Language change in 20th century written Chinese - The claim for Europeanization Dissertation zur Erlangung des Grades einer Doktorin der Philosophie am Fachbereich Asien-Afrika-Wissenschaften der Universität Hamburg Vorgelegt von Ruth Cordes aus Waiblingen Hamburg 2014 1. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Michael Friedrich 2. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Kai Vogelsang Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 24.11.2014 Contents 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 3 2 The call for Europeanization ................................................................................ 12 3 The Europeanization hypothesis: Participants in the discussion on Europeanized grammar .............................................................................................................. 24 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 24 3.2 Wang Li ................................................................................................. 24 3.3 Beijing Normal University ..................................................................... 27 3.4 Li Chi .................................................................................................... 30 3.5 Cornelius C. Kubler ............................................................................... 32 3.6 Edward Gunn ......................................................................................... 33 3.7 Xie Yaoji ............................................................................................... 33 3.8 Alain Peyraube....................................................................................... 34 3.9 He Yang ................................................................................................. 34 4 The Corpus .......................................................................................................... 37 4.1 Reasons for using a corpus in this study ................................................. 37 4.2 Existing corpora ..................................................................................... 38 4.3 Corpus design ........................................................................................ 39 4.3.1 Preliminary considerations ..................................................................... 39 4.3.2 The process of selecting texts: a working diary on difficulties and other interesting findings ................................................................................. 44 5 The Examples ...................................................................................................... 55 5.1 Morphology ........................................................................................... 55 5.1.1 Disyllabization ....................................................................................... 56 5.1.2 Word formation affixes .......................................................................... 58 5.1.3 Plural marker –men 们 ........................................................................... 75 5.1.4 Progressive aspect marker –zhe 着 ......................................................... 82 5.1.5 New prepositions consisting of verb and conjunction: duìyú 对于, gunyú 于 and similar constructions ............................................................... 87 5.2 Syntax .................................................................................................... 92 5.2.1 Nominal phrases .................................................................................... 93 5.2.2 Verbal phrases ......................................................................................116 5.2.3 Prepositional phrases .............................................................................123 5.2.4 Clause and sentence ..............................................................................139 5.3 Lexicon and semantics ..........................................................................155 5.3.1 Semantic extension of passive marker bèi 被 .........................................155 5.3.2 Extension of potential mood ..................................................................160 5.3.3 Neologisms ...........................................................................................162 5.4 Special case: script ................................................................................164 5.4.1 Personal pronoun t ..............................................................................164 5.4.2 Syntactical marker de ............................................................................169 6 Summary ............................................................................................................173 Literature ...................................................................................................................184 Language change in 20th century written Chinese – the clai for Europeaizatio Ruth Cordes Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Introduction “文法的欧，是语法史一桩大” (“The Europeanization of grammar has been an event of great consequence in the history of our language.” (transl. by Alain Peyraube 2000) Wang Li 1944/45 “Only the grammar of the Chinese language remained remarkably stable amidst all these changes.” Alain Peyraube 2000 Linguistic – or language – change happens everywhere and at all times, accelerated by social upheavals, though generally slower in written than in spoken language (cf. Glück 1993: 590). Whereas linguistic change is on some levels so fast it can be easily observed, like phonetic or semantic change, it is generally rather slow on other levels, like grammar (or morphosyntax). In written language, however, the conservative force of the letter is challenged by the possibility to purposefully prefer the one formulation or structure over the other. Where in spoken language people tend to structure their utterances automatically according to patterns acquired since childhood, they can formulate much more consciously in written language, which means that this would be the area where they experiment with new, fashionable expressions or grammatical structures. The two contradicting views above, by Wang Li and Alain Peyraube, mark the two extremes in the discussion about the origin and extent of linguistic change in 20th century written Chinese. Wang Li, with his broader notion of 语法 yŭfă – grammar – (including lexicon, stylistics and writing), saw this change as a result of contact with European languages, whereas Alain Peyraube, representing a narrower concept of grammar, found other sources of influence on 20th century written Chinese. The one point both can agree on is: Written Chinese did change radically since the middle of the 19th century. At the beginning of this process was the highly esteemed Literary Chinese in all variations (or, later, called wényán 文言), and the low written 3 Language change in 20th century written Chinese – the clai for Europeaizatio Ruth Cordes Chapter 1: Introduction Colloquial Chinese (later known as báihuà 话), which was by traditional scholars considered unfit to express serious contents. The problem was that it took a lot of time to master the literary language, so that huge parts of the society were excluded from literacy. Towards the end of the 19th century, several attempts were made to use a more accessible type of language for newspapers and magazines intended for the reading of larger portions of the society.1 For the sake of alphabetization of former peasants that were needed as industrial workers, and in the attempt to teach people so they could participate in political discussions and thereby constitute a modern nation, means were sought to allow them to learn how to read and write in a shorter time and, above all, in a language that was near to their spoken language. Several people were occupied with the improvement of written Chinese: Some with the creation of a phonetic writing for Chinese, similar to the Japanese syllabary or using Latin script as a basis, others with the unification of the pronunciation of Chinese characters. In fact, in 1913 a conference was summoned to define the pronunciation of characters. This again needed a phonetic writing system to record these readings. Also the educational system reflected the switch from Literary to Colloquial Chinese as the subject to teach children in school: Since the 1910s, the language taught was called guówén 文 (national written language), which in 1920 was changed into guóyŭ 语 (national spoken language; until then, the term “national language”, guóyŭ 语, referred to the Manju language of the Qing dynasty rulers). The necessity to reform was felt in nearly every aspect of public life, like the government, educational system, economy and commerce among others (even down to clothing and hairstyle), as well as in language and literature, which in its turn had to serve the modernization. 1 Starting around 1868 (the year of Huang Zunxians “famous line wŏ shŏu xiě wŏ kŏu ‘my hand writes as I say with my mouth’”, Chen 1999: 70) was the movement for the unification of spoken and written language. The role of báihuà as a means of mass education was highlighted by Qiu Tingliang in 1898: “There is no more effective tool than wényán for keeping the whole population in ignorance, and there is no more effective tool than báihuà for making it wise.” (Tan 1956 cited by Chen 1999: 70) Around the Reform Movement of 1898, báihuà newspapers, textbooks and dictionaries were published “all around the country”