20世纪的历史语言学

Historical Linguistics in the Twentieth Century

本文讨论 2 0世纪世界范围历史语言学的主要事件以及相关理论与方法的新进展 :印欧语系在赫梯语等新发现古文献材料冲击下分类观念有所变化 ;对世界语言的系属分类探索逐步展开 ,主要叙述诺斯特拉语系和欧亚语系的形成和研究情况以及汉藏语系与南岛语、南亚语构成的华澳大语系分类状况 ;与系属分类相关的理论与方法中重要的创新有语言变异理论、词汇扩散理论以及远程比较方法 ,另外 ,声调发生学、混合语理论、语言年代学、语言接触和联盟理论以及语言地理类型学等也是本世纪历史语言学的新发展和主要的成就。

The author discusses the main events in historical linguistics throughout the world and the new development of relevant theories and methods. In the author's opinion, changes have taken place in the concept of classification of Indo-European languages under the impact of the newly-discovered ancient Hettite literature; research on the classification of languages has gradually unfolded with its focus on the formation and study of the Nostratic Euro-Asian families of languages, and on the classification of the Sino-Austronesian family of languages which is composed of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, and Austronesian languages. Innovative theories and methods related to the classification of languages include language variations and vocabulary proliferation theories and remote comparison methods. New developments and major achievements in historical linguistics last century also include tone genetic linguistics, mixed language theory, linguistic chronology, the theory of language contact and union, and linguistic geographical typology.