Multiple Origins of the Old Chinese Lexicon
上古汉语的多向起源
Axel Schuessler 许思莱

Abstract 摘要
This article proposes that Proto-Chinese and subsequent Old Chinese (OC) had absorbed a significant number of words from Miao-Yao, Kam-Tai and Austroasiatic sources as well as loans from Tibeto-Burman. The multiple origin of the Chinese lexicon can already be suspected by the simple observation that Old Chinese frequently has two or more different words for the same thing or concept, and as it turns out, each word can be traced to a different language family. One can distinguish layers of borrowing or absorption because of the different treatment of foreign initial clusters in Old Chinese; for example, putative foreign word initial cluster *kl- can show up in Middle Chinese as th-, t-, k, among others. Finally, these early loans shed some light on OC phonology as well as enigmatic etymological relationships, as cases like ‘beard’ illustrate.

本文指出原始汉语及后来的上古汉语曾从苗瑶语，侗泰语 (Kam-Tai)，和南亚语(Austroasiatic) 中吸取了相当可观的词汇量，并从汉藏语中借有许多词汇。从简单观察上古汉语对同一事物，同一概念具有两种甚至更多词汇表达的现象，就会使我们联想到是否这些词汇具有不同来源的问题。那么，根据上古汉语辅音群的特殊性，我们是能够具体分离出汉语吸取和借代其它语言词汇的层次的，譬如，推定得到的辅音群的之一，kl-, 后来在中古汉语中表现为 th-, t-, k-。再有，这些早期的语言借代现象，像“顪”，即胡子，所提示的情景，还为探讨语音及不可思议的语源关系提供了新的希望。

<< Back 返回

Readers 读者