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In the past 100 years, Otto Jespersen’s influence in China ebbed and flowed for various reasons. However, it looks certain that he is mainly remembered here as a grammarian, due to the significant influence of his theory of the grammatical ranks on the Chinese linguists who, during the first half of the twentieth century, made efforts to write descriptive grammars of the mother tongue according to its own features instead of the Indo-European morphological categories. Even up till now The Philosophy of Grammar (1924) and Essentials of English Grammar (1933) remain his only two books that have been translated full-text into Chinese.
The fact that this eminent grammarian was actually an erudite and prolific scholar who wrote extravagantly in diverse fields of linguistics was seldom unfolded in China until the publication of Professor REN Shaozeng’s Selected Readings in Linguistics from Otto Jespersen (2006), which for the first time presented the Chinese translations of half of Mankind, Nation, and Individual from a Linguistic Point of View (1925), an enlightening part of Language: Its Nature, D evelopment and Origin (1922), and an almost full-text of Efficiency in Linguistic Change (1941). This volume successfully inspired Chinese readers’ curiosity in Jespersen’s non-grammatical writings, leading to the successive reprints of several of his most important works (English reprints with thorough introductions in Chinese) in the following decade in the land where his linguistic ideas played an interesting and complex role.
However, his works on phonetics have never been seriously translated into Chinese, although he made, especially in his early age, remarkable contributions to phonetic evolution, to general phonetics as well as to the description of Modern English sounds and spellings on the historical principles. Therefore, the present volume is meant to fill this gap, and simultaneous editor, translator and annotator anthologized from his vast number of phonetic writings, translated the selected texts into Chinese from German, English and Danish, and bountifully annotated these texts so that Chinese readers will be able to take an effective look at the aspects of Jespersen’s world that have never been available in Chinese before.
Altogether 24 pieces of Jespersen’s works on speech sound have been included in this volume and grouped into four topics: On Phonetic Evolution, On General Phonetics, On English Phonetics, and On the History of Phonetics. The half-a-century span of these works starts from “Om lydskrift, særlig Lundells‘Landsmåls alfabet’ og Bells‘Visible Speech’” (1884) to the last of his three “Zur Lautgesetzfrage” together with some updated English works in Linguistica (1933). Between them are his essays, treatises, a newspaper article, an encyclopedia entry, along with several chapters from his renowned The Progress of Language (1894), Fonetik (1899), Phonetische Grundfragen (1904), Lehrbuch der Phonetik (1904/1920), Modern English Grammar: Sounds and Spellings (1909), and Language (1922).
Exploring and translating the classic works by a linguistic giant may never be an easy task. The project would never be successfully completed without the kind help from the experts, colleagues and friends home and abroad, who encouraged and supported me in the various stages of the preparation of this volume. I am especially grateful to the generous help from Prof. Hans BASBØLL, Prof. REN Shaozeng, Prof. Douglas A. KIBBEE, Prof. Peter STEINER, Prof. QIAN Jun, Prof. John E. JOSEPH, Prof. GAO Yihong, Prof. Frans GREGERSEN, Prof. LAI Ying-Chuan, Prof. Mark GAMSA, Prof. LIU Yugang, Prof. FU Tianhai, Dr. CHANG Wen-Yuan, Dr. GUO Wei. My gratitude is also due to the library of my home university, to Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and to the Library at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
My sincere thanks also go to the colleagues who offered invaluable advice at the 14th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences in Paris (ICHoLS XIV, 2017), and at the 2019 Annual Colloquium of Henry Sweet Society of the History of Linguistic Ideas in Edinburgh.
QU> Changliang
May> 2020
Dalian,> China
1 叶斯柏森晚年曾编写两部单卷本自选集，1932年自选集题为《思考与研究》（ Tanker og studier ），收录用丹麦语撰写的文章19篇；1933年自选集题为《语言学文集——用英、法、德语撰写的论文选》（ Linguistica: Selected Papers in English, French and German ），收录用上述三语撰写的文章21篇。60年代初在伦敦和东京出版了一部全英文版的单卷本《叶斯柏森选集》（ Selected Writings of Otto Jespersen ），收录他各个时期的著作34种；该选集未标注其编者姓名和具体出版年份，因序言中有“本选集为纪念叶斯柏森诞辰100周年而筹备”而被称为“百年纪念版《叶斯柏森选集》”。据叶斯柏森自传《一位语言学家的一生》记载，该选集事实上的编者是日本语言学家市河三喜（1886—1970）。关于这部选集，详见拙著《从百年纪念版选集看叶斯柏森的语言学思想》（清华大学出版社，2019）。
2 见克里斯托弗森，《奥托·叶斯柏森》（ Otto Jespersen ），第2页，载尤尔、尼尔森（Arne Juul & Hans F. Nielsen）主编《叶斯柏森面面观》（ Otto Jespersen: Facets of His Life and Work ，荷兰John Benjamins出版社，1989）。
3 见《北欧语文学学报》新系列第6卷（1917），第40页。这篇书评除了1917年的丹麦语原文之外还有法语译文，载于1933年自选集。
4 见《现代英语语法》第1卷《语音与拼写》（1909），第v页。
5 见威尔伯编《1885至1886年语音定律之争资料集》（1977），荷兰John Benjamins出版社，第lxxxix页。
6 见科尔纳著《论泰希默〈学报〉的重要性》（ The Importance of Techme r ’ s “Zeitschrift” ，1973），荷兰John Benjamins出版社，第22页。
7 20世纪前半叶，叶斯柏森的语言学思想不仅在我国形成了重要影响，对日本语言学界的影响也十分突出，他的许多著作在出版伊始就有了日语译本。劳宁《日本语言学者关于普通语言学的著作及译著》一文（载《语言学资料》1965年第2/3期）提到了3部叶斯柏森著作日译本：《言語進歩論》（ Progress in Language with Special Reference to English ，新村出译，1901），《言語―その本質·発達及び起源》（ Language: Its n ature, d evelopment and o rigin ，市河三喜、神保格译，1927），《人類と言語》（ Mankind, Nation and Individual from a Linguistic Point of View ，须贝清一、真锅义雄译，1932）。
8 国音派学者在这背后的心态是十分复杂的，参见黎锦熙《国语运动史纲》（商务印书馆，1934/2011）。
9 感谢以色列俄中关系史专家马克·甘萨（Mark Gamsa）教授提供了这一资料。
10 马泰修斯的文章以英语撰写，原载于荷兰出版的《昔日弟子与同行友人献给约瑟·施莱纳博士教授先生六十华诞的论文集》[ Verzameling van opstellen, door oud-leerlingen en bevriende vakgenooten opgedragen aan Mgr. Prof. Dr. Jos. Schrijnen bij gelegenheid van zijn zestigsten verjaargad ，1929]；现已重印于《语音学与音系学早期经典著作选读》（清华大学出版社，2019）。
11 胶辽官话方言用字从罗福腾《牟平方言词典》（江苏教育出版社，1997，即李荣主编41卷本《现代汉语方言大词典》胶辽官话分卷），注音依据本人观测记录的今大连城区老派发音。
12 上述泰语例词见于裴晓睿、薄文泽《泰语语法》（北京大学出版社，2017），第69页；壮语例词见于韦景云、覃晓航《壮语通论》（中央民族大学出版社，2006），第189页；缅甸语例词见于汪大年、杨国影《实用缅甸语语法》（北京大学出版社，2016），第43页；藏语例词见于格桑居冕、格桑央京《实用藏文文法教程》（四川民族出版社，2004），第235页。
13 补偿性延长（compensatory lengthening，叶斯柏森称compensation-lengthening）指“短元音+辅音”的组合中，辅音若消失，元音常由短音变为长音，填补了辅音留下的时间空位。英语语音史中这一现象主要见于辅音/ç，x，r/消失之后，其前面的元音的延长，如light /liçt/ > /liːt/ > /lait/，bought /bɔxt/ > /bɔːt/以及英国英语bar /bɑr/ > /bɑː/。（见《现代英语语法·第1卷·语音与拼写》第10章。）与之具有可比性的是，大连话有大量与普通话不同调的上声字（调值同北京话的214，发音过程较长），皆与古入声字存在对应关系。古-p尾字如“插”“汁”“涩”“入”“接”等，古-t尾字如“一”“七”“八”“出”“得”“发”“缺”等，古-k尾字如“叔”“色”“福”等，这些字在大连话里（以及许多其他地区的胶辽官话方言里）今均为上声。
14 罗福腾《牟平方言词典》里的“壁子”词条格外强调了“室内”和“薄”这两个最关键的义素：“房间与房间之间的墙壁，比房子四周的墙壁要薄。”（第12页）
15 这个术语的译法，本书从特拉斯克《语音学与音系学词典》中译本（语文出版社，2000），音译为“斯特德”。
16 这一章没有收进英语版的《从英语看语言的发展》，但是后来译成英语收进了1933年版自选集，标题改为《英语的浊擦音和清擦音》（Voiced and Voiceless Fricatives in English）。百年纪念版选集亦有收录。
17 除了最后一节“非拉丁字母文字的转写”由裴得生所写之外，其余28节都是叶斯柏森所写。