THE ADPOSITION YI AND WORD ORDER IN CLASSICAL CHINESE

古漢語中的以字及與其有關的詞序問題

孫朝奮(Chaofen Sun)

《Journal of Chinese Linguistics》 19卷2期 (1991/06) Pp. 202-219

摘要

Linguists seem to have a different opinion on the syntactic properties of the PP's in Classical Chinese. While many assume that Classical Chinese had predominantly postverbal prepositions, many others believe otherwise. This study finds that the latter view is perhaps correct and that the PP's in Classical Chinese could be either postverbal or preverbal. On text-count level, PP's of the two types are about equally divided. Furthermore, this paper shows that the adposition yi 以 can be used as a preverbal preposition, a postverbal preposition, or a preverbal postposition in Classical Chinese. Evidence will be given to contend that the variation between the preverbal and postverbal uses of yi seems to be motivated by discourse factors. The nominals following the preverbal yi seem to be much closer to their antecedents than those after the postverbal yi. In addition, the high degree of variability of yi may follow from an earlier grammatical change, i.e. changing from postpositional to prepositional. Thus, it is hypothesized that the postpositional use of yi perhaps was simply a vestige of earlier Sino-Tibetan syntax.

並列摘要

語言學家對古漢語中介詞短語的句法特點有不同的看法。有的認為古漢語中的介詞短語大都是在動詞的後面，但也有人持反對意見。本人支持後者的觀點。事實上古漢語中的介詞短語用在動詞前後均可。在應用上，動詞前和動詞後介詞短語的使用頻率似乎是不相上下。在古文中，“以”字有時用在動詞前，有時用在動詞後，在動詞前的，有時還是後置詞。有不少例子顯示“以”字的用法可能是有一定規律的。動詞前的和動詞後的“以”字句可能是和上下文的話語結構有關。動詞前“以”字後的名詞一般都較動詞後“以”字後的名詞較接近它的先行詞“antecedent＂。至於“以”字後置詞的用法則可能是因上古語法的演變而造成的。漢語的詞序可能是從漢藏語的主賓謂演變成主謂賓。所以，古漢語中的後置詞用法可能是古漢藏語語法的痕跡。