論對漢語時間副詞起制約作用的隱性語義範疇― 以“從此”等八個現代漢語時間副詞爲例

Abstract

In the paper, eight temporal adverbs “congci”(從此), “congjin”(從今), “conglai”(從來), “shizhong”(始終), “xianglai”(向來), “yixiang”(一向), “yizhi”(一直) and “yongyuan”(永遠) have been examined, so as to explore the covert semantic categories that play a restrictive role hidden behind modern Chinese temporal adverbs. In order to reduce the complexity of the discussion and make it easier to clarify the problem, only three covert generic semantic categories are discussed in the paper, which are tense category, temporal quantity category and positive / negative category. The tense category is composed of absolute past tense, absolute future tense, whole temporal domain, relative past tense and other specific temporal categories. The temporal quantity category is composed of background specific temporal quantity category and measuring specific temporal quantity category. The positive/negative category consists of positive restricted specific category and negative restricted specific category. Through investigations, the basic phenomena that eight temporal adverbs such as “congci”(從此) are how restricted by above three semantic categories are sorted out in the paper. For example, “congjin”(從今) can express absolute future tense, but can not express absolute past tense; “yixiang”(一向) can express absolute past tense, but can not express absolute future tense; “yizhi”(一直) can express absolute past tense, absolute future tense and whole temporal domain. “Xianglai”(向來) can express background temporal quantity, but can not express measuring temporal quantity; whereas “congci”(從此) can express both background temporal quantity and measuring temporal quantity. Positive category has an strong restrictive effect on “shizhong”(始終), while negative category has an strong restrictive effect on “conglai”(從來). In a word, the study of this paper confirms that it does exist some covert semantic categories, which hide behind the words, but restrict the meaning of words. These categories have a great restrictive effect, even though the quantity of which is limited, and the functions of which are strong or weak. If these covert semantic categories can be understood comprehensively and profoundly, the law of the structure of word meaning will be got a clearer understanding also.