古漢語或外來語？五一廣場東漢簡中的「央」、「央人」試解

Ancient Chinese or Loanword? The Usage of Yang央and Yang Ren央人in the Eastern Han Bamboo Slips from Wuyi Square

五一廣場東漢簡的口語記錄中，有一種說話者將「央」作為詞頭，冠於人、事、物前的特別用例；例如「央物」、「央人」。對此，學界提出了將「央」解為人名、中央、第一人稱領格（所有格）等三種解釋。本文在前賢的討論基礎上，全面檢驗已發表的五一簡中「央」之文例，發現「央」在口語中的用例大致可分為兩種情況：其一，以「央＋某人∕物」的形式出現，指「我的某人」或「我的東西」；其二，以「央人」的形式出現，指「我們」、「我輩」之意。據此，本文認為將「央」解為第一人稱領格的意見較為正確。但同時也發現「央人」這種延伸用例，以及「央」的使用者大多為男性，不符合既有成果引《說文》對「姎」：「女人自稱，我也」的解釋。考慮到「央人」在語法結構上與《後漢書》〈南蠻西南夷列傳〉中，用為長沙、武陵蠻自稱「我輩」的「姎徒」相似，本文認為這種「央」的用法除了源自古漢語外，也可以思考非漢族群語言習慣混入的可能性。

In the oral accounts recorded in the Eastern Han dynasty bamboo slips from Wuyi Square, Changsha city, there is a peculiar usage of yang央as a prefix by speakers before people and things, such as yang wu央物and yang ren央人. Academic circles have put forward three interpretations of yang: a person’s name, the meaning of“central,”and the first-person possessive case. To further our understanding of its usage, the present article analyzes all instances of yang in the Eastern Han bamboo slips from Wuyi Square, finding that yang in spoken language can be divided into two interpretations based on the situation: first, it appears in the form of“yang + someone/thing,”which refers to“someone of me”or“something of me”; second, it appears in the form of yang ren, connoting“we.”This article thus concludes that the previous interpretation of yang as the possessive case is more accurate. But it is also discovered that the extended use of yang ren and the fact that most of its users are male do not conform to the explanation in the early dictionary Shuowen說文that yang姎is“the first-person pronoun for women.”Furthermore, considering that the grammatical structure of yang ren is similar to that of yang tu姎徒, the latter of which was used by the Changsha長沙and Wuling武陵non-Han peoples to refer to themselves as“we”in“Biographies of the South and Southwest Barbarians”南蠻西南夷列傳of the Book of the Later Han, such terms may come from a mixing of Chinese and non-Han language habits.