用儿童语言来进行语言学论证--一些方法学上的考虑  

The Use of Child Language in Linguistic Argumentation

作　　者：李行德 LEE Thomas Hun-tak(Institute of Theoretical Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Science,Tianjin Normal University,57 Wajiayao Dajie,Hexi District,Tianjin 300074 Chinese University of Hong Kon)

机构地区：[1]天津师范大学语言心理与认知科学研究院,天津市300074 [2]香港中文大学

出　　处：《当代语言学》2018年第4期552-571,共20页Contemporary Linguistics

摘　　要：人们一般采用两种语言证据来进行语言学论证:内部证据和外部证据。前者包括各种表达式的形式语义特点以及语言形式的分布;后者则包括来自儿童语言、语言演变、语言处理和语言障碍等方面的相关语料。用儿童语言来进行语言学论证,在一个层面可以为某一种理论提供示例、说明和诠释,如功能学派韩礼德对婴儿语言的描述、结构主义学派雅柯布森的音系获得学说以及生成语法对早期幼儿句法的各种转换分析。在另一个层面,儿童语言可用来确认或支持某种理论或假说,给语言分析建立一个实证基础,并通过新规律的发现反过来推动语言理论的建构,这方面也不乏成功的例子,如对普遍语法中结构依赖性原则和功能范畴的验证。本文回顾一些经典个案,从中探索如何把儿童语言运用在语言学论证当中,提出一些相关的方法与准则。儿童语言证据与语言学论证之间呈现复杂的互动关系,不能简单地仅以儿童掌握某种形式的难易或这种形式出现的早晚作为支持某种语言分析的关键证据。用语言获得数据来印证一种语言分析,必须在语言发展及其初始状态(普遍语法)这两方面都具备一个理论模型,才能有效地建立理论和获得证据之间的联系。本文对近年来用儿童语言来论证句法分析的名动包含说进行评估,指出其方法论上的不足,并说明儿童语言事实并不支持该分析。Two types of linguistic evidence are generally used in linguistic argumentation： internal evidence and external evidence, the former including the distribution of linguistic forms and the syntactic/semantic properties of various representations, and the latter drawing data from child language, language change, language processing and language disorders. On one level, child language data can provide illustrations, explications and interpretations of a particular linguistic theory, as can be seen from Halliday＇s child language study based on the functionalist framework, Jakobson＇s structuralist theory of phonological development, and the various transformational analyses of early child syntax in generative grammar. On another level, child language can provide an empirical basis for linguistic analysis, confirming a particular theory or hypothesis, and in turn facilitate the construction of linguistic theory through the discovery of new regularities. One could think of the empirical confirmation of the structure dependence of transformations and early functional categories as successful examples of such uses of child language. This paper reviews a number of classic studies to observe how child language data should be used in linguistic argumentation, with an aim to exploring methodological requirements. The interaction between child language evidence and linguistic argumentation is complex, and one cannot simply rely on the relative precedence or relative difficulty of particular forms as crucial evidence for a particular analysis. In using child language to confirm a linguistic analysis, a model of language acquisition and its initial state （ Universal Grammar） would need to be presupposed before valid connections can be established between theory and evidence. The paper will critically assess the claim that child language supports the recent syntactic proposal that verbs are a subclass of nouns in Chinese, pointing out its inadequacies and its invalidity.

关 键 词：儿童语言 语言学论证 心理语言证据 语言学方法论 名动包含说 

分 类 号：H193.1[语言文字—汉语] H319.3