Joseph Edkins의 중국어 연구에 대한 기초적 고찰

Abstract

By examining Joseph Edkins’ (1823~1905) research on the Chinese language, the present study elucidates aspects of the study of Chinese by Westerners in the modern era and examines its significance in the history of Western scholarship on Chinese. As Edkins’ studies on Chinese, the seven following works have been selected as the objets of research. : A Grammar of Colloquial Chinese as exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect, A Grammar of the chinese colloquial language commonly called the Mandarin Dialect, Progressive Lessons in the Chinese Spoken Language: with lists of common words and phrase, and appendix containing the laws of tones in the Peking Dialect, A Vocabulary of Shanghai Dialect, China's Place in Philology, Introduction to the Study of the Chinese Characters, Evolution of the Chinese Language. He compiled a grammar book and a glossary each for the Shanghai and Mandarin dialects. As for Edkins’ study of grammar, it was characterized by an emphasis on both the sounds and a comparison among dialects. In the case of his research on lexicons, the glossary of the Mandarin dialect classifies and lists words based on their meanings in Chinese, and the one of the Shanghai dialect is characterized by adopting the format of an English-Chinese dictionary. In the three other volumes of research, Edkins compared world languages with Chinese, discussed the characteristics of Chinese characters, and, through all of this, discussed changes in human languages and the significance of Chinese among them. This aimed at proving that Chinese likewise had originated from the same, single source of the world’s languages. Edkins’ study of Chinese is significant, first, for synthesizing and critically inheriting existing research by other Western missionaries. Second, he attempted contacts between Western linguistics and the Chinese language by applying the methods of contemporary Western comparative linguistics to the latter. This differed from other missionaries’ research on Chinese, which was for practical purposes, and served to transmit knowledge of Chinese to the West. Third, Edkins absorbed not only traditional Chinese linguistics but also contemporary linguistic research by the Chinese.