《无罪获胜》语言学探微

耶稣会传教士何大化等人于1671年在广州将"诉状"、"康熙圣旨"等12篇与"康熙历案"相关的文书编印成中拉文对照的文集Innocentia Victrix(《无罪获胜》).初看,该文集只是一本"康熙历案"的卷宗.然而,如果以语言学的视角审视全书,那么我们会发现,它实际上是一本来华传教士的专业汉语教材.时代的变迁和政权的更迭,导致了明清官话语音的嬗变,加之"康熙历案"迫使传教士停止了传教活动,客观上使他们有了充裕的时间将注意力集中于学习中国的语言与文化上,从而促使在华耶稣会编辑刊印了这本汉语教科书.此教科书不仅记录了当时的汉语官话语音,而且也反映了17世纪中后期中西语言接触之实况,颇具语言学史料价值.

A Detailed Linguistic Study of Innocentia Victrix

In 1671, R.P. Antonius de Gouvea and his companions Jesuits in China published the book in Guangzhou Innocentia Victrix, a Chinese-Latin bilingual edition in which 12 documents of the "Calendar Case in Early Kangxi Reign" at the conclusion of the case were collected. It can be seen at first glance as a dossier of the "Calendar Case in Early Kangxi Reign" . However, if we examine the entire content of the book carefully from the linguistic perspective, we may find that it is actually a Chinese textbook specially for missionaries to China. Social and political changes caused the gradual change of Mandarin pronunciation, and moreover, "Calendar Case" forced the missionaries to temporarily stop conducting missionary activities, which enabled them to have enough time to concentrate themselves on the studies of Chinese language and Chinese culture, thus resulting in the edition of this Chinese textbook.This Chinese textbook has two remarkable linguistic characteristics. The first one is that there are four fonts of Chinese characters adjusted to 12 documents with different styles due to the mutual acknowledgement regarding Chinese character typefaces among Jesuits in China for they thought these four typefaces of Chinese characters could serve the purpose of various stylistic documents in Chinese. Although the editors chose vertical typesetting for Chinese documents in this book, they arranged platoons from left to right instead of the traditional way of from right to left so that European missionaries could read it easily, which marked the beginning of the left-to-right form in the use of the Chinese written language. The second one is that the pronunciation of almost each Chinese character in this book was labeled by Latin letters, namely Chinese Romanization. The romanization system of this book basically followed the way of Matteo Ricci's system of Xizi Qiji with exceptions of some Latin spellings of Chinese characters, which, however, presents certain regularities and reflects some phonetic changes of Mandarin caused by the change of Ming and Qing dynasties. In Qing Dynasty, Nanjing lost its status of Liu Du (the former capital) while Beijing became the unique political center of China, with which Beijing dialect was to have greater influence on Mandarin pronunciation. Therefore, Innocentia Victrix is of great value for studying the history of the Chinese language.