科學文本中英語「or」與漢語「或」的語義類型之比較—以《觀念物理》為例

A Comparative Analysis of the Semantic Meaning Patterns of ‘OR’ in Physics Texts in English and Mandarin Chinese

本研究旨在透過跨語言的比較，分析英語科學文本中「or」與漢語科學文 本中「或」的語義類型，藉以釐清英語「or」及漢語「或」所指涉的連接意涵， 並比較二者語義類型的異同，以及「or」所對應的漢語表徵方式。本研究分析 範疇為科學文本Conceptual Physics 及其中文譯本《觀念物理》有關運動與力 的主題，藉由技術建置語料庫，並透過韋氏字典、中研院現代漢語平衡語料庫、 教育部重編國語詞典等語料分析資源，加以分析歸類。研究發現，漢語「或」 的語義類型多達七種，包括排斥、兼容、所有、等同、兼有、列舉及近似之類 型。英語「or」則具有六種語義類型，與「或」相較，「or」的意涵缺少「兼 有」類型，實則「or」的「兼有」類型乃是利用「and」直接表述。此外，「or」 除了直譯為「或」外，還發現漢語中另有十四種表徵形式用以傳達「or」的各 類語義。綜合上述「or」與「或」的分析比較，在科學語言習得、科學文本識 讀及科學教學應用上，本研究提出相關建議。

In terms of cross language comparisons， this study aims to explore the semantic meaning patterns of the logical connective ‘or’ between English and Mandarin Chinese. An ‘OR Corpus’ was constructed with the source of the texts drawn from Conceptual Physics and its Chinese translation. The texts include topics of motion and forces. The semantic meanings of related translations were mainly analyzed and categorized using Webster’s College Dictionary， Revised Mandarin Chinese Dictionary compiled by the Ministry of Education and the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese. By looking into the free translations of ‘or’ in Mandarin Chinese and cases of translating ‘and’ into ‘huo’， seven meaning patterns of ‘huo’ (or) in Mandarin Chinese were identified. The free translations of ‘or’ and ‘and’ show that ‘huo’ encompasses ‘inclusive or’， ‘exclusive or’， ‘identity’， ‘all’， ‘enumeration’， ‘approximation’， and ‘addition’ meanings in Chinese. More importantly， the word ‘or’ by itself in English text does not quite express the meaning of addition. Besides， ‘or’ in English is not only translated directly into ‘huo’， but there are also 14 representative forms in Chinese to express various meanings of ‘or’ in English without the word ‘huo’. Accordingly， the implications of Chinese science text editing and science language teaching were discussed and suggested.