香港粵語“單音節促發論”分析：語言接觸下的新視角

本文旨在以香港粵語語境下的報章副刊為主的實際語料為研究材料，驗證“單音節促發論”(facilitation of transference of monosyllabic words) 和“知覺顯著性”(perceptual salience) 的可信度，探討中英語碼轉換分別在詞彙、語音和句法上的促發誘因(facilitation)，以期開闊語碼轉換研究的視野。研究結果顯示，克萊恩(Michael Clyne 2003)的理論為粵語和英語之間的移轉，提供了合適和具說服力的分析框架。
This paper aims at presenting evidence of facilitation of transference from English into Hong Kong Cantonese (Clyne, 2003), which have been in contact for over 150 years. Being a Sino-Tibetan language, Cantonese is morpho-syntactically characterized by monosyllabic salience (Chao, 1968). Facilitation is psycholinguistically driven by perceptual salience (Paradis, 2004), which appears to facilitate the borrowing of monsyllabic English words (MEWs). This may take the form of code-switching or direct insertions into Cantonese (cf. 'code-mixing', Mysken 2000), in speech or in informal writing ('Hong Kong Written Chinese', Shi 2006). Over time, comunity-wide borrowing may result in MEWs becoming loanwords after their pronunciation has been assimilated to Cantonese phonology (e.g., fenl si2, FAN 屎 < fans). Morphosyntactic evidence includes (i) truncation of the first syllable of polysyllabic words, including in the A-not-A structure; (ii) bilingual punning; and (iii) the use of monosyllabic English names in the 'aa3 X' bisyllabic frame. Copyright © 2015 商務印書館.