“言文一致”:从词汇看现代汉语的现代性

Consistency of Spoken and Written Language: On the Modernity of Modern Chinese from the Perspective of Vocabulary

汉语的现代化进程始于20世纪的第一个十年,经五四新文化运动的强力推动,20年代末初具规模。近代汉语和现代汉语的区分标志是什么?王力认为语音、语法、词汇三者中,应将语法作为主要依据,关注的是汉语本体的变化;吕叔湘则强调言文一致的实现是汉语现代化的分水岭,着眼于语言在社会运用上的变化。随着书面语使用者的爆发式增长、语言内容和话语行为的质变,以及传媒的多样化成为汉语近现代转型的重要动机,新增词语引发的词汇体系的重构是汉语之为现代的最重要的体现形式。新增词语有一个共同的形态特征:二字词。二字词具有两种语言功能,一、精密描写,二、讲述与听解。只有二字词才能应对科学的进步和日益复杂的人类社会,也只有二字词才能对非日常的内容做到说得出、听得懂。这种本文称之为"科学叙事"的话语行为以"言文一致"为基本条件,是语言现代化的本质所在。本文的主要观点是,言文一致是汉语现代化的重要标志,而言文一致需要词语上的基础;汉语的词语新增得以在短时期内完成,是东亚域内语言接触与词汇交流的结果。从词汇体系现代重构的视角对汉语进行考察是必不可少的,因为语言的现代性是由词语的现代性决定的。

The modernization of Chinese language began in the first decade of the 20 th century, and began to take shape in the late 1920 s with the strong promotion of the May Fourth New Culture Movement. What is the distinguishing mark of modern Chinese language? Wang Li believes that among pronunciation,grammar and vocabulary, grammar should be regarded as the main basis for distinguishing modern Chinese,focusing on the changes of Chinese language itself. Lü Shuxiang emphasized that the realization of consistency between language and text is the watershed of modern Chinese, focusing on the social application of language. This paper holds that the explosive increase of written language users, the qualitative change of language content and discourse behavior, and the diversification of media are important motives for the transformation of Chinese language in modern times, and the reconstruction of vocabulary system caused by new words is the most important embodiment of Chinese in modern times. The new words have a common morphological feature: two-character words. Two-character words have two linguistic functions, one is precise description, and the other is speaking and understanding. Only twocharacter words can cope with the progress of science and the increasingly complex human society, and only two-character words can speak and understand non-daily contents. This kind of discourse behavior, which is called " scientific narrative" in this paper, takes " consistency between words and texts" as the basic condition, which is the essence of language modernization. The main point of this paper is that the consistency of speech and text is an important symbol of Chinese language modernization, and the consistency of speech and text needs the foundation of vocabulary. The addition of Chinese words can be completed in a short period of time, which is the result of language contact and vocabulary exchange in East Asia. It is necessary to study Chinese from the perspective of modern reconstruction of vocabulary system,because the modernity of language is determined by the modernity of vocabulary.