Usage

惯用法

The collective term for the speech and writing habits of a community, especially as they are presented descriptively with information about preferences for alternative linguistic forms. Linguists emphasize the importance of describing the facts of usage as a control on the claims made by grammars, and contrast this emphasis with the prescriptive attitudes of traditional grammar, whose rules often bore no relationship to what people actually did with their language. The many ‘levels of usage’ which descriptive investigations encounter can be formally taken into account in several ways, such as by adding usage labels (as in dictionary entries, e.g. ‘slang’, ‘nautical’), or by the use of statistical statements about preferences, or (in generative contexts) by the notion of variable rules.

统指一个社会的言语和书写习惯，特别是用描写方式提供的关于两种交替语言形式优先选哪一种的信息。语言学家强调描写惯用法事实的重要性，这种描写是对语法理论的制约；这种强调与传统语法的规定态度相对立，后者制订的规则往往与人们实际的语言使用情况无关。描写研究中遇到的多种“惯用法层面”可以用几种方式作形式上的处理，例如加“惯用法标签”（如词典的词条加“俚语”、“航海”等标签），或加关于优选的统计说明，或（在生成语言学中）借助变项规则。