翟理斯对汉语语音特征认识的比较研究

A Comparative Study of Herbert Allen Giles’s Cognition of Chinese Phonetic Features

本文以19世纪英国汉学家翟理斯为中心,分析了其在《汉语无师自通》《字学举隅》《华英字典》著作中对汉语语音特征的认识,并与同时期及19世纪以前的汉学家进行对比,既考察了翟理斯汉语注音系统自身的发展变化,又与其他汉学家作了历时和共时的比较。我们发现翟理斯的注音系统是逐渐发展完善的,这主要体现为从以英语的发音规则为汉语注音到注重汉语的实际发音情况的变化。在与其他汉学家比较的过程中,我们也发现了翟理斯对汉语语音特征的一些认识,包括对后鼻音韵尾ng、零声母问题、尖团音的分离合流问题以及一些特殊语音成分等的认识和描述,在一定程度上比较符合汉语语音的历史演变过程。通过对以翟理斯为代表的汉学家对汉语语音特征认识的比较研究,可以在理论上佐证中国本土韵书和学者对汉语语音发展变化的描述和记录,进一步证明汉语的某些语音变化情况,希望可以填补早期汉语语音学史研究中类型比较研究的不足,扩大当下汉语本体研究和对外汉语教学研究的学术视野。

The article is based on the 19th century British sinologist Herbert Allen Giles, and analyzes his cognition of the features of Chinese phonetics in his works such as Chinese without a Teacher: Being a Collection of Easy and Useful Sentences in the Mandarin Dialect, with a Vocabulary;Synoptical Studies in Chinese Character;A Chinese-English Dictionary. At the same time, we compare Giles with sinologists from the same period and before the 19th century. It not only examines the development of the Chinese phonetic annotation system of Giles, but also compares with other sinologists from perspective of synchronic and diachronic. We find that the Giles‘s system is gradually improved, which mainly reflects the change from using the pronunciation rules of English to annotate Chinese phonetic pronunciation to pay attention to the pronunciation of Chinese. In the comparison with other sinologists, we also find that Giles has some description and understanding of the Chinese phonetic features, such as the post-nasal tail vowel ng, zero initial syllables, Jian-Tuan problem and some special phonetic features. These understandings are more consistent with the historical evolution of Chinese pronunciation in some way. Through the comparative study of sinologists‘ understanding of Chinese phonetic features, which is based on Giles, it is possible to prove the description of Chinese native rhyme books and scholars, and further prove some Chinese phonetic changes theoretically. The article hopes to fill the gaps in the comparative study of types of early study of Chinese phonetics and expand the current academic perspectives of Chinese ontological study and TCSOL.