“夜来”“夜里”词源新解

A New Explanation on the Etymology of Yelai and Yeli

目前有关“夜来”的词源主要有三种解释:一是源自“夜晚”;二是由“X来”这类构词模式派生而出,“来”具有派生性;三是“词根+词缀”式合成词,“来”是时间词后缀。“夜来”自魏晋后主要表昨天晚上义,唐代引申泛指晚上,宋代新增昨天义,其中“来”仍承担一定的词汇意义,尚不能归为词缀或类词缀。并且“夜来”的出现时间早于“夜晚”,在使用频次和范围上均超过“夜晚”,二者关联不明显。“夜里”在唐宋南北文献和元明清南方文献中主要泛指晚上。“夜来”“夜里”应是“时间名词+时间方位词”结构,其中“来”做动态时间方位词用于指示时间的方向和位置,“里”做静态时间方位词仅指示时间的位置。并且进一步系连“晚来”“晚里”“黑来”“黑里”“晚上”等时间词证明了“时间名词+时间方位词”结构的合理性。清代北京小说中新增“夜里”表昨天义应是“夜来”语音弱化的结果,这与唐代产生的“夜里”不同源。

At present,there are three main explanations for the etymology of yelai:1)a word originated from yewan;2)a derivational word of the pattern“X lai”,in which lai is an affix;and 3)a compound word of“etyma+affix”structure.After the Wei and Jin Dynasties,yelai mainly represented the meaning of“yesterday evening”.In the Tang Dynasty,it extended to refer to“the evening”.In the Song Dynasty,the meaning of“yesterday”was added.In these periods,lai still bore a certain lexical meaning and could not be classified as an affix.In addition,yelai surpassed yewan in terms of generation time,the frequency and scope of use,so the correlation between them is not obvious.Yeli mainly refers to“the evening”in the literature of south China in the Tang,Song,Yuan,Ming and Qing Dynasties.Yelai and yeli were both first in the structure of“temporal noun+temporal postposition”,in which lai was used as a dynamic temporal postposition to indicate both the direction and time,and li was used as a static temporal postposition to indicate time only.At the same time,temporal words,such as wanlai,wanli,heilai,heili and wanshang prove the rationality of the structure of“temporal noun+temporal postposition”.In addition,yeli in the Beijing novels of the Qing Dynasty indicates that the meaning of“yesterday”should be the result of the weakening of the pronunciation of yelai,which is different from yeli in the Tang Dynasty.