西方傳教士之漢語言觀──以一本十七世紀閩語語法為例

The Chinese language through the eyes of Western missionaries: A Hokkien grammar of the 17th century

西方傳教士在十六世紀之後對中國語言的描述是國際漢學的一個重要基礎。過去研究之焦點在於西方傳教士對中國上層社會所使用之語言的描述與記錄，如利瑪竇(Matteo Ricci)的Dizionario portoghese- cinese（《葡漢字典》），金尼閣（Nicolas Trigault）的《西儒耳目資》及萬濟國（Francisco Varo）的Arte de la lengua Mandarina（《官話文典》）等。然而，有關西方傳教士在十九世紀前對中國方言之描述過去並未引起漢學家們之研究興趣。本研究以一本十七世紀初西班牙傳教士所編的閩語語法為研究對象，探討西班牙傳教士如何記述與理解中國方言。他們所記載的中國方言為菲律賓華商之閩南語。本文探討西方傳教士如何援引歐洲的傳統語法架構來分析與印歐語系完全不同之漢語方言，研究結果顯示出傳教士在語言描述方法上具有相當大的彈性。雖然其在分析漢語方言時，使用歐洲傳統語法架構為基礎，但同時也承認歐洲語言與漢語方言之差異性，並能針對漢語語言中與歐洲語言不同的一些語言特徵如聲調與量詞等進行分析。

The missionary exploration of Chinese languages is recognized as an important founding stone of European sinology. Previous research on the history of Chinese missionary linguistics has focused on the early Jesuit contributions to the study of the languages of China's elite, i.e. the classical written language of the literati and the quasi-official court language known as Mandarin (guanhua). Mastering these languages was crucial for establishing and maintaining contact with imperial officials. In contrast, much less research has been devoted to early missionary dialect research. This tradition goes back to the early 17th century when Jesuits and Dominicans started to document the Hokkien vernacular of the overseas Chinese of the Philippines. The first part of this paper compares the different approaches to language documentation as embodied in missionary grammars and dictionaries of Mandarin and Hokkien respectively. The author will show that the approach of the Manila-based missionaries was oriented towards the spoken language, contrasting with the script-oriented approach of the China-based Jesuits. The second part will discuss some representative examples of spoken language documentation in a 17th century Hokkien grammar and other contemporary sources. Although the compilers were strongly influenced by the Greco-Latin tradition of grammatical analysis, they also recognized linguistic features foreign to European languages.