중국어 존현문에 관한 소고 - 정보적 측면을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper considered the existence sentence of Chinese in terms of an informational perspective. We can summarize it as follows. First, we can look at the scene with a Chinese dictionary on the desk and express ‘桌子上有汉语词典’ or express ‘汉语词典在桌子上’. That is, it can be expressed in two different syntactic structures for the same scene. These two sentences are the same in terms of truth conditions, but they are different in terms of information. In the former, the speaker used the ‘桌子上’ as a topic and used it as a starting point for the message to be delivered. At this time, the speaker assumes that the information ‘桌子上’ already exists in the listener's head, and the listener updates the new information on it. In the latter, the speaker used the ‘汉语词典’ as a topic and used it as a starting point for the message to be delivered, and the listener updates the new information on it. The reason why the same scene is structured differently is that when the speaker wants to convey some information to the listener, he or she chooses the structure that the speaker thinks is most effective in each situation. In addition, the place of Chinese existence sentence has different characteristics from other topics. It is located at the beginning of the gate and is also the same as other place adverbial topics in terms of old information, but it differs from them in that it is given prominence and encoded as a subject. Second, although the NPs of Chinese existential sentence are known to be indefinite, in fact, many definite NPs are found. Through the definite NPs, we can see that the Chinese existential sentence reflects the cognitive mechanism of close-up perspective mode as well as long-range perspective mode. In addition, although the definite NP of Chinese existential sentence is a definite noun phrase, it may be new information. However, not all definite NPs are new information. Third, we analyzed the informational characteristics of untypical existential sentence. The ‘VP+NP’ structure has no place, so it has no topic. Therefore the entire sentence is new information. ‘NL+NP’ structure has no ‘VP’. This structure can be transformed into an NL+VP+NP structure by inserting the verb ‘有’ or ‘是’ that represents the simplest existence. This structure can be selected and expressed when the conceptualizer does not attach informational value to the existence method of the NP. ‘在NL+VP+NP’ structure further limits the space where NP exists, and serves to emphasize and remind listeners that the space is here.