The discourse function of numeral classifiers in Mandarin Chinese
汉语数量词在话语中的作用
Chaofen Sun 孙朝奋
Abstract 摘要
The paper discusses the findings of an investigation on the manners in which the Mandarin numeral classifiers (NCL) are used in natural discourse. Five short stories written in Mandarin published in Taiwan are investigated. 14 native speakers of Chinese (all Cornell students) were consulted to help determine the discourse status of various topics. Significantly, 44% of the semantically referential-indefinite entities are found to be introduced into the discourse without NCL’s. Furthermore, 80% of the major discourse entities as determined both by our subjects’ judgment and our discourse persistence values (the number of occurrences within 10 clauses after the initial introduction) are introduced into the discourse with the NCL’s, while 2% of the minor entities at their initial occurrences are without NCL’s. Thus, the findings of the current study reveals that there appears to be a correlation between the use of NCL and the thematic status of the discourse entities. The overriding principle is thematic centrality.
本文讨论汉语数量词在话语中的功能。我们对五篇在台湾发表的短篇故事作了一个调查。此外，我们还请了十四位康奈尔大学的中国同学帮助我们决定各个名词性实体在故事中的作用。在统计上我们发现，44％在语意上非限定的有指实体在故事中第一次提到时都没有数量词。而且根据我们实验对象的判断和话语持续值（一个实体在故事中第一次提到后的十句中的重复次数）而定的主要实体中，80％在故事中第一次提到时都有数量词，而82％的次要实体在故事中第一次提到时均没有数量词。因此本文的调查结果表明，数量词的应用和话语中的名词性实体与故事主题有关。