英文摘要 |
We start by noting the rule whereby the original character of particular word is already known for a dialect, the literary and vernacular pronunciations of that character evidence phonetic correspondence. Likewise, the basic assumption for determining the original character for a word in a particular dialect is that if the literary pronunciation and the original character are already known or determined, the phonetic position of the vernacular pronunciation and the original character will be identical. Next, we focus on one of the most basic words in Chinese - da - and its two historical pronunciations. Interestingly, the word da is an exception to the above rule insofar as its literary and vernacular pronunciations may be either, or neither, of the two readings given above. We continue by considering the fact that sometimes it is necessary to search for evidence for which character is best suited to represent a word either internally, through correspondences between literary and vernacular pronunciations, or externally, from words common to different dialects or from cognatic relations among related dialect words. Once this distinction is made, research into Chinese historical linguistics, the history of dialects, or the history of dialect regions will be able to provide valuable historical/cultural evidence that could also be of use in resolving the big problem of the word da. |