A Prospect of Chinese Syntax Research —A review of Waltraud Paul’s New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax

doi:10.12002/j.bisu.140

Abstract

Abstract:

Chinese, an isolating language, displays some grammatical phenomena which do not belong to typical isolating languages. It is significant to account for such special and surface phenomena, which may contribute to linguistic research as in typology and crosslinguistic comparisons. Taking Transformational-Generative grammar as the theoretical framework, Professor Waltraud Paul’s new book, New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax, takes some controversial grammatical structures, such as word order, linguistic category and basic syntactic structure, as researching objects. Through careful observations and fine-grained descriptions, Paul deconstructs typological generations and makes reasonable explanations for relevant linguistic facts. According to the author, Chinese is shown to have always displayed SVO order through the diachronic development of more than three thousand years. Prepositions, postposition and adjective in Chinese are separate categories, topic in Chinese can be used to express both given information and new information, and sentence final particle in Chinese is a head of C. Finally, Paul points out that the concept of cross-categorial harmony derived from order typology is the generation of typology, which is of a fundamentally statistical nature, and therefore such typology is not a constituent part of Universal Grammar. The book greatly deepens understandings of Chinese grammar, supports that Chinese, as other languages, co-exists universality and specificity as well, and highlights the significances of Chinese in global general linguistics.

Keywords: Waltraud Paul; New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax; review; Transformational-Generative grammar

摘要：

汉语是孤立型语言,同时又存在诸多不属于该语言类型的语法现象,如何对汉语表面特殊的语法现象作出合理解释,在类型学和跨语言比较等语言学研究中都有重要意义。Waltraud Paul教授的《汉语句法新视角》以生成语法为理论基础,以基本句法结构、语序和语类等诸多具有争议的语法现象为研究对象,解构了类型概括,对相关语言事实作了细致观察和精确描写,并作出合理解释。本书作者指出,汉语在三千多年的历时发展中一直是SVO语序,汉语中的前置介词、后置介词和形容词都是独立语类,汉语话题可以表达已知信息和新信息,句末语气词属于C中心语。本书作者最后指出,依据语序类型而得出的跨类和谐语序本质上是基于统计性的语序概括,因而不是普遍语法的组成部分。本书加深了对汉语语法的理解,证明了汉语与其它语言一样并存普遍性和特殊性,对推动世界范围的汉语研究具有重要意义。

关键词: Waltraud Paul, 《汉语句法新视角》, 评介, 转换生成语法

CLC Number:

H146.3

YANG Liexiang. A Prospect of Chinese Syntax Research —A review of Waltraud Paul’s New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax[J]. Journal of Beijing International Studies University, 2018, 40(1): 120-128.

杨烈祥. 汉语句法研究新图景——评Waltraud Paul教授的《汉语句法新视角》[J]. 北京第二外国语学院学报, 2018, 40(1): 120-128.

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