Journal of Chinese Linguistics Vol.24 – 1996

Abstract 摘要
This article introduces the reader to a now defunct Sino-Japanese language peculiar to Japan known as hentai kambun 变体汉文, “variant Chinese.” It was widely used along with orthodox Chinese and various literary Japanese styles in the Japanese court throughout the premodern period. Some two-thirds of all extant premodern Japanese texts, including government records and communiques, biographies, temples histories, and a range of literary materials, are written in some form of hentai kambun. A knowledge of it is therefore a sine qua non for the study of Japanese civilization. The linguistic characteristics of variant Chinese–its hybrid Sino-Japanese grammar and syntax, vocabulary and orthographical features–are described and illustrated with examples, and the origins and historical place of variant Chinese relative to literary Japanese and orthodox Chinese are also discussed. Fully naturalized styles of hentai kambun, often referred to collectively as kiroku-tai 记录体, “the documentary form,” emerged in the Heian period (ca. 9-12th c.) and were seen in their day not as sub-standard or aberrant forms of Chinese but instead as heavily Sinicized styles of written Japanese. The complex interplay between these kiroku-tai forms, kundoku 训读 (a system for translating Chinese texts into Japanese), and literary Japanese, both medieval and modern, is also treated here, with examples of various Chinese-derived locutions that are found in modern written Japanese. Finally, the article explores the important literary uses of variant Chinese in such genres as courtier diaries and war tales, as well as in Japanese poetic criticism. Variant Chinese literature is one of the least developed areas in Japanese studies. Our future progress will depend upon our ability to train new scholars in Japan and the West to use hentai kambun materials skillfully in their literary research.

这篇文章要给读者介绍日本所特有的但已不使用的由汉语和日语组成的一种语言，即“变体汉文”。前现代时期日本朝廷除了运用正统的中文和其它日语书面体以外，也运用变体汉文。现有的前现代时期的日本书籍和文件，其中包括政府记录和公报，传记，神殿的史籍以及各种文学材料的三分之二都是用一种变体汉文写成的。凡是要研究日本文化的人都非要获得关于变体汉文方面的知识不可。本文用具体例子来描述变体汉文的语言特点，即半汉半日的语法和句法，词汇，正字法的特点。本文还探讨了变体汉文的来源和历史上的地位与书面体日语和正统的中文之间的关系。被日语充分吸收的变体汉文的书面体常被称作“记录体”（kirokutai），是平安时代（大约从九世纪到十二世纪）出现的，当时并未看做不规范或是古怪的汉文，反而被认为是受汉语影响极大的日文书面语文体。本文还涉及了这几种记录体文体，训读（kundoku）（即把书面中文翻译成日文的一个方式）以及中世纪和现代日本书面语之间复杂的相互影响，并举了很多现代日文书面语中由中文演变而来的惯用语的例子来加以说明。最后，这篇文章还探讨了变体汉文在朝臣日记，军事故事和日本史评论中主要的书面用法。变体汉文研究是日语研究中最薄弱的一个方面。我们未来的进步将取决于能否在日本和西方国家培养出一批新的能在日本文学研究中熟练运用变体汉文材料的学者。