中古文獻所見語氣詞“那”的性質——再論近代漢語語氣詞“那”的來源

On the Feature of the Mood Particle na(那) in the Middle Chinese Literature:Further Discussion on the Source of Mood Particle nain Early Mandarin

現代學者大都認爲近代漢語語氣詞'那'在魏晉時期已經産生。筆者(朱慶之1991)根據中古佛經中的大量'那''耶'異文資料認爲,中古時代寫作'那'的句末疑問語氣詞其實都是'耶'的形誤字,其讀音仍然同'耶',並非語言中有一個讀音爲'那'的新語氣詞。二十多年來,陸續有一些商榷的文字發表。批評者回避筆者的兩個關鍵疑問,另闢蹊徑,試圖從論證'那'在中古有表示肯定語氣的用法來維持舊説。本文將就此作進一步的討論:除了用'耶'同樣具有表示肯定語氣的用法來證明批評者的立論不能成立外,還運用漢語俗文字學的理論來對'耶—那'混用現象的性質作新出的解釋。在中古時代,'那'除了'本職工作'以外,還是'耶'的俗字。文章的目的是釐清事實,並唤起研究者的進一步興趣。

Scholars today generally believe that the mood particle na(那)mainly used in Early Mandarin had already appeared in Middle Chinese although there are a few findings reported.Based on the discovery of the large number of na used in the Medieval Buddhist scriptures which usually were in other editions replaced with ye(耶),a very popular mood particle in Classical Chinese,and the characters of both look very similar,the author(1991)suggested that,those nas in Middle Chinese texts are actually the writing mistakes of ye but not that there was a new mood particle na in Middle Chinese.Over the past 20 years,there have been some critical comments on this point.These discussions avoided answering the two key questions raised by the author,and tried to prove the traditional opinion in a new path.This paper will further discuss this open problem,and try to give a new explanation of the feature of the na,based on the theory of the Chinese Vulgar Character Studies(漢語俗文字學)that nais actually the vulgar style of ye in Middle Chinese texts.