中國親屬稱謂的語形擴展與語意延展

MORPHOLOGICAL EXPANSION AND SEMANTIC EXTENSION IN CHINESE KIN TERMS

本文的主要目的在從語形上來分析中國親屬稱謂的內在結構，包括詞素與詞素之間的關係以及稱謂與稱謂之間的關係。分析的結果發現：（1）所有的親屬稱謂是由21個詞根，經過一步一步的語形擴展的過程而得到的。（2）稱謂一般的內在結構分為詞頭、詞根與詞尾這三個部分，三者各有其不同的語意延展作用。詞根有範疇延展的作用，亦即意義的範圍由小而大，詞頭與詞尾有把指涉的親屬關係由近推遠的作用。（3）依據語法類的觀念，可建構比我們所知更多的合於語法的可能稱謂，但是文化如何從所有的可能稱謂中選出某些稱謂來使用，這需要從結構的、脈絡的、和心理的因素來作語用學的考察。

This is a morphological analysis of Chinese kin terms in relation to meaning construction of kin terms. Traditional semantic approaches to kinship, including componential analysis and extensionist analysis, are criticized because of their ethnocentric presupposition that a kin term designates more than one kin type. Chinese kinship terminology in which each term refers to only one kin type obviously has different characteristics from western kinship systems. Among Chinese kin terms, morphemic composition is the most important characteristic that causes one-to-one designation of terms and the large number of kin terms in the Chinese system. This analysis first assumes the existence of a focal morpheme in every kin term. Three hundred and sixty-nine literary kin terms derived from Feng's book are analyzed. The way to find the focal morpheme is by conducting a certain parsing process. Next the two morphemes left from the final step of parsing are judged by generation rule and sex-specifying rule in that order to determine which is the focal morpheme. By this method, 21 focal morphemes are found in all Chinese kin terms. Every focal morpheme can generate a set of terms which forms a kinship category. Then, the kinship category can be defined componentially by semantic features shared among all terms of the same set. From the list of kin terms generated from the same focal morpheme, we find that there is a level-by-level process of morphological expansion. Diagram 1 shows the morphemic ordering in every kin term. At the same time, the diagram reveals the general form of morphological sequences as follows:one (or two) type modifier+fa focal morpheme+a sex modifier. How is the meaning of a kin term obtained through this morphemic composition starting from its focal morpheme? We here assume the order of semantic construction, that is, the sex modifier (if any) is first combined with the focal morpheme, then the type modifier (or modifiers) is attached to form the meaning of the term. So far, the process of semantic extension from each focal morpheme is clear, as shown in Diagram 2. Also the semantic transformations caused by any modifiers can be expressed by extension rules.In addition, some morphemes are found to be clustered as a grammatical class. So, the concept of 'equivalence class' is applied to generate all morpho-syntactically well-formed kin terms. This raises some pragmatic questions. For example, why is only a partial set of literary kin terms culturally defined among all possible choices? Why is only a partial set of literary kin terms used verbally? Finally, why is only a small portion of kin terms used frequently in daily life? Some structural, contextual and psychological explanations are accordingly given. The author attempts to achieve a complete analysis of a kinship terminology system as proposed by Lounsbury. That is the author deals with the syntactics, semantics and pragmatics of kin terms without the omission of any aspect of these three. Clearly, this formal analysis of Chinese kin terms emphasized the syntactical relation of the constituent morphemes in kin terms. It not only provides and analytical model for future studies in the historical change and local variation of Chinese kin terms, but also demonstrates some theoretical significance in 'language, cognition and social structure'.