Aspectual Variation in Chinese Existentials: A Corpus-based Analysis

基於語料庫之時貌變異分析：以漢語存現句為例

邱妙津(Miao-chin Chiu)

existential construction ； aspect markers LE and ZHE ； corpus linguistics ； Chinese ； VARBRUL ； 存現句式 ； 時貌標記了/著 ； 語料庫語言學 ； 漢語 ； 迴歸分析

華語文教學研究

14卷3期（2017 / 09 / 01）

1 - 30

英文

This paper provides a new perspective on an old issue regarding the aspectual alternation of LE and ZHE in Chinese existential constructions, which has mainly been discussed with introspective data in the past. This corpus study examines the variation between [NPLoc V-LE NP] and [NPLoc V-ZHE NP] forms, as shown in (1) and (2): (1) 家裡來了兩位大學生。 Jia-li lai le liang wei daxuesheng. house-in come LE two CL college student 'There were two college students who came to our house.' (2) 桌上放著一個大蛋糕。 Zhuo-shang fang zhe yi ge da dangao. table-on place ZHE one CL big cake 'There is a big cake (placed) on the table.' In the current study, 260 types of verbs were examined and 2193 valid tokens were coded according to topicality, definiteness, animacy of the post-verbal NPs, as well as transitivity and semantic type of the verbs involved. This quantitative study has successfully identified linguistic factors that can account for the systematic aspectual variation in Chinese existentials. Results of the VARBRUL analysis indicate that semantic type of the verb plays an essential role in determining the choice between LE and ZHE, while animacy and topicality of the post-verbal NPs are less influential. This paper presents a fresh insight on aspectual alternation in Chinese existential constructions.

本研究從量化的角度檢視影響時貌標記「著」與「了」的多重變項，以現代漢語存現句為例，藉由分析句式[NP_(Loc) V-ZHE NP]如「桌上放著一個大蛋糕」與[NP_(Loc) V-LE NP]如「家裡來了兩位大學生」所出現的上下文環境，探討各種語言變項對於兩種時貌標記出現的影響。本論文透過中文詞彙特性速描系統(the Chinese Word Sketch)以及聯合知識庫(Udn.data)檢視260個高頻動詞，共蒐集了2193筆之真實語料，以應用軟體VARBRUL進行迴歸分析，並使用遞增(step-up)和遞減(step-down)方式，找出最適合的自變項組合來解釋帶有「著」與「了」的存現句式之出現語境。研究結果顯示，以下四個語言變項對於這兩個時貌標記在存現句式中的出現有顯著影響，按照其解釋量由高至低依序為：動詞的語義類別、動詞後名詞片語的定指性(definiteness)、主題性(topicality)以及生命性(animacy)。

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