中文Wh-詞組研究

Abstract

如下面(1)到(4)的例子所顯示，中文的Wh-詞組可以有疑問、存在、全稱或是變項的語意解釋: (1) 約漢喜歡什麼(呢)? (2) 約翰可能吃了什麼。 (3) 約翰什麼都吃。 (4) 誰先來，誰先吃。Wh-詞組的諸多不同意思引發了許多有趣的句法及語意議題，下面是其中幾個值得探究的問題。 (A) 各種不同語意解釋的Wh-詞組，其認可語境為何? (B) 各種不同語意解釋的Wh-詞組，其所受制的句法語意限制為何? (C) 相同的一個Wh-詞組是如何得到不同的語意解釋的?那些不同語意解釋底下的 相同Wh-詞組具有統一的語意嗎?在過去的二十年，上述問題曾有許多討論，也有許多不同的理論被提出，然而這些不同的理論，彼此之間差異極大，這個研究全面性地探究比較所有和Wh-詞組相關的語言現象，並評估各理論間的優劣。在這個計劃裡，我們仔細地比較以下幾種WH-詞組的理論: (1)固有存在量化理論 (Huang 1982)，(2)隱性運符移位理論 (Aoun and Li 1993)，(3)非選擇性約束理論 (Cheng 1991； Tsai 1994； Lin 1996等)，(4)替換選擇語意理論 (Shimoyama 2001, 2006； Kratzer 2006； Dong 2009，(5)語意隱含理論 (Liao 2010)。在這個計劃裡，我們挖掘了一些和Wh-詞組理論相關的語料，澄清一些懸而未決的重要議題，並且仔細研究是否某一理論的確有其他理論所沒有的優點，也全面性地比較各理論間的異同，特別是我們也探究了不同語意解釋底下的相同Wh-詞組是否真的具有統一的語意。我們的討論暗示著，變項語意的Wh-詞組似乎有較高的可能性來統一所有的wh-詞組。另外我們也指出， ’都’和wh-詞組的交互影響依舊是個謎，如何妥當解釋為何’都’可以和右向的Wh-詞組產生聯繫是個值得繼續探就的議題。總而言之，這篇研究成果，對於要入門wh-詞組研究的人提供了整體性的介紹，點出現今遺留的問題有哪些，對於有經驗的研究者則提供了理論的比較基礎，點出未來研究的理論突破點為何，所以這篇論文有淺有深，對於未來wh-詞組的研究，是一篇不可或缺的文獻。

Wh-phrases in Chinese may receive an interrogative, existential or universal interpretation, as the following examples show.(1) Yuehan xihuan shenme (ne)?John like what Q‘What does John like?’(2) Yuehan keneng chi-le shenmeJohn possibly eat-Asp what‘John might have eaten something.’(3) Yuehan shenme dou chiJohn what all eat‘John eats anything.’ (4) Shei xian lai, shei xian chi who first come who first eat ‘Whoever comes first eats first.’The various interpretations of wh-phrases raise many interesting syntactic and semantic issues such as the following:(A) What are the licensing contexts for each different usage of wh-phrases?(B) What are the constraints that each usage of wh-phrases is subject to?(C) How does the same wh-phrase get different interpretations in different context? Do those different occurrences of the same wh-phrase have a uniform semantics? The above questions have generated many different theories of wh-phrases over the past two decades. Given such a variety of theories, it is necessary to have a complete overview of linguistic phenomena involving wh-expressions in Chinese and to evaluate various theoretical proposals concerning those phenomena. The theories that this project examined include the quantificational approach (Huang 1982), the operator movement approach (Aoun and Li 1993), the unselective binding approach (Cheng 1991, Cheng and Huang 1994, Tsai 1994, Lin 1996), the alternative semantics approach (Shimoyama 2001, 2006； Kratzer 2006； Dong 2009) and the implicature approach (Liao 2010). In this project, we discussed a large number of linguistic data relating to wh-phenomena, clarify some major remaining issues to be further investigated and look into the question of whether a particular theory has advantages over another one and how different theories may compare with each other. In particular, we also tried to see whether the various interpretations of the same wh-phrase are actually derived underlyingly from the same semantics. Our study shows that wh-phrases analyzed as variables have a better chance to unify all different usages of wh-phrases. Finally, this project also examined the interaction between ‘dou‘ and the interrogative wh-phrase that appear to its left. This type of construction has been a puzzle to the theorizing of wh-phrases and remains mysterious. We leave this type of sentence for future investigation.