言語接觸과 借用語로 살펴본 현대중국어 어휘체계의 다원성

Abstract

This paper tries to explore Chinese' language contact and loan-words from the point of multi-dimensions of modern Chinese lexicon. Chinese Language may be isolating languages, but it is not a isolated language. Chinese or Sinitic languages now and always has been surrounded by non-Sinitic languages. Despite the fact that the Chinese have always had non-Chinese-speaking neighbors, there has been a general tendency to view the Chinese as a monolithic ethnic and linguistic entity, highly resistant to any sort of outside cultural or linguistic influence. The View that Chinese has seemed like an impermeable nucleus from which linguistic influences have flowed outward, but which generally has not affected by the inflow of foreign elements is a kind of linguistic version of ‘Chinese world order’. But we believe that such an approach is not correct. Prior to the establishment of Qin-Han empire, China's cultural and linguistic superiority was not as overwhelming as it was to become later and Chinese absorbed many loan-words in this period. Even after Qin-Han empire, many loan-words originated from Austro-Asiatic family, Indo-Iranian family, Indo-European family and Altaic language family flowed into Chinese lexicon. In the nineteen centuries, Chinese borrowed Japanese words originated from Chinese source on a relatively large scale. In the following years, Chinese again absorbed numerous loan-words from European language, mainly from English. These loan-words are the essential elements of contemporary Chinese lexicon. It also has changed Chinese lexical structure and made a great contribution to the multi- dimensions of modern Chinese lexicon.