漢語及物化的大數據研究

A DATA SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF TRANSITIVIZATION IN CHINESE

本文從資料科學的角度來考察漢語中一個新興的現象「及物化」：亦即動前介詞組轉化為動後的直接賓語（如「為人民服務」轉為「服務人民」）。此現象仍處於變動之中，可視為一種復古的趨勢（如「士為知己而死」就有相應的為動式「君子死知己」），可能會逐步消亡，也可能像「語言癌」一般引發爆炸性的發展（參見何萬順等2016）。因此我們需要結合資料科學和語法理論來為其問診把脈，不但要總結先前的演化歷程，更能預測未來的發展趨勢。此外，及物化現象只在幾類文體中展現高度的能產性，這也讓我們有機會一窺其使用上的考量及背後機制，並印證於新聞語料庫的統計數據之上。

From the perspective of data science, this study aims to investigate an emerging phenomenon called 'transitivization' in Mandarin Chinese. It is a syntactic change that turns a preverbal applicative argument into a postverbal direct object. This process can be viewed as a 'renaissance' wei dong shi 'beneficiary verb form' in Classical Chinese. It may either die out after a short period of time, or have an explosive growth in its popularity just like the so-called 'language cancer' recently observed in Taiwan. Therefore, we need to address the issues by combining data science and syntactic analyses. This move enables us not only to give a comprehensive review of the current status of this syntactic change, but also to make a plausible prediction about its future development. Finally, it is instructive to note that transitivization is found only in certain stylistic registers like news headlines, which in turn allows us to look deeper into the pragmatic considerations and underlying mechanism of the whole process.