构拟与诠释:汉语音韵史研究的两种对立观点  

Reconstruction or Interpretation: Two Conflicting Views on the Study of Chinese Historical Phonology

作　　者：薛凤生[1] 

机构地区：[1]美国俄亥俄州立大学东亚语言文学系

出　　处：《语言科学》2003年第5期3-9,共7页Linguistic Sciences

摘　　要：进入20世纪以后,汉语音韵的研究方式发生了一场巨大的转变。在印欧学者所倡导的“历史比较语言学”的影响下,以高本汉为代表的众多学者,便开始了“构拟”(“重建”)古音的工作,使用“万国音标”之类的拼音符号标示“音值”,代替了中国传统音韵学较抽象的“反切”注音。这种“构拟”工作,迄今仍风行不衰,成为汉语音韵史研究的主流。这种作法自然使他们不自觉地偏重“音值”的猜测,而不特别重视解读韵书或韵图记录下来的许多现象。与前述的作法相反,我认为《切韵》、《韵镜》、《中原音韵》等韵书或韵图,都是各个时代的专家对其语言的忠实记录,所以我们的研究目标自然是“诠释”这些可靠的韵书,推论出其所依据的音系。本文试从音位学的观点,指出构拟法不能解决的某些问题,及其所以无法解决之故;并举例说明《切韵》、《韵镜》、《中原音韵》等书所记录的现象都可以在音系学理论的基础上得到合理的解释。For more than half a century, research on Chinese historical phonology has been almost totally dominated by the reconstruction, or Gouni, theory, overlooking the fact that, at least as early as A. D. 601, pronunciations of words in the then standard language were already meticulously regis- tered and classified in the rhyme book Qieyun, followed by other rhyme books for later periods of the language. This strange phenomenon was perhaps caused by the fact that none of those books used phonetic symbols of any sort for the notation of pronunciation. Instead, they used a seemingly strange method which may be called 'internal mutual notation' in defining the reading of a word(i, e. within the same sound system), and this is perhaps quite confusing to the non-native speakers who are used to phonetic symbols. In the present paper, it is argued that, since the notation and classification of words in the rhyme books are strictly phonemic in nature, the reconstruction approach cannot really explain them satisfactorily by figuring out the unique sound system underlying each of the books. Therefore, it is hereby strongly proposed that the phonemic approach be adopted as an alternative. A few examples are included to demonstrate how the status and the evolution of a group of rhymes in the Qieyun can be logically explained byu the phonemic approach, but not by phonetic reconstruction.

关 键 词：汉语 音韵学 音位学 构拟 诠释 

分 类 号：H11[语言文字—汉语]