Identifying Early Sino-Vietnamese Vocabulary via Linguistic, Historical, Archaeological, and Ethnological Data (早期漢越語詞彙的確認—— 來自語言學、歷史學、考古學、民族學的資料證據)

Abstract

In this study, over 60 Chinese loanwords in Vietnamese are claimed to have been borrowed during the East Han or West Jin Dynasties. These Early Sino-Vietnamese (esv) words are identified via a combination of linguistic, historical, archaeological, and ethnological data sources and frameworks. Such an interdisciplinary method helps to confirm or refute these words’ status as loanwords and as belonging to this specific historical period. The combined linguistic and extralinguistic data also leads to hypotheses about possible phonological changes in Chinese from the Old Chinese (oc) to Middle Chinese (mc) periods. In particular, while Sino-Vietnamese words from the mc period have expected qusheng tones for Chinese qusheng loanwords, oc-era esv words have either shangsheng or, unexpectedly, pingsheng tones. It is hypothesized that esv words with shangsheng tones for oc qusheng words were borrowed earliest, while esv items with pingsheng represent a later stage in oc in which final *-s was in the process of being lost in the first few centuries ce. 本文重點討論東漢或西晉時代借自漢語的60多個早期漢越語詞，通過語言學、歷史學、考古學、民族學等多個學科，綜合使用各種資料加以論證。這種跨學科的方法可用來解答它們是否屬於外來詞、這些詞是否屬於此一歷史時期的問題。此外，語言學材料和非語言學材料的結合還使我們能夠就上古到中古可能存在的語音變化提出假設；具體說來，源自中古的漢越語借詞本該以去聲對應漢語去聲，然而在源自上古時代的早期漢越語中卻可以是上聲甚至是出人意料的平聲。我們因此可以假設：對應古音去聲的早期漢越語上聲出現得比較早，而對應上古音去聲的早期漢越語平聲，應該出自*-s逐漸消亡的晚期上古音階段，即剬元紀年的頭幾個世紀。(This article is in English.)