汉语史研究的对象和材料问题——兼与刁晏斌先生商榷

Issues and Data in the Study of History of Chinese Language and a Dialog with Prof. DIAO Yan-bin

汉语史研究的对象是汉语口语发展史。"口语"相当于"谈话体"。汉语口语史是一以贯之的,先秦的文言和唐宋以后的白话,其基础都是当时的口语。东汉到隋时期口语性材料比较贫乏,从上古的"文言"式口语到唐以后的"白话"式口语,中间好像发生了断崖式的突变。事实不可能如此。其间的渐变过程,正是发生在约六百年的中古汉语阶段,只是由于口语文献不足,这种渐变性目前还是若隐若现,看不真切。汉语史研究应该依据口语性语料。古代文献的情况很复杂,就口语性而言,可以大别为两类:1)比较贴近口语的。这在历史文献中大量存在,是研究口语史的基本依据。2)文白夹杂的。这可以通过一定的方法将其中的口语成分剥离出来。目前普遍存在对语料不加分析导致结论不符合实际的问题,是违背研究口语史的宗旨的,亟须纠正。

The main research content of the history of Chinese language is the historical development of'oral Chinese',w hich is equal to'conversational Chinese'.The author argues that the development of oral Chinese has been threading throughout the history of the Chinese language such as the classical literary language wenyan in the pre-Qin periods and the vernacular literary language baihuawen in the Tang and Song Dynasties w ere both based on oral language.It is true that the oral language data of the historical period from the East Han Dynasty to the Sui Dynasty is relatively scarce,and it seems that an abrupt change must have taken place in the development of the oral language from w enyan to baihuawen,but that can’t be the case.Instead,a gradual change took place right w ithin the period of M iddle Chinese Language w hich lasted for about 6oo years but appeared rather vaguely due to the scarcity of oral language documents.The author holds that the history of the Chinese language must be studied on the basis of those oral language documents.Although,those documents are complicated,they can be roughly divided into tw o types according to how'oral'they are,i.e.,1)the'quasi-oral'type,w hich is abundant in historical w ritings and serves as the basis for historical studies of oral Chinese language;2)the wenyan-baihuawen mixture type,from w hich oral language data can be properly identified somehow.The author finally points out that the common practice of not conducting careful discriminating and screening of language data w hich naturally leads to unreliable conclusions,goes against the ultimate purpose of historical studies of oral language and such kind of study must be rectified immediately.