronically can not be analyzed satisfactorily without tracking down the development the perfect constructions diachronically. we still run short of a systematical comparative study on the grammaticalization of the perfect between english and chinese and especially the motivations and mechanisms behind the development of the perfect constructions. in addition, the exploration of the motivations and mechanisms of the grammaticalization of the perfect constructions is expected to provide feasible explanations to the first language acquisition of the perfect constructions in english and chinese, the second language acquisition of the perfect (including english as a second language in chinese and vice verse) and the similarities and differences of the acquisitions of the perfect between the two languages. the present thesis will endeavor to carry out a study cross- linguistically by way of extensive data from literature and corpora, in particular dive into the different and common motivations of the development of the perfect constructions from a cognitive perspective. 1.2 organization of the thesis the structure of the thesis is organized as follows: chapter one presents the introduction of the academic value of this research, the status quo of relevant researches and the organization of this thesis as well. chapter two covers the literature review of the historical and current researches on grammaticalization and the perfect abroad and at home with comments on relevant topic. these help determine the scope of the study. chapter three constitutes the empirical body of the thesis, devoted to the data collection from english corpora, chinese corpora and literature. based on quantitative and qualitative evidence from both historical and contemporary periods of english and chinese, the grammticalization paths of the perfect in english and chinese are investigated from semantic bleaching, morphological and syntactic change and other aspects. chapter four is the discussion section and leads up to the detailed linguistic analysis of the perfect, highlighting the common features and the differences of the grammaticalization of the perfect between english and chinese. conclusions can be found in chapter five, which summarizes the chief points of the thesis and delineates some ideas about the potential research for further study. ma thesis ningbo university - 3 - 2 literature review during the last two decades, roughly from the mid- eighties of the past century, grammaticalization research has been firmly established and gradually become a major and still expanding field of study in linguistics (wischer and diewald，2002; hopper and traugott， 2003; lehmann，2004 to mention a few). the theories and methodologies have also undergone a considerable development, with old questions challenged, reanalyzed and furthered, new questions raised, discussed and explored, more accurate scope of grammaticalization proposed, described and identified. the perfect, as one example of grammaticalization, has already received great interest in linguists. for some typological and descriptive linguists (e.g., comrie, 1976; dahl, 1985；binnick, 1991) have utilized to establish potentially universal tense- aspect categories. however, traditional opinions are based on the more fully attested development of the perfect in romance (brinton, 1988：p.99), but the changes of romance are not completely parallel and identical to those in english which is a member of the indo- european family, let alone to chinese which is a language belonging to the sino- tibetan family. technically speaking, linguistic researchers on aspect at home usually lay more stress on the description of features of the aspect in modern chinese, a few linguists from a diachronic view have revealed the changes that take place in the use of what are traditionally called perfective particles in chinese, while others regarded the perfective aspect in chinese as equivalent to the perfect in english and romance. in consideration of this, there is no question that a relatively comprehensive and insightful literature review is inevitable, which will include the theoretical foundation, the approaches and the methodologies to the grammaticalization and the perfect. 2.1 researches on grammaticalization in this subsection, i will first introduce the concept of grammaticalization and then the merited previous and current researches on the theory of grammaticalization, for each important theoretical development and methodology introduced in grammaticalization indicates the corresponding progress that will further our understanding of the language phenomena and provide a necessary background of the present research. 2.1.1 concept of grammaticalization in what follows, the thesis presupposes a general concept of grammaticalization by way of presenting some representative definitions of grammaticalization. the term grammaticalizsation (a more widely used one), originally coined by antoine meillet (in 1958 1912), is most famously defined as “ the attribution of grammatical character to a erstwhile autonomous word” (hopper and traugott, 2003: p.19). this indicates that ma thesis ningbo university - 4 - grammaticalization is typically the shift/process of an independent word to the status of a grammatical element; meillet also suggested that change from relatively free to relatively fixed word order. in either case, the change is conceived as unidirectional, from a to b, not vice verse, that is, grammaticalzation is essentially “ lexical grammatical” with the grammatical development containing an internal “ sequence syntactic morphological” . perhaps the most commonly cited definition in grammaticalization literature is what jerzy kurylowicz proposed in 19751965: “ grammaticalization consists in the increase of the range of a morpheme advancing from a lexical to a grammatical or from a less grammatical to a more grammatical status, e.g. from a derivational formant to an inflectional one (p.52).” in many literatures, kurylowicz s definition is generally briefed as “ lexical grammatical” and “ grammatical more grammatical” , or “ any morpheme (lexical or grammatical) a more grammatical morpheme” . a more explicit definition presented by christian lehmann in his book is a very influential one on the grammaticalization theories and researchers, for lehmann, “ grammaticalization is a process leading from lexemes to grammatical formatives. a number of semantic, syntactic and phonological processes interact in the grammaticalization of morphemes and of whole constructions (1995 1982: p. x)” . actually, lehmman s definition asserts clearly that he views grammaticalization as “ a distinct/gradual process” which is suggested earlier in meillet and kurylowicz s discussions. this outlook is also elaborated by paul hopper and elizabeth closs traugott in the following way: “ grammaticalization as the process whereby lexical items and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions, and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions (hopper and traugott，20031993: pp.xv).” similarly, for william croft (1990), “ grammaticalization is the process by which full lexical items become grammatical morphemes is unidirectional and cyclic : grammatical morphemes originate from lexical items, disappear through loss, and reappear when new words become grammatical morphemes. phonological, morphosyntactic and functional (semantic/pragmatic) changes are correlated (p.230)” . later on, the notion of grammaticalization has undergone a process of amplification and escalation, some linguists broaden the view of grammaticalization as a process to a research framework, and further, to the status of a theory. more recently, two famous widely- cited definitions are as follows: “ grammaticalization” has two meanings, one to do with a research framework within which to account for language phenomena, the other with the phenomena themselves (hopper and traugott, 20031993: pp.12); “ reduced to its essentials, grammaticalization theory begins with the observation that grammatical morphemes develop gradually out of lexical morphemes of combinations of lexical morphemes with lexical or grammatical morphemes (bybee et al., 1994: p.4)” . ma thesis ningbo university - 5 - besides the definitions discussed by the above linguists, the chinese researchers view grammaticalization from a difference perspective. researches on grammaticalization can be traced back to literatures in song dynasty in the 11th century, zhouhui s qingbozazhi put that “ dongpo teaches his disciples to write, they use more empty (function) words than full words” (see 孙朝奋, 1994; 杨成虎, 2001: p.27). in chinese traditional linguistics, the study of grammaticalization phenomena is regarded as “ shicixuhua” (实词虚化), with a stress on the researches of semantic bleaching of the lexical items (杨成虎, 2001: p.28). sun chaofen (孙朝 奋, 1991), a researcher who first introduced the grammaticalization theory in 1990s, considered the grammaticalization theory be identical with xuhualun (虚化论). however, current grammaticalization theory deals more than the shicixuhua, which will be discussed in section 2.1.2.2. from the various definitions surveyed above, by no means are they comprehensively listed, we may conclude that the notion of grammaticalization is far from specific. most of the definitions are propaedeutic rather than formal (lehmann, 2004: p.154). at the same time, there is a prototypical or notion of how grammaticalization is understood (cf. h