変化述語をもつ「どんどん」文の意味からわかる「動詞固有の意味」と「文の意味」, そしてその関係について

Abstract

Émile Benveniste once said, "le sens d'une phrase est autre chose que le sens des mots qui la composent" ("La forme et le sens dans le langage", 1966). This paper is an attempt to clarify and explain the relation between sentences, words, and "signes (termes)". In Japanese, "dondon"-sentences with change-predicates show three patterns of meaning : (a) Dondon huusen ga hukuramu. (b) Dondon posutaa ga hagareru. (c) Dondon okyaku ga tootyaku suru. In example (a), the sentence with "dondon" describes the process of the expansion of a balloon. Sentence (b) describes the situation in which the "coming-off' of a poster proceeds from its edge, and sentence (c) describes the process in which the number of the guests grows in the course of time. These three patterns of meaning must have come about from the concatenation of the consisting elements. In (a), "dondon" conspires with a predicate of scale and generates the meaning that the degree of the size of a balloon gets bigger. In (b), it conspires with an object that has an extension and generates the meaning that this "coming-off' proceeds from the edge. In (c), it conspires both with a predicate that has no scale and with an object that has no extension, and generates the meaning of cumulation. Therefore, predicates and objects (or participants) constrain the interpretations of "dondon"-sentences, and I must add that these properties (with scales or extensions) are not derived from each individual word, but from the event structures of these sentences. What we actually have here are patterns or types of the interpretation of events, so sentences (or utterances) are interpreted along these lines. Words or elements contribute to generation but not construction of the meaning or interpretation of sentences.