漢語抽象動詞存現句的歷史發展及其主觀化過程

Subjectification and the Development of Special-Verb Existential/Presentative Constructions

本文探討漢語抽象動詞存現句的歷史發展。抽象動詞存現句指的是由“有＂和“是＂等構成的存現句式。考察發現，雖然“有＂之類的格式自古以來就是佔主導地位的格式，其內部構成在歷史上出現過較大變化。最主要的變化是動詞類型的擴大，即從單純的存現動詞“有＂擴大到表示數量大或全的“多＂、“饒＂、“皆＂等以及表示視見活動的“見＂和“睹＂等。這些新增入的動詞在存現格式裡都有語法化的意義，它們除了表示存在的意義之外還增加了作者和說話人的主觀意願或視點。這個現象似乎說明，所謂語法化的從單純的語義內涵到主觀化的過程不單是單個詞語的問題，也是整個句子格式的問題。

This paper deals with the historical development of a special type of existential/presentative construction in Chinese, i.e., existential constructions with an ‘empty’ verb (such as you 有 ‘have/exist’ and shi 是 ‘be’) as the main verb. In documenting the major changes that have taken place in this construction, I show that while some of the major existential constructions, such as the youconstruction, have been present since the earliest stages of the history of the Chinese language, major grammaticalization processes have taken place, not in the form of changes in individual verbs per se, but rather in the range of verbs allowed over time in the construction: verbs of abundant quantity (duo 多 ‘be many’, rao 饒 ‘be abundant’, jie 皆 ‘be all’) and verbs of vision (jian 見 ‘see’, and du 睹 ‘see’) are gradually introduced into this construction. I take this as evidence that the development of existentials in Chinese can be characterized as an increase in subjectification and that the unidirectionality principle of grammaticalization can be applied to constructions in addition to individual lexical items.