動詞在句首語言之修補現象

Repair in Verb-initial Languages

本文以分析Cebuano 語與鄒語言談語料，探討詞序以動詞為首語言之修補現象與該語言語法結構間的關係。Fox, Hayashi & Jasperson (1996) 的研究顯示，英語與日語言談語句中各詞組排列順序規律與否影響其修補現象的呈現。英語為SVO 語言，自然語料中其語句內詞序排列方式相當一致，說話者修補時傾向於由句首開始。日語為SOV，其語句內詞序排列較為鬆散，說話者修補時則傾向於修補因問題產生中斷的詞組，而不回到句首。然而Fincke (1998) 針對菲律賓呂宋島南部Bikol 語的研究，以及Wouk (2004) 對Indonesian 語修補現象研究顯示各語言的修補現象與句法之間的關連不盡如Fox 等人研究所預期。Cebuano 語與鄒語同為動詞在句首的語言，其修補現象呈現不同樣貌。Cebuano 語句型結構組成成分多樣複雜，言談中主要論元不出現的頻率極高，說話者傾向在言談問題發生的詞組做修補。而在鄒語的言談語句，詞序規律性高，但與英語不同的是，鄒語說話者也傾向在問題發生的詞組做修補。我們綜合各語言的修補現象歸納出，詞序排列規律性雖能影響修補現象的形成，各詞組內部構詞或句法結構的複雜性越高，說話者進行立即性修補的可能性越大，也因此造成各語言修補模式的不同。

The phenomenon of repair has not been well researched, although it is pervasive in daily conversation. Fox, Hayashi & Jasperson’s (1996) pioneering work on repair in English and Japanese has shown that languages with different syntactic structures organize repair in different ways. Speakers of English, which has a rigid S-V-O word order, use much clausal recycling, while recycling in Japanese, a verb-final language with loosely-organized constituents, is only made locally at a constituent-initial position or at the trouble source. However, this study on the repair phenomenon in Tsou and Cebuano, both predicate-initial Austronesian languages in Taiwan and in the Philippines, respectively, as well as the later studies on repair in Bikol (Fincke 1998) and Indonesian (Wouk 2004), has shown that both word order and rigidity/looseness of this word order are not the only factors that organize repair. We propose that constituent structure is a more important factor that is responsible for the organization of repair in languages.