從古契字論臺灣地名表記的傳統規範機制

On the Conventional Regulatory Mechanism in Writing the Placenames in Taiwan

臺灣豐富的古契字收集成果，使古契字成為研究臺灣地名的珍貴史料。本研究運用古契字中記載的地名來探討規範傳統閩南語地名漢字表記的內在與外在機制，以回答：在沒有權威性正字法的年代，為什麼有些地名表記比較穩定，有些比較不穩定？本研究從古契字中提取出的地名表記語例，依照表記的穩定程度和地名語源（漢語系或南島語系）分類，並預期源於漢語的地名，因為書寫者知道語源，知道自己在寫什麼，地名表記便趨向穩定。本研究除了證明以上假設，也把用語源維持穩定表記的機制概念化為「語義校準」。但是語義校準也帶來對地名源流望文生義的問題，本研究稱為「語源合理化」，此一現象可以用來解釋俗民語言學的產生與特色。除了語義校準，地名表記亦可透過印記提供的先行語例來規範表記。但如果先行語例本身已無標準，書寫者無可依循，地名表記便會趨向不穩定。本研究以許多源於南島語系的地名來說明此類地名表記的不穩定性。

The old contracts from the pre-twentieth century Taiwan form an enormous corpus of placenames for studying the linguistically internal and external mechanisms to regulate the written forms of placenames. This paper tries to explain, when an authoritative orthography was absent, how the written forms of some placenames kept stable, but some did not. This study extracted representative cases from these old contracts and classifies these placenames according to their etymological origin(Sinitic or Austronesian) as well as their stability in written forms. The result shows that knowing the etymology of a placename helped the writer to pick correct characters for the placename upon writing, resulting in the uniformity of its written form. I would call this mechanism “semantic calibration”. This mechanism served as the semiotic interface to introduce the conventional association between character and meaning to regulate the written form of placename. This proposal is supported by the routine practice of instructing someone to write correct characters in the culture using Chinese characters. Moreover, “semantic calibration” also stimulated folk etymologies of placename to explain the written form which they observed, and it is called “rationalized etymology” in this paper. Beside the internal mechanism, the other regulatory force came externally from the stamps held by local headmen. The scribes of contracts could refer to these stamps to find the correct characters of the placename in question, and these stamps successfully regulated the written form of the Austronesian-origin placenames. However, if the written forms inscribed on the stamps varied, a stable form is not expectable because the scribes had no standard to follow.