Mandarin “到” as a telicity indicator

論文發表人: 楊惠玲 (亞利桑那州立大學英文系語言學博士班)

https://sites.google.com/site/lasso2010nm/

 

本研究旨在解釋漢語「到」與有界動詞同時存在的現象，如句(1)。此句有兩種解釋，我的文法為a，但其他人可能同意b的用法，後者可見於正式文體中。

(1)    你發現到了嗎？

a.     你發現「到」這個字了嗎？

b.     你發現到（某件事)了嗎？

漢語「到」係將活動動詞轉換為瞬成動詞，見(2)及(3)。

(2)    我在聽阿妹的歌。

(3)    我聽到阿妹的歌。

Vendler (1967)及其他學者將find「發現」歸類為瞬成動詞，因此即便沒有「到」，句(4)仍舊合法。

(4)    我發現一個有趣的現象。

吾等可推論「發現」此雙音節字已屬有界(telic)，不需藉由「到」轉換為有界。然而實際語料顯現此推論並不正確，因為有人認同(5)的用法。

(5)    我發現到一個有趣的現象。

本研究因而進行「發現」此字的語料庫分析。中研院現代漢語平衡語料庫未見任何類似句(5)「發現到」之用法，然而Google搜索的確找出不少例句。為進一步了解「發現」的語法化程度，我再度搜尋語料庫。結果顯示漢語語料庫無「在發現」此類記載，Google確有些例句如(6)，但不多見。

(6)    你此刻正在发现着未来的幸福。(Google例句)

本研究指出「發現」此字進一步詞彙化，失去其有界性。「到」添加於有界動詞之後同時也顯示該字為有界標記(telicity marker)且為語法之一部份。

 

This paper attempts to tackle the phenomenon of the telic marker -dao attaching to an already telic verb in Mandarin, as in (1b). My version of Mandarin grammar is (1a), without dao as a suffix.

(1)    你發現到了嗎? ni   fa-xian-dao       le      ma?

a.     'Did you find 'dao' as a word?'

b.     'Did you find (something)?'

Mandarin dao is used to turn an activity verb into achievements as in (2).

(2)    wo   ting           dao          A-Mei      de    ge.

        1sg   listen DAO        (name)      DE   song

        'I heard A-Mei's song.'

According to Vendler (1967), find falls under the category of verbs of achievements. Thus, (3) is grammatical without dao.

(3)    Wo   faxian       yi      ge     you.qu              de    xian-xiang.

        1sg   find           one   CL   interesting DE   phenomenon

        'I found an interesting phenomenon.'

It seems that these disyllabic words are inherently telic and thus dao is not required to mark telicity. One could then predict that dao is only needed in monosyllabic words as in (2). However, this prediction is not borne out since dao can also be suffixed to achievement verbs, as in (4).

(4)    wo   faxian       dao          yi      ge     you.qu              de    xian-xiang.

        1sg   find           DAO        one   CL   interesting DE   phenomenon

        'I found an interesting phenomenon.'

I checked the occurrence of [faxian 'to find' + -dao] from the Taiwan Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Mandarin and surprisingly did not find a single entry. However, Google search showed many instances of faxian-dao sentences.

To see how much farther faxian has become grammaticalized, I then further checked its compatibility with the progressive marker在zai. Again, the modern Mandarin corpus (Taiwan) does not have any of such an entry as '在發現'. Although this combination doesn't seem to occur productively, from my Google search I did find examples shown as in (5). This is another piece of evidence supporting my argument that faxian is losing its telicity.

(5)    你此刻正在发现着未来的幸福

        Ni    cike  zheng        zai    faxian       zhe           wei.lai       de    xing.fu

        2sg   now  right          ZAI  find           ZHE         future        DE   welling-being

        'You're finding future well-beings.'

To sum up, this study provides evidence that dao is syntactically motivated.

My findings show that the unexpected appearance of dao in (3) shows that the verb faxian has further lexicalized and lost its achievement property in the new grammar of speakers. The process also shows grammaticalization as the verb reanalyzed and moving to a new position, which is "up" in the syntactic tree.