草登嘉戎語與「認同等第」相關的語法現象

Empathy Hierarchy in Caodeng rGyalrong Grammar

語言行為中，說話者對言談所涉及之個體（你、我；人、物）認同程度有區別，往往造成語言結構上之差異，形成「認同等第」。嘉戎語的認同等第語法化頗深，對其形態句法有關鍵性影響。本文以嘉戎語四大壩方言草登話為對象，探究認同等第所涉及之語意、語用因素，以及認同等第對名詞施動格標記、動詞人稱與「向」範疇、主賓注意順序等各結構層面所產生之作用。形態句法證據顯示，草登話存在有五等級之認同等第，等第間強弱有別，對草登話結構制約程度亦有不同：說話者 ＞ 聽話者 ＞ 屬人第三者 ＞ 其他動物 ＞ 非動物。

Linguistic structure frequently encodes differences in the way a speaker identifies (or empathizes) with various entity types (such as speech-act participant vs. non-participant, human vs. animal, animate vs. inanimate) that are involved in the discourse, resulting in so-called ‘empathy hierarchies’. rGyalrong is notable among Tibeto-Burman languages for possessing such elaborately developed distinctions, with wide repercussions to its grammatical structure. This article draws upon first-hand data from the Caodeng subdialect of the Sidaba dialect to explore the semantic and pragmatic bases of the rGyalrong empathy hierarchy, as well as its impact on several important grammatical areas: nominal ergative marking, verb agreement, direction, and attention flow. The morphosyntactic evidence examined herein reveals a five-degree hierarchy: speaker > hearer > human third person > non-human animate > non-animate. Different pairwise oppositions on the hierarchy manifest different degrees of control on the grammar of the language.