汉语方言中的历史层次

The historical strata in Chinese dialects

汉语方言中的历史层次可能是语言中特有的现象,近年来引起研究者浓烈的兴趣。历史层次基本上指文白异读,一般的了解白读是白话音,文读就是读书音。除闽语以及极少数方言之外,其他方言的文白异读都是局部的、片面的,只有闽语等少数方言是相当全面的。官话、吴语、晋语、客家话、赣语、湘语、粤语大体跟北京音一样,文读未必是读书音,而是一种白话音,时间或早或晚。当两种白话音融合的时候,用其中一种强势的白话音来读书,因为用这种白话音读书,慢慢就成为文读。这是两种白话音的混合引起的现象,其中也许还有更早期的底层。另一种情形较为全面,就像闽语跟儋州话,白读是本有的,文读真的是所谓读书音,由于科举盛行,文读是为了读书从强势方言借进来的语音,以及离标准音远的地方引进的形形色色的外来方言。

That there is more than one historical stratum underlying a language is a topic that has drawn increasing attention of linguists working on Chinese dialectology in recent years.Generally speaking,the historical strata may consist of two different sets of readings,the colloquial versus the literary.The former represents a dailyspoken language,and the latter is usually used in reading.Except for Min and a few other dialects,the double-reading phenomena in all major Chinese dialect groups are sporadic and scattered.Similar to what we find in the Beijing dialect,the literal readings in the Mandarin,Wu,Jin,Hakka,Gan,Xiang,and Yue dialects belong,partially or wholly,to the daily-spoken language in different times,and were characteristically colloquial.When two colloquial layers coalesced,the prominent dialect was used for reading and eventually gave rise to the so-called literary readings.In addition,in some cases,a language may display an even earlier stratum of pronunciation.The Min dialects,however,demonstrate a different situation.Literary readings are so complete that in some extreme cases almost every morpheme may have two matching readings,a distribution in which the colloquial readings are the basic forms and the literary readings are really literal.Because of the traditional civil service examination,the literary readings were borrowed from the standard language or a nearby prestigious dialect.And,due to a mixture between the two layers,new readings may have been subsequently created.