从情态动词到饰句副词——“敢”之“凡”义探源

From a Modal Verb to an Adverb Modifying the Sentence:A Semantic Exploration of Gan

以往研究多将“敢”有“凡”义视为汉文佛典特有的语言现象,排除在“敢”的各类情态用法之外。本文基于汉译佛经中“敢”发生词义突变的年代和地域及其出现的句式语境,结合原典语言和汉语方言材料,初步推断这类“敢”并非昙花一现,来去无踪影,而是作为一个外来词,在汉语语境下改头换面,遵循从情态动词到饰句副词的演变路径,被重新分析为表确认的语气副词,并在以晋语为代表的北方汉语中保存下来。

Most of the previous studies regard gan with the meaning of fan as a peculiar linguistic phenomenon in Chinese Buddhist scriptures,and exclude it from all kinds of modal usage of gan.Based on the time,region and context,in which the meaning of gan changed abruptly in Chinese Buddhist scriptures,and combined with the original text and Chinese dialects,this paper preliminarily concludes that this kind of gan,as a foreign word in the context of Chinese language,evolved from a modal verb to an adverb modifying the sentence,was reanalyzed as an adverb of mood to express confirmation,and survived in Northern Chinese represented by Jin dialect.