Language Log
最近作爲放鬆，除了長時閒放空之外，在看Language Log（http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll）裏梅維恒的文章，有篇“Are Sanskrit and Chinese "congenial languages"?” （http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=6931）很有意思，特別是Wolfgang Behr自己的回復，取其中最與我相關者貼于下：
1. The point I try to make is that people like Kingsmill were under such strong influence of various popular comparative paradigms at the end of the 19th century 。。。 that they saw no other way as to posit Chinese and Sanskrit as genealogically and even structurally related when trying to establish "Aryan" supremacy in semi-colonized China, or at least a primaeval "great unity" (datong 大同 ) of China and Europe. In short: "congenial" languages also had to be "cognate" languages in this intellectual climate.
2. Widening the lens even a bit further, it seems that most Chinese authors dealing with Sanskrit and Chinese in the premodern period seem to have been convinced that they are perfectly translatable, despite the great structural diversity. Comparing the two languages, the Buddhist monk Fayun 法雲 in the preface to his Fanyi mingyiji 翻譯名義集 (Thesaurus of meanings of the translated (Buddhist) terms) of 1157 says: "Even if the sounds are seemingly different, meanings by and large correspond" (音雖似別。義則大同). He then continues to invoke the later popular metaphor of the comparison between the two languages being like ‘… turning over a brocade embroidery: front and back are both gorgeous, but left and right are reversed.’ (如翻錦繡背面倶華。但左右不同耳). There is, in other words, a certain conviction of linguistic universals involved in such passages. What is largely missing in Ancient China, as far as I can see, is the idea, widespread in Europe since Humboldt, Herder and their followers, that languages are "relative", i.e. that they are so different or culturally determined in their linguistic means and potential of expressing thought, that there is a serious problem of translation. I would be very grateful to everyone who has premodern counterexamples to linguistic universalism from outside Europe.
從什麽時候開始大同心被忘卻了？
1. The point I try to make is that people like Kingsmill were under such strong influence of various popular comparative paradigms at the end of the 19th century 。。。 that they saw no other way as to posit Chinese and Sanskrit as genealogically and even structurally related when trying to establish "Aryan" supremacy in semi-colonized China, or at least a primaeval "great unity" (datong 大同 ) of China and Europe. In short: "congenial" languages also had to be "cognate" languages in this intellectual climate.
2. Widening the lens even a bit further, it seems that most Chinese authors dealing with Sanskrit and Chinese in the premodern period seem to have been convinced that they are perfectly translatable, despite the great structural diversity. Comparing the two languages, the Buddhist monk Fayun 法雲 in the preface to his Fanyi mingyiji 翻譯名義集 (Thesaurus of meanings of the translated (Buddhist) terms) of 1157 says: "Even if the sounds are seemingly different, meanings by and large correspond" (音雖似別。義則大同). He then continues to invoke the later popular metaphor of the comparison between the two languages being like ‘… turning over a brocade embroidery: front and back are both gorgeous, but left and right are reversed.’ (如翻錦繡背面倶華。但左右不同耳). There is, in other words, a certain conviction of linguistic universals involved in such passages. What is largely missing in Ancient China, as far as I can see, is the idea, widespread in Europe since Humboldt, Herder and their followers, that languages are "relative", i.e. that they are so different or culturally determined in their linguistic means and potential of expressing thought, that there is a serious problem of translation. I would be very grateful to everyone who has premodern counterexamples to linguistic universalism from outside Europe.
從什麽時候開始大同心被忘卻了？
