分類詞在北方漢語中的演變：魏晉南北朝與元朝兩個時期的比較

Development of Sortal Classifiers in Northern Chinese: A Comparison between the Wei-Jin-Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Yuan Dynasty

分類詞源於漢語而後影響壯侗語，還是漢語借自壯侗，頗有爭議。支持壯侗的證據之一是現代南方漢語分類詞較北方漢語多，可見是壯侗先影響了南方漢語，再向北擴散。Her & Li (2023)則論證北方漢語為源頭向南方擴散，但北方漢語後期與阿爾泰語系接觸而產生「阿爾泰化」，分類詞因而減少。本文的目的是以魏晉南北朝與元朝時期的分類詞語料檢驗此項假說。漢語分類詞於魏晉南北朝時期趨於成熟，本文統計此時北方漢語中分類詞的數量，作為比較的基礎。接著檢視受蒙古統治的元朝。兩相比較發現，元代北方漢語的分類詞數量比魏晉時期不減反增，可見元之前的兩千五百年間，漢語分類詞從無到有不斷增長，減弱的趨勢應在元以後發生，尤其是滿族統治近三百年的清朝。

It has been debated whether sortal classifiers originated in Chinese and then influenced Tai-Kadai or vice versa. One piece of evidence supporting Tai-Kadai as the origin is the higher number of sortal classifiers in modern southern Chinese, compared to northern Chinese, suggesting that Tai-Kadai classifiers first influenced southern Chinese and then the feature diffused northward. However, Her & Li (2023) provide evidence supporting northern Chinese as the origin, arguing that later interactions between northern Chinese and the Altaic languages led to the“Altaicization”of northern Chinese, resulting in a reduction in classifiers. This paper aims to examine this hypothesis based on the respective classifier data from the Wei-Jin-Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Yuan Dynasty. Classifiers in Chinese matured during the time of the Wei-Jin-Northern and Southern Dynasties. It is therefore necessary to first establish the number of sortal classifiers in northern Chinese during this period as a basis for comparison. We then examine the Yuan Dynasty, which was under Mongol rule. The result of comparing the Wei-Jin-Northern and Southern Dynasties, on the one hand, and the Yuan Dynasty, on the other hand, clearly shows that the number of sortal classifiers in northern Chinese increased rather than decreased in the Yuan. This indicates that a trend of growth in Chinese sortal classifiers, from nonexistence to abundance, occurred over the two and a half millennia before the Yuan Dynasty. The decline must have taken place after the Yuan Dynasty, particularly during the nearly three centuries of Manchu rule in the Qing Dynasty.