Westernization of Chinese Grammar in the 20th Century: Myth or Reality?
二十世纪汉语语法的西化: 迷思抑真相?
Alain Peyraube 贝罗贝

Abstract 摘要
Researchers on grammatical change are more than often extremely suspicious of the phenomenon of borrowing, which they consider as an undesirably weak explanation. The main reasons against borrowing are that it is unfalsifiable and that the direction and extent of borrowing, if any, as well as the kinds of features affected, are determined more by social factors than by linguistic ones. However, since Wang Li's remark in the 1940s that "the europeanization of (Chinese) grammar has been an event of great consequence in the history of our language", many have tried to contribute arguments in favor of the thesis of a westernization of Chinese grammar. I will argue that these arguments, which often are repetitive, are far from being as convincing as one would like to suppose. The first part of this paper will show that the great majority of the examples put forward as evidence for a europeanization of Chinese grammar were actually in place before any contact between China and the West. In other words, regarding the problem of actuation (origin of the forms), it is suggested that any influence of Western languages on Chinese grammar has been quite limited. In the second part of this paper, however, it will be acknowledged that such an influence could have been important, at least in some registers of language (special kinds of shumianyu), for the implementation (spreading) of the so-called Western structures. The last part of the paper will discuss some universals regarding grammatical changes to borrowing in order to explain why Westernization of Chinese has necessarily been limited.

研究语法变化的学者通常对外借现象都持着非常怀疑的态度，他们认为外借是一个较弱的解释。怀疑外借现象的主要原因是这个解释无法被反证，而且外借的方向及程度，以至其它被牵涉的部分主要是受社会性因素的影响而少受真正语言学方面的影响。不过，王力在1940年代曾说汉语语法欧洲化在中国语言历史中产生了重大影响，自此以后许多语言学家就对汉语西化这个问题作了许多研究。本文讨论这些研究，并认为这些多所重复的研究论点实际上的说服力并不强。本文第一部分指出持汉语西化论的学者所举之例大部分在中国与西方正面接触之前已经存在。换言之，就形式始源问题而言，西化对汉语语法的影响是很有限的。本文第二部分则承认西化影响在其它方面的重要性可能顽大，至少在某些书面语方面，但只在扩大所谓西化语法结构流传方面。本文最后部分讨论有关语法变化外借理论的一些普通现象，以解释为何汉语语法的西化必然是有限的。

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