Verb and Clause in Chinese Discourse: Issues of Constituency and Functionality
现代汉语话语中动词性成分的组合结构和功能关系
Edward McDonald 马爱德

Abstract 摘要
While most scholars seem to agree with Tsao (1990) as to the inadequacy of the notion of "sentence", as traditionally defined in Indo-European languages, for the analysis of Chinese, two opposing trends have emerged in defining the basic grammatical units for Chinese. On the one hand, Tsao himself extends the study of grammar into its discourse contexts, taking the topic chain, "a stretch of discourse headed by one or more topics...followed by one or more comment clauses" as the basic unit. On the other hand work in the structuralist tradition (Zhu 1985, Lu 1993) takes the smaller unit of "phrase" as basic, and more recent investigations into the grammar of spoken Chinese from an intonational viewpoint (Tao 1991, 1996) seem to confirm this insight. In attempting to reconcile these two tendencies in the description of Chinese grammar, what is needed is a way of linking grammatical and discourse organization: in effect, seeing grammar as one the layers of meaning of the text. In this project, determining the status of the verb is crucial since it is commonly regarded as central to the definition of grammatical units, the principle of "one verb per clause" (Tao 1996) often being invoked as a way of justifying the boundaries of the clause. However, as has often been noted, the range of elements of the verb class in Chinese is so wide, and their potential to combine freely with each other is so great, that applying such a principle in practice is very difficult. The present study recognizes the basic structure of successive verbal elements as a logical one (Ouyang 1986) defined by a combination of taxis and logico-semantic relationships–in effect treating all verb combinations like serial verb constructions (Li & Thompson 1981). The boundaries of the clause can then be determined by the Theme and Rheme structure (Fang et al. 1995), and various verbal elements then be identified as functioning either textually, to introduce and focus on particular pieces of information, or interpersonally, to mediate the exchange between interlocutors in terms of mood and modality, or experientially, to represent the main and associated processes in the model of experience given by the clause. Such a multifunctional analysis allows us not only to account for all the different types of structures entered into by verbal elements in Chinese, but also provides a way of reconciling competing views of basic grammatical structure in Chinese.

按照多数汉语语言学家的一致主张，像印欧语言中“句子”这一概念不大适合于汉语语法的描写，近来给限定汉语基本语法单位有两种相互矛盾的看法。在一面，像曹逢甫（1990年）从话语语境着手去分析语法结构以“话语连串”为基本单位，在另一面，像朱德熙（1985年），陆俭明（1993年）则以“词组本位”为主要主张，而最近从语调角度上研究汉语口语的语法组织（陶鸿印1996年）与后者结论大概一致。若要调和对汉语语法描写的不同趋向，先需把话语组织和语法结构联合起来看，将语法看成是话语意义中的一个层次。为了这样的目的，因为动词一般被认为在限定语法结构起着主要作用，而像“每个句子只能有一个主动词”般这一原则通常作为确定句子的主要标准，因此确定动词的具体作用是不可忽略的任务。然而，汉语里动词性成分的范围那么宽，相互组合的可能性那么大，以这么一种原则作为实用的标准并不简单。本文以连续的动词性成分的基本组织所谓“逻辑性”（欧阳1986年）结构，即所有动词之间的联系则像“连续动词结构”（Li & Thompson 1981年）那般。小句的界限以“主位述为”结构（方琰等编1995年）去决定，而不同动词成分则起着“语篇性”作用（制定信息的不同片断）、“人际性”作用（调节说听话者之间关系）或“经验性”作用（表达世界模型的不同变化过程）。通过这么一种多元功能的描述，我们既可以较为全面地描写汉语动词性成分的所有结构，也能解决对汉语语法结构的矛盾看法。

Subject Keywords 关键词

Verb 动词 Clause 小句 Chinese 汉语 Discourse 话语 Function 功能 Structure 结构

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