从语言的本质看音译和借词

Transliteration and Loan Words: A Perspective from the Nature of Language

语言是制约信息传达及意义推测的工具,是一套俗例化的社会性惯例,反映了语言使用者对外部世界的认知,这是语言的共性。各种语言用不同的手段和方式强制性地制约语义的不同领域,形成了不同语言的特性。语言本质上是一套由认知驱动的社会性惯例和信息推测制约工具。对照语言本质观,音译和借词是用音形代文意的方式为输入语提供认知符号,是通过移植能指而让人探究所指的意义投射。音译词和借词的生命力由输入语对具有"不可通约性"事物和概念的信息传递制约需求决定,也由音译词和借词在音、形两方面与输入语信息传递制约规则的协调兼容性决定。

Language is a particular set of social and conventionalized constraints on inference of conveyed information, reflecting language speakers’ perceptions and conceptions of the external world. This is the commonality of all languages. Different languages arbitrarily constrain different functional domains in different manners and to different degrees. This is what makes language differ. Language in nature is a set of cognition-driven social convention and constraints on inference of received information. In the light of this view on the nature of language, transliteration and loan words are two means of overcoming incommensurability through borrowing the phonetic form of another language, i.e. the cognitive signifier, for a projection and exploration of the signified. The viability of transliterated words and loan words is dependent on two factors, the need for constraining inference of the newly transplanted information, and the compatibility of the words with the constraining rules of the receptor language in terms of phonology and morphology.