摘要
在语言学田野调查中,类型学问卷是一种广泛使用的方法。本文在Haspelmath(2010a)对“比较概念”和“跨语言范畴”的区分基础上,认为问卷杂糅了这两类范畴,且在语言记录和描写过程中存在局限。问卷涉及的范畴不能涵盖也无法对应于特定语言中的全部描写范畴;问卷中跨语言范畴与具体语言中描写范畴的所指也未必相同,而比较概念又往往框定了范畴的边界。我们认为问卷所代表的自上而下的“假设-验证”式田野研究范式有其存在的必要性,但必须结合自下而上的研究来获取和描写语言个性。
In linguistic field studies,it is generally accepted that two approaches must be combined to obtain and analyze linguistic data:the bottom-up approach that emphasizes language description must be language-specific,and the top-down approach that assumes typological findings as guidelines for language description.Typological questionnaires are usually considered as useful tools in data collection and provide a descriptive framework in language description.Based on the distinction drawn by Haspelmath(2010a)between crosslinguistic categories and comparative concepts,this paper explains the limitations of typological questionnaires and justifies the necessity of combining the bottom-up and the top-down approaches in field studies.Haspelmath(2010a)criticizes the idea of identifying crosslinguistic categories before comparing languages,and proposes the distinction between comparative concepts,which are used for crosslinguistic comparison,and descriptive categories,which are categories of particular languages.We use the examples of grammatical relations and passives to justify that some crosslinguistic categories turn out to have no categorial parallelism in different languages,and thus are only language-specific.Both language-particulars(i.e.,including crosslinguistic categories)and comparative concepts are included in questionnaires by design.The limitations of using questionnaires in linguistic fieldwork are reflected by category identification and category specification in data elicitation and language description.With respect to category identification,because the range of descriptive categories in a particular language does not necessarily align with the comparative concepts or crosslinguistic categories involved in questionnaires,solely relying on questionnaires will lead to ignorance or misunderstanding of significant language-particulars.As for language description,crosslinguistic categories fail to provide insights for description as no correspondence should be presumed between the two types of categories;comparative concepts,however,play very limited role in language description,as they can only partially characterize the linguistic facts in a particular language.In any case,with the typological framework in questionnaires,category identification and specification are still language-specific to a large extent.I also comment on the“hypothesis-testing”method which is supposed to be the tenet of questionnaires,concluding its problem is that it denies the fact that the way of understanding and describing a specific aspect of language by no means has conclusive answers.Ultimately,this motivates the combination of the two approaches in studying specific languages.
作者
李昱
LI Yu(Department of Linguistics,609 Baldy Hall,University at Buffalo,North Campus,Buffalo,NY 14260,USA)
出处
《当代语言学》
CSSCI
北大核心
2020年第1期114-133,共20页
Contemporary Linguistics
关键词
田野调查
问卷
比较概念
描写范畴
类型学
fieldwork
questionnaire
comparative concept
descriptive category
typology
