WIDER GENETIC AFFILIATIONS OF THE CHINESE LANGUAGE

追溯汉语更远古的语源

John D. Bengtson

《Journal of Chinese Linguistics》 27卷1期 (1999/01) Pp. 1-12

摘要

The ancestry of the Chinese language is still a topic of vigorous debate. (See Wang, ed., 1995). In my own research, I find the immediate affiliation with Tibeto-Burman to be the most probable, i.e., that Chinese is a Sino-Tibetan language. Beyond that horizon, I accept the more distant affiliation of Chinese (and Sino-Tibetan in general) with Sino-Caucasian (or Dene-Caucasian: see Starostin, 1995). However, Dene-Caucasian properly consists of more language families than just Sino-Tibetan, Caucasian, and Yeniseian, the languages cited by Starostin. This paper brings in additional evidence from the other Dene-Caucasian languages, namely Basque, Burushaski, and Na-Dene. It will be shown that this supplemental evidence sheds additional light on the deep ancestry of the Chinese language.

並列摘要

汉语语源的问題一直是热烈争论的题目。（参看王士元1995）在研究中，我发现汉语和藏缅语有直接关系，即汉语是汉藏语系中的一种语言。我还同意在汉藏语以外，汉－高加索语族（或者Dene-高加索语族，参看Starost in 1995）是汉语（一般地讲，包括和汉藏语系语言，）更远的来源。但是，Dene-高加索语族的内容不只限于Starostin所提到的汉藏语系，高加索语系和Yeniseian语系。本文根据Dene-高加索语族中另外几种语言的材料，即巴斯克语，Buru-shaski语和Na-Dene语的材料，为汉语具有更远古的语源关系提供了进一步的线索。