The Problem of the Suffix-Men in Chinese Grammar
汉语语法中词尾 "们" 的几个问题
Robert Iljic 罗毅

Abstract 摘要
This article offers a detailed analysis of the so-called ‘plural’ suffix -men in Mandarin Chinese. -Men occurs with both personal pronouns and nouns. However, while it is regularly attached to personal pronouns, it appears only sporadically – though not randomly – with nouns. Its occurrence after nouns is highly constrained (humanness, incompatibility with simultaneous counting, definiteness, non-genericity, modal overtones) and is manifestly not governed by considerations of number alone, unlike the plural in Indo-European languages. Clarifying the conditions of the occurrence of -men with nouns was the major unsolved problem, since this optional use cannot be captured in terms of syntactic or any other mechanical rules. It is discourse-motivated and depends on pragmatic factors. The dichotomy between obligatory and optional use prompted many scholars to distinguish two values for -men, a plural after pronouns and a collective after nouns. I argue that -men is in all cases a collective. What actually triggers the occurrence of -men is the conjunction of number and person. This is the case par excellence of the ‘plural’ of personal pronouns, which does not correspond to an addition or multiplication of elements, but rather to what Benveniste (1966) calls ‘amplification’ of persons. I show that in narrative contexts the group referred to by N-men is constructed relative to a given character as opposed to the speaker/narrator. The character is not only the locator for the group but also the spatial point from which things are viewed. This shifting of perspective (internal versus external point of view) is not structurally conditioned, which explains why nouns in narration are not obligatorily suffixed by -men. In summary, the suffix -men always marks a subjective grouping, either relative to the speaker/narrator or to some character whose point of view the narrator provisionally adopts. This amounts to unifying nominal and pronominal -men. The collective at issue should be characterized as personal, in the sense we talk about ‘personal’ pronouns.

汉语词尾“们”用在人称代词或指人的名词后面。被看做是表示复数，归人数语法范畴。“们”字附加在代词之后是强制性的，因为代词必须表达数的概念。而“们”字附加在名词之后，缺少强迫性，因为很多情况下，名词后不加“们”也可指几个人。带“们”的名词的用法受到限制。吕叔湘证明了带“们”的名词指的是整个集合体，通过研究，我们认为“们”在代词之后出现也表示集合体，关系到人称语法范畴。所谓人称代词的“复数”，实际上包含群的意义，即“括大的人称”。例如：“我们”并不是几个同时说话的“我”，乃是一个我加上了其它，是说话者代表的一群人（包括“我”即“非我”）。“你们”是和说话者相对立的一个集合体，而“他们”则是说话者和对话者之间建立的主观空间中被剔除的那群人。“们”的出现是由数与人称两个范畴的结合所确定的。而人称代词的“复数”是此种结合的一个典型事例。在对人讲话的场合下，“N+们”起代词作用，等于一个质量的“你”。这就是为什么“们”是强制性的。对叙述文的彻底调查揭示了“N+们”所指的集合体通常是以上下文中的某人为标准而设立的，它是确定集合体的基准点和观察点。集合体若不是以上下文所提到的某人为基点而造的，名词后边仍然有“们”，这就意味着空白是由叙述者本人填补的，其明显的迹象是语气。总之，“们”一律表示主观集合体。因此，“们”必须被理解为“人称”集合体标志。“们”与数量词不相容就是由于它的集合性引起的。集合（画一个整体的轮廓）和计数（强调计数单元）是一对矛盾的观点，两者不可兼顾。其余的属性是跟着“们”的人称性质而来的，尤其是它和指人名词的亲和力。用“们”设立的集合体确实是一个主观而暂时的集合体，总是位于一个给定的场合，最后，人称范畴说明为什么“们”是有确定性和非类别性。

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