- 期刊
Finding Language-Internal Cognates in Old Chinese
古代漢語詞彙中的同源詞研究
摘要
The investigation of language-internal cognates and word families in Chinese plays a central role in enhancing our understanding of Old Chinese phonology and morphology, as well as constituting a key element for fostering our knowledge of the history of Sino-Tibetan languages. Here, we provide an overview of common challenges encountered when searching for language-internal cognates in Old Chinese. We identify three major problems in this endeavor. An epistemological problem arises from varying definitions of word families among scholars, a heuristic problem results from the scarcity of shared workflows for word family identification, and a representation problem follows from the absence of standards for data handling and analysis. While ultimate solutions remain elusive, three suggestions are proposed to enhance future research on Chinese word families. These include advocating for a stricter separation between words and their written representations in Chinese characters, investing time and collaborative efforts in establishing consistent annotation schemes for Chinese word families, and promoting the integration and standardization of data from neighboring languages.
並列摘要
古代漢語詞彙中的同源詞和詞族研究在增強對古代漢語音韻和形態的理解方面起著核心作用，並且構成了促進學術界對瞭解漢藏語系的關鍵因素。本文概述了對古代漢語詞彙中的同源詞進行研究時經常遇到的挑戰和問題。所識別出的問題主要有三個：由於學者們對詞族的定義不同而造成的認識論問題；由於缺乏用於詞族識別的共享研究流程而造成的啟發式問題；由於數據處理和分析缺乏標準框架而造成的表達問題。雖然解決方案仍難以實現，但提出了對未來研究有所助益的三項建議。這些建議包括：提倡漢字和詞語之間進行更嚴格的區分，加強多方合作，建立一致的漢語詞族注釋方案，促進與東亞鄰近語言的數據整合和標準化。