英文摘要 |
Mandarin polysemous auxiliary yao4 (要) involves three main semantic functions: volitive modality, obligative modality, and immediate future, which are closely interrelated in diachronic development and synchronically complemented with each other regarding semantic and syntactic distributions; those distributional significances enable the three polysemous functions to be represented by one shared form yao4 (要) without causing misinterpretations from the violence of form-meaning correspondences. In our study, it is found that the presence or absence of the two force-dynamic features [+F] (reacting force) and [-F] (counterforce) (based on Force Dynamics, Talmy 2000) on the grammatical subjects can help distinguish the multi-functions of yao4 (要). Furthermore, varying degrees or types of subjective involvement in the completeness of propositional meanings are beneficial in disambiguating the polysemous usages of yao4 (要) as well. In particular, to make the distributional patterns of yao4 (要) clearer, the dialectal analysis of the two modal auxiliaries ai3 (愛) and beh4 (卜) in Southern Min were added to do comparison with the behaviors of polysemous yao4 (要); the result showed that while arbitrariness are reduced in Southern Min because the functions of polysemous auxiliary yao4 (要) are divided by ai3 (愛) and beh4 (卜), there need to be more distributional restrictions or conversational cues for Mandarin users to elicit adequate interpretations of the multi-functional yao4 (要); therefore, the notions of Force Dynamics and Subjectification (Langacker 1990) could be more useful in disambiguating the functions of yao4 (要) in Mandarin. |