西方語法理論與中國語言事實的初始遭遇

——衛匡國《中國文法》序

姚小平

一

在西方與中國的交往史上，晚明是一個特殊的時期。西洋人首度大舉來華，接觸並認識中國語言文化，就發生在那個時候。在那一時期的中西交流活動中，耶穌會士所起的作用非常突出。比起13世紀初成立的方濟各會、道明會（一譯聖方濟會、多明我會）等修會，後起的耶穌會只是小兄弟，建立於1534年，但很快就開始拓展傳教事業，向遠東地區進發。1552年8月，該會創始人之一沙勿略（St. Francis Xavier，1506-1552）從日本航行至上川島，這裏距廣東臺山沙咀不足十海裏。由於明朝海禁甚嚴，他未能如願登陸。三年後，巴萊多神父（Melchior Nuñez Barreto，1520-1571：This Jesuit was the first missionary to whom Chinese barriers were temporarily lowered. He went as far as Canton, where he spent a month each time (1555). A Dominican, Father Gaspar da Cruz, was also admitted to Canton for a month, but he also had to refrain from forming a Christian community）曾在赴日途中泊靠廣州，謀劃開拓中國教區，打算留下一位年輕會友，讓他專門學習漢語，然而也未能成功。又過二十餘年，羅明堅（Michele Ruggieri，1543-1607）、利瑪竇（Matteo Ricci，1552-1610）終於從澳門進入內陸，成為第一批通過實地接觸而學得中國語言文字的耶穌會士。

衛匡國（Martino Martini，字濟泰，1614-1661）於1643年入華，他與本會前輩利瑪竇相隔逾半個世紀，據《在華耶穌會士列傳及書目》，這期間又有六十餘位耶穌會士陸續來到中國，其中在研習中國語言文字上貢獻較多的，除了利瑪竇、衛匡國之外至少還有兩人：郭居靜（Lazare Cattaneo，1560-1640：In Beijing the Jesuits resided at the residence of Wang Honghui, but Korean war fears hindered their visit. Wang, who had sponsored the trip, was passed over in his bid for a higher office, and thus had no direct influence with the eunuchs who maintained the Emperor’s appointment schedule. Money was running out, and it became clear a meeting at Court was now impossible. The two months spent at Wang’s residence were not idle, however. Ricci, Catteneo, and Zhong Mingren edited a Chinese vocabulary arranged in alphabetical order, romanized in the modified system originated by Ricci, including aspirants and indicators for the five tones of the Nanjing official language, which Ricci calls Quonhua (i.e., guanhua 官話). Apparently a manuscript (now lost) was produced, entitled Vocabularium sinicum, odine alphabetico europaeorum more concinnatum et per accentus suos digestum. Ricci later related how important Cattaneo’s contribution to the project was, “Father Catteneo contributed greatly to this work. He was an excellent musician, with a discriminating ear for delicate variations of sound and he readily discerned the variety of tones.” Nicolas Trigault refers to this work in his Chinese treatise Xiru ermu zi 西儒耳目資 (1626).）和金尼閣（Nicholas Trigault，1577-1628）。郭居靜與一位中國教友鐘巴相（Sébastien Fernandez，1562-1622，一名鐘鳴仁）曾協助利瑪竇標注字音、辨別聲調，合作編纂了一部拉漢字典，即白佐良先生（Giuliano Bertuccioli，1923-2001）在本書《導言》開首提到的那部成稿於1598年的字典寫本，現藏於羅馬耶穌會檔案館；金尼閣這個名字在中國語言學家聽來並不陌生，因為1626年梓刻於杭州的《西儒耳目資》，署名作者便是金尼閣，這本書開耶穌會音韻研究之先，不但系統地使用拉丁字母為漢字注音，還從普通語音學和比較語音學的角度解析漢語的音理，為三百年後中國拼音字母的創制鋪墊了基礎。

衛匡國做的卻是一件很不同的事情，他編寫了耶穌會的第一部漢語語法書。在衛匡國之前，利瑪竇等人已注意到漢語具有奇特的構造，與西方人以往所知的任何其他語言類型都不一樣。在金尼閣傳述的《利瑪竇中國劄記》裏，我們可以發現不少關於漢語特點的看法，論及音節構造、聲調特徵、同音現象、文白異體、方言差別，有時還涉及語法，例如指出：在兩個人談話時，漢語從不使用“語法上的第二人稱”；在談到自己時，從來不用“第一人稱的代名詞”，“直呼本名而不說‘我’”，除非是主人對僕人、上級對下級說話；表示客氣、謙恭、避諱的詞極多，等等。 不過，這些說法都是從語用和修辭的視角，觀察漢語辭彙語法而得出的零星結果，距離成體系的專門語法描寫尚遠。當衛匡國來到中國時，耶穌會已經有了自成一體的拼音轉寫方案，也有了初具規模的漢外字典，這些都可以用於漢語教學。但是，還缺少一本漢語語法書，這個任務就落到了衛匡國的肩上。

二

衛匡國抵達中國時，正值明王朝岌岌將墜。不久清兵入關，攻陷江南，他目見戰事的慘烈，數度遭遇亂世之險。好在清軍無意加害西教，衛匡國與其他教士大都得以安然存身，且能不失時機地佈道宣教，為耶穌會吸納了一批本土士人。他沿承利瑪竇的做法，遵從中國人祈祖祭孔的俗例，這也使得耶穌會在入華天主教各派當中發展最為順暢，與明清朝野的關係都較好。在1650年爆發的所謂“禮儀之爭”中，衛匡國是代表耶穌會執言的關鍵人物。那一年，羅馬教廷命令在華教士返回歐洲面陳原委，衛匡國被推為耶穌會特使，而待到他歷盡艱辛抵達羅馬，已是1654年。同年，他向教廷呈遞了一份報告書——《中國基督徒人數與素質簡況》（Brevis relatione de numero et qualitate Christianorum apud Sinæ，1654）。兩年後，教皇亞歷山大七世頒發飭令，准允中國教徒保留本民族的祭祀習俗。這樣的讓步在當時的教會只不過是一種策略罷了，然而在今天看來，卻是中西文化欲順利交往而必須達成的折衷。或許衛匡國已經體悟到，任何一種西方精神文化形式，無論宗教、哲學還是語法理論，來到中國都不能不接受改造，以靈活變通的方式存在。

返歐途中，衛匡國攜有多部書稿，並且在1653-1658年間先後出版了其中的三部：《中國新地圖志》（Novus Atlas Sinensis），基於實地勘測，收載中國地圖17幅；《韃靼戰紀》（De bello Tartarico），記敍明清戰史，也包括著者本人走北闖南的親身經歷；《中國上古史》（Sinicæ Historiæ, Decas I），從神話傳說講起，敍述西曆紀元前的中國歷史。這些著作無一不是創新，內容所及都是西方學界認識中國事物的盲區，只須一部就足以使他成名，何況接連三部！歐洲知識界由是大為震撼，很多學人因此對中國歷史文化萌生興趣。此外，他還有一部書稿，在旅程中不斷修訂繕寫，那就是《中國文法》（Grammatica Sinica）。這部稿子應該也有機會發表，可是始終未能梓行。其中的緣由已難考明，也許是因為他覺得自己的作品尚未成型，需要時日提煉；但也可能是受限於技術條件，比如手稿中插有漢字，會讓印刷商發怵。

衛氏中文語法的原始手稿很可能已經佚失。幸運的是，衛匡國沿途與學界友人交往，他們當中至少有兩位獲得了《中國文法》抄本這一珍奇難得的贈禮，而這兩份抄本又被輾轉傳抄，加上衛匡國留下的遺著（應是底稿或自抄新本，最有可能為身邊教友收藏），迄今已發現的中文語法稿本計有五種，分藏於德國、英國、波蘭的幾家圖書館。白佐良比較了五種抄本，決定選用柏林國家圖書館收藏的一種作為翻譯的底本，因為它最為完整、保存狀態最好，而且來源可以確知：封面上寫有兩段題注，一段稱，這一本子是德國醫生克利耶（Andreas Cleyer，1634-1697）於1689年從爪哇寄至歐洲的，作為禮物贈給本國同行門澤爾（Christian Mentzel，1622-1701）；另一段稱，巴耶（Theophilus Siegfried Bayer，1694-1738）於1716年在柏林皇家圖書館抄錄了衛匡國的原本。門策爾起初迷戀於中國醫藥和植物，後來將很大一部分精力投諸漢語研究，著有《中文之解：論漢字和漢語發音》 （Clavis Sinica, ad chinensium scripturam et pronunciatorum mandarinicam，1698）；巴耶是聖彼德堡科學院院士，因著《中文大觀：中國語言文字詮釋》（Museum Sinicum: In quo Sinicae Linguae et Litteraturae ratio explicatur，1730）一書而被譽為西方漢學研究的先驅，此書收集了六萬漢字並摸索編排歸類的方法，是在歐洲正式刊行的第一部論述漢語的專著。然而，無論門澤爾或巴耶，其實都從未到過中國，他們對漢語語法結構的認識都受惠於衛匡國的《中國文法》。

衛匡國的《中國文法》雖未湮沒，卻始終沒有公開發表。遲至20世紀末，《中國文法》才得以公諸學界，有了現代印本，即白佐良譯注的拉丁文-義大利文對照本。不久，白佐良又在《華裔學志》上用英文發表書評，考證衛氏語法撰寫、傳抄、流布的經過。2006年春天我在羅馬訪學期間，已讀到拉意對照本，並隨手記下一些心得，現在寫這篇小序，恰能用上當時所做的筆記。那時馬西尼教授告知，其師白佐良先生承譯的中文本已校訂過半，並邀我為中譯本寫序。能有幸先期讀到漢譯文，且有機會與學界同好分享研讀所得，我自然樂意之至。五年前，我們曾經把來華方濟各會士萬濟國（Francisco Varo， 1627-1687）撰著的《華語官話語法》譯成中文，如今，一部比它更早的西洋漢語語法又將付梓；而在這之前，英人威妥瑪（Thomas Francis Wade，1818-1895）編寫的《語言自邇集》也已有了中譯本。進入新世紀以來，看到一部又一部西洋漢語研究史上的要著被還原為它們所探究的物件語言，身為中國學者我每每感到一種物還原主、學歸本根的欣喜。我們對整個海外漢語研究史的考察，必將隨著這類要著的重刊、移譯、詮解和考釋，而逐漸地深入、豐滿起來。

三

《中國文法》僅含三章，首章談語音，後兩章論語法。書中舉例不多，表達精練，描述簡約。全稿像是一份大綱，根據拉丁語法為漢語擬出語法框架，點到了很多大的方面，而具細入微的探索還有待展開。

首章論述語音，主體是一張字表，列出三百多個字，實際上是一張音節表。衛匡國解釋說，這些字都是單音節的詞，沒有屈折變化（monosyllabae et indeclinabiles）。這是從語法和音節構造上看漢字，不管它的筆形構造；也即把漢字看作漢語裏最簡單而獨立的語言單位，一個漢字就是一個單音節詞。傳教士接觸漢語之初，就為漢語的詞歸納出兩個特點，一是單音節性，二是沒有詞形變化。沒有詞形變化，這一點基本上可以肯定，然而單音節性卻很有爭議。利瑪竇早就持類似的看法，甚至認定漢語裏面所有的詞都是單音節的；換言之，即使是雙音節、多音節的詞，也都可以還原、歸簡為有意義的單個音節。可是我們觀察上古漢語，如《詩經》當中，已經存在“蟋蟀、菡萏、崔嵬、逍遙、綢繆、婆娑”等不可拆解的雙音節詞。顯然，漢語的字與詞、詞與音節並不像早期傳教士以為的那樣是完全等同的。不過，比之印歐屈折語言和日語等粘著語言，漢語基本詞彙的單音節程度高得多，所以，把單音節性看作漢語構詞的一個特點，大體上仍是可以接受的。關於單音節性這一命題，因觀察分析的角度不同，學者們的看法也會各異，但有一點可以肯定：衛匡國在此列出的音節表為漢語所獨有，任何一部西方語言的語法書都不會附帶這樣的音節表，更不用說把它安排在起首第一章。

原作的字表上，每個字都標有拉丁注音，用拉丁語釋義，按照慣常的字母順序排列。中譯本不僅用括弧加標了現代漢語拼音，還附上了另一種注音，即葡萄牙道明會士法蘭西斯科·迪亞茲（Francisco Diaz，1606-1646）曾經用過的一套音標。白佐良認為，衛匡國在注音時有可能借鑒了迪亞茲於1640年編成的《漢西字彙》（全名為Vocabulario de Letra China con la Explicacion Castellana “用卡斯蒂利亞語釋義的中文字典”）。這部字典收有七千餘字，較完整的抄本之一現藏波蘭克拉科夫市的雅傑隆斯卡圖書館。梵蒂岡圖書館存有另一抄本，編號Borgia Cinese 412，我曾想借出一閱，可惜因本子遭損、有待修繕而未能如願。迪亞茲、衛匡國所用的音標，都是早期漢字拉丁注音的珍貴史料；在《中國文法》的拉意對照本上，除了這些之外還標有威妥瑪注音，例如第一個字“雜”，注音依次為衛匡國式、威妥瑪式、現代拼音、迪亞茲式：

ça (tsa, zá) çǎ

字表一開頭說，漢語的音節不超過318個，可是序號卻明明排到第320。或許應該剔除第102個有音無字的hun，以及第293字“物”（與第299字重複），那麼總數就恰如衛匡國所說的那些。現代的漢語詞典在正文前後也常附有音節表，不過那上面的音節一般是帶四聲的，而衛匡國的本意是要編一張無聲調的純音節表；這樣的純音節只是在理論上才有其存在，需要用實有聲調的字來做例子。據他說，這些純音節配上五個聲調，足以構成1179個音節。接下來，他從學習者的角度講了六個較難發的音，都是輔音：c、ch、g、j、n、m（等於韻尾-ng），並與西班牙語、義大利語裏的類似輔音做了比較。拿義大利語來比較，這很自然，因為衛匡國的母語是義大利語。至於還頻頻地與西班牙語做比較，一方面大概是想顧及西班牙傳教士學漢語的需要，另一方面則是受到迪亞茲等前人影響的結果。

衛匡國辨別的五個聲調依次為：去聲、上聲、入聲、平聲、濁平；調號分別作：ˊ，ˋ，ˇ，ˉ，ˆ。這樣的排序有些特別。萬濟國的五個聲調與此相同，排序更合中國人的習慣：平清（上平）、濁平（下平）、上聲、去聲、入聲；調號分別為：ˉ，ˆ，ˋ，ˊ，ˇ。就分別調類而言，西士並無發明，中國音韻學家早已判別清楚了，但創制調號是西士的貢獻。然而這方面的首功應該記在利瑪竇、金尼閣的名下。

四

《中國文法》的第二章探討語法，分作三小節。第小一節的題目是〈論名詞及其變格〉，當然漢語沒有屈折形變，所以衛匡國講的重點是：同一個字因其所在的位置不同，可以是名詞或形容詞，也可以作動詞。名詞和動詞的界限不清楚，但不是所有的動詞都可以作名詞，反之亦然。例如，“打”、“去”只是動詞，不能當名詞，而“愛”、“想”兼具動、名二性，如在“我愛你”、“我想他”裏面是動詞，在“我的愛”、“我的想”中則是名詞。

至於形容詞，衛匡國認為它總是出現在名詞之前，如“好人”；後置於名詞的形容詞就變為名詞：“人的好”（可是他沒有考慮“[他]人好”這種似乎更常見的構造）。這也等於說，當一個名詞出現在另一個名詞之前，就成為形容詞。但如果一個名詞的後面帶了“子”，如“房子”、“哥子”，則不能再充當形容詞。名詞沒有數的變化，複數意義用“們”來表示，如“人們”；或可以利用字的重疊來表示，如“人人”。他特別提醒讀者，“們”與西方語言的名詞複數標記並不相當，因為當一個名詞的前面已經有了表示數量的表達時，就不能再用“們”，例如“多人”、“叫幾個人”，後面都不能帶“們”字。“子”和“們”都是所謂“小詞”（particula）。更重要的一個小詞是“的”，表示屬格關係，永遠後置於名詞或代詞：“人的好”、“我的狗”。在西洋漢語語法裏，小詞或小品詞（本書中譯為“助詞”）從一開始就是一個至關重要卻又含混不清的概念，凡是表達語法意義的字都叫小詞，涵蓋面幾乎跟虛詞一樣寬泛。

第二小節題作〈論代詞〉，只列口語的“我、你、他”及其帶“們”的複數形式，不涉及文言人稱代詞。又列有“不變格”，即不帶“們”的“誰”，以及“個個”、“自己”、“這個”、“那個”等。最後是指示代詞+量詞+名詞搭配的三個示例：“這個人”、“這只牛”、“那匹馬”。關於量詞，後面第三章第七節講到數詞時有更詳細的列述。

第三小節〈論動詞變位〉，區分三個基本時態：“我愛”是現在時，“我愛了”是過去時，“我將愛”是將來時。基本時態之外，又有已完成行為的表達，如“我愛過了”；或一種延續未完的過去狀態的表達，如“那時間愛”。語式有三種：主動式，如“我愛”、“我打你”；被動式，如“我被他的愛”或“我被他愛”、“我被他打”；祈願式（optativum，或稱“希求式”，本書中譯為“選擇式”），如“我巴不得愛”或“巴不得我愛你”。這種語式見於希臘語而不見於拉丁語，所以衛匡國在把這兩句漢語譯入拉丁語時，只能用虛擬式來表達：Utinam ego amem; utinam ego te amem；換用英語說，應該是“If only I could love”、“If only I could love you”。無論在哪種語言裏，動詞都是最具活力、最不易把握的詞類，況且中西語言動詞的形態絕然有別，比起其他詞類來在語義上也更難對應，所以在早期的西洋漢語語法中，動詞便成為薄弱的一環。

第三章繼續講語法，含七節。第一節〈論介詞〉，把“前、後、上、下”看作介詞，與動詞組合時一般出現在前，如“前作”、“後來”、“上去”、“下走”；與名詞組合時則出現在後：“房前”、“門後”、“卓子上”、“地下”，但不儘然，如“外面”、“裏頭”。除這些之外，只提到一個“為”，例子是“為天主到那裏”。

第二節〈論副詞〉，區分21類，可謂精細入微。第一類表示願望（optandi，本書中譯為“選擇”），例詞是“巴不得”。這個例子在前一章裏講到動詞的時候也舉過，解釋為祈願式，或許可以認為，在漢語裏是用副詞等辭彙手段來表達西方語言通過動詞變位元表示的語氣。其餘各類的設立大抵是清楚而合理的。在西方語言中，副詞的詞形相當固定，從邏輯語義上說與漢語的副詞也較容易逐類對應。

第三節〈論嘆詞〉，分出三類：表痛苦，表讚賞，表驚歎。按照今天常規的理解，第一類“苦”、“苦惱”、“可憐”和第二類“奇”都是形容詞。無論歐語漢語，都有不少形容詞可以單獨使用，作獨詞感歎句，例如“奇怪！”（英語 “Strange!”）。這類詞顯然有別於嚴格意義上的感歎詞，如“啊（呀）！”、“哇（噻）！”。衛匡國在此引用的例詞，特別是單音節的“苦”、“奇”，即使在文言裏通常也不獨用，要說成“苦耶！”、“奇哉！”。這裏的“耶、哉”，也即本節陳述的第三類，是漢語特有的語尾助詞，早期的西洋漢語語法沒有把它們看作獨立的詞類。但後期的著作，如甲柏連孜（Georg von der Gabelentz，1840-1893）在《漢文經緯》中，已明確設立一類“尾助詞”（Finalpartikeln），儘管對於“哉”、“兮”等究竟屬於嘆詞還是尾助詞尚難決斷。

第四節〈論不常用的連詞〉。所謂“不常用”，指的是大都見於文言古語。其下略分四類：1）起連系作用；2）起止句作用；3）表示轉折；4）表示相反。其中第2類“也”、“矣”歸在連詞底下很勉強，不過著者已看出它們的功能在於“止句”，故稱之為“語尾小詞”（particulae terminativae），這就為後來的語法家讓語尾詞獨立城類預備了有用的概念。

第五節〈名詞的原級、比較級和最高級〉。按照西方語法，惟形容詞和副詞才有級的分別，名詞並不適用這一範疇。衛匡國這樣解釋，是因為他把“果子”、“房子”等詞中的實字“果”、“房”看作絕對名詞或純名詞，可比於形容詞的原級（或稱絕對級）。接下來講的“更”“絕”等，現在作程度副詞解，衛匡國在前面的副詞一節裏也舉過具有比較意義的“更”字。這一節的處理有些奇怪，形容詞本該單獨分出一節來講，可是本書中並沒有這樣的一節。形容詞去了哪里呢？先是在第一章第一節，歸到名詞底下，把形容詞看作名詞的活變形式，如“好”是名詞兼形容詞；之後是在第三章第二節，把形容詞視為副詞的小類，尤其是表示性質的“善、妙、好、巧”等；再次是在第三章第三節，看作嘆詞的一類，如“苦、奇”。看來著者是惑于漢語詞性之活，覺得把形容詞拆散開來，才符合漢語語法的實際。雖然這樣做並不成功，卻也顯出一種企圖擺脫西方語法、把握漢語特點的嘗試。

第六節〈附：代詞〉，列出口語中的三個單數人稱代詞“我、你、他”，然後說明“的”的用法，即表示領屬關係：“我的”、“我們的”、“我的國”、“我的府”。這一節的內容與前面第二章第二節所敘不無重複，看來像標題所記的那樣，是一個附錄，想必是補寫之後附上的，容以時日的話，著者會把兩處合併起來。

第七節〈論數詞以及與之有關的小詞〉，除開通常意義的數詞，還選出近四十個常用量詞，歸作一類來分析。其體例大抵是，先說明一個量詞的適用範圍，指哪一類事物，再舉出最常見的搭配形式。衛匡國最後指出，量詞也可後置於名詞，如“牛一頭”、“馬一匹”。在初識漢語的歐人眼裏，量詞是一個突顯的特徵，無怪著者在這上面著墨很多。出自早期傳教士之手的各類漢語字典，也常附帶一張量詞表，例如方濟各會士

葉宗賢（Basilii à Glemona，1648-1704）編纂的《字彙臘丁略解》（Dictionario Sinici-Latina Brevis Explicatio），附錄之一〈數目異節〉收有近90個量詞（Particulas Numerales）。其實，在表達本身難以數的事物、而又必須取某一單位來計量時，西方語言也會用到量詞，例如在用拉丁文翻譯上述搭配短語時，衛匡國就用了folium（張）、manus（卷）、granum（粒）、par（雙）、massa（團）、congerie（堆）、bursa（袋）等詞。只是跟漢語的量詞比起來，這些詞終究個數有限，零零散散不成系統，所以西方語法學家對自己的語言從不覺得有必要專門作量詞的分析，更不會當作一個自立的詞類來處理。

五

萬濟國的《華語官話語法》成書於1682年，1703年出版於廣州，是迄今已知第一部正式發表的西洋漢語語法。幾年前，在《華語官話語法》中譯本推出之際我曾寫道：我們追蹤西方人研究漢語語法的歷史，“有案可查的始點”便是這本書。 現在看來，這個始點還可以往前推進數十年，到17世紀中葉衛匡國攜回歐洲的《中國文法》。據白佐良推測（見本書〈導言〉第5節），《中國文法》應該在1696年就已經以某種形式在歐洲正式出版，只是還沒有發現相應的印本，某個本子或有可能沉睡於東歐某國的某家圖書館。當然，我們要等到那個印本重新面世，才有把握來改寫西方漢語語法的刊行史，否則“最早正式出版”這項榮譽頭銜仍得頒給萬濟國語法。

西方人究竟是從什麼時候開始編撰漢語語法的呢？整個歷程的起點也許比衛匡國、萬濟國都要早，早到16世紀末，因為根據道明會會史的記載，該會教士胡安·柯伯（Juan Cobo，生年未詳，卒於1592年前後）撰有一部漢語語法，書名叫Arte de la lengua China（《中國語言文法》，或譯《中文語法術》）；然後，1640-1641年間在菲律賓，道明會士法蘭西斯科·迪亞茲又編寫了一部漢語語法。 可是，由於迄今尚未發見任何手稿或抄本，迪亞茲的語法甚至連書名也已不存，這些就僅只是空頭記錄，難以作為“有案可查的始點”。在此，像在任何一項人文學術史的考察中那樣，文本的發現和闡釋仍然至為關鍵。《華語官話語法》、《中國文法》相繼譯成中文，進入中國學人的視野，意義正在這裏。如今，這兩部初始階段的西洋漢語語法擺在我們面前，期待著感興趣者來對它們的體系、內容、概念術語等等進行比較。同時，它們牽及的早期歷史在我們眼裏依然撲朔朦朧，有不少疑點尚待澄清，例如：《華語官話語法》與《中國文法》有沒有淵源關係？萬濟國對衛匡國撰寫漢語語法一事是否知情？《中國文法》在多大程度上是衛匡國的獨創，他是否借鑒過早先已有的成果（如柯伯、迪亞茲的漢語語法，須知衛匡國對迪亞茲的《漢西字彙》並不陌生）？

諸如此類的問題，我們不妨先擱置起來。也許有一天，會突然在世界的某個角度發掘出關聯文本，書稿、信件、日記等等，到那時種種疑團自會開釋。

（2007年大雪日於北外）

The Paper LionEarly Western Study of the Chinese Language

(www.logoi.com/notes/jesuits.html)

The European Catholic missionaries who reached China in the late 16th century were the first Westerners who tried to learn Chinese in a systematic way. The pioneers were two Italian Jesuit priests: Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci. They learnt Chinese with local tutors in the Portuguese colony of Macao, against the will of their brothers, who thought that they were wasting their time, trying to do the impossible. Indeed, without any grammar or dictionary, and with poor teachers who only spoke Southern dialects, it was a miracle that they learnt Chinese so well!

Michele Ruggieri was able, with some help, to write a catechism in Chinese, and he even composed poems in Chinese. Matteo Ricci surpassed him: he is the author and translator, together with a number of Chinese Christian literati, of numerous works on subjects such as geometry, geography, morality, theology and so on. He also compiled a Chinese-Portuguese dictionary, never published. Another Jesuit, Nicolas Trigault, wrote a massive work in Chinese entitled The collection of sounds and writings of the Western scholars (1625), presenting to the Chinese public the Latin alphabet, while also offering the first system of "Romanization" (i.e. a way to render Chinese sounds in Latin letters).

How did these missionaries learn Chinese? Most of them thought that the Chinese language did not have grammatical rules, and that the only way to learn it was to be exposed to a good teacher, and to memorize sentences and patterns. In fact, this remained the way Westerners learnt Chinese for a long time, at least until the beginning of the 20th century. Such method was based on traditional Chinese pedagogy, which prized memorization of characters and of sentences extracted from the classics of Chinese literature.

As a matter of fact, more experienced missionaries prepared simple conversation textbooks for the newly arrived recruits. Some 17th- and 18th-century teaching materials used by beginners have survived in the Vatican Library in Rome or in the French National Library in Paris: most of them consist of dialogues in spoken Chinese, usually between a Westerner and a curious Chinese. The Chinese asks many questions about the customs and strange things of Europe, and the Westerner, beside trying to impress him with the description of mechanical clocks, oil painting in three dimensions and the like, always tries to talk about Christianity. The first Western grammar of Chinese was written in Latin by the Italian Jesuit Martino Martini in the mid-17th century, but was never published. In the latter part of the 17th century, however, missionaries from Spain (Dominicans, Augustinians and Franciscans) tried to fill the vacuum. Unlike the previous generation of Jesuit priests, these Spanish friars were bound to work not with the Chinese scholars, but among commoners. Thus they were interested in the spoken language, and not so much in the classical literature and the written classical language. They not only used dialogues, wrote dictionaries (of course by hand!), but finally were able to print a Spanish-language grammar of Chinese in Canton in 1703. Authored by Francisco Varo and Pedro de la Pifiuela (editor), the Arte de la lengua mandarina (Art of the mandarin language) was circulated mainly among missionaries in China, and maybe passed on to some interested merchants. Only few copies made it to Europe, and were avidly collected by linguists, who used (and at times plagiarized!) that knowledge to establish the basis for the modern study of Chinese in the West.

We find a funny description of the best method to learn Chinese in a manuscript grammar prepared by the Augustinian monk José Villanueva towards the end of the 18th century:

What should a European do who wants to learn Chinese? He should put away the Chinese characters and start with the Chinese syllables written as European words and annotated with the proper accents. He should not trouble to learn many syllables, but learn to pronounce those he reads with fluency and without hesitation. He must try to find some Chinese who speak and understand correct Mandarin, and should speak and converse with him as much as possible... Then after having trained for four or five months he should take a Chinese book, written in Chinese characters without admixture of European words... He should grasp the Chinese-European dictionary and look up each character patiently, one by one, and assure himself calmly of its meaning, without fear, realizing that he is carrying his cross. No doubt he will forget one character while he is looking for another. But he should not give up, only go on and look it up for the second, the fourth, and the sixth time. Often he will feel horrified and it will appear to him impossible to learn the characters. In each character he will see a fierceful lion wanting to attack him. When he realizes that it is a paper lion, he will laugh. After two months or at most three the fearful lion will be transformed in a peaceful ox ... .

Today such method would not find much acceptance, and nevertheless, many who study Chinese indeed still "feel horrified" and in each Chinese character continue to see a fierceful lion wanting to attack them!

Chinese as a foreign language

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This article contains Chinese text.Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

Increased interest in China from those outside has led to a corresponding interest in the study of Chinese as a foreign language. However the teaching of Chinese both within and outside China is not a recent phenomenon. Westerners started learning Chinese language in the 16th century.

In 2005, 117,660 non-native speakers took the Chinese Proficiency Test, an increase of 26.52% from 2004.[1] From 2000 to 2004, the number of students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland taking Advanced Level exams in Chinese increased by 57%.[2] An independent school in the UK made Chinese one of their compulsory subjects for study in 2006.[3]

Contents

[hide]

· 1 History

· 2 Difficulty

· 2.1 The characters

· 2.2 The tones

· 3 Where to learn

· 4 Notable non-native speakers of Chinese

· 5 See also

· 6 Notes

· 7 External links

[edit] History

The fanciful Chinese scripts shown in Kircher's China Illustrata (1667). Kircher divides Chinese characters into 16 types, and argues that each type originates from a type of images taken from the natural world

The understanding of the Chinese language in the West began with some misunderstandings. Since the earliest appearance of Chinese characters in the West,[4] the belief that written Chinese was ideographic prevailed.[5] Such a belief led to Athanasius Kircher's conjecture that Chinese characters were derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphs, China being a colony of Egypt.[6] John Webb, the British architect, went a step further. In a Biblical vein similar to Kircher's, he tried to demonstrate that Chinese was the Primitive or Adamic language. In his An Historical Essay Endeavoring a Probability That the Language of the Empire of China Is the Primitive Language (1669), he suggested that Chinese was the language spoken before the confusion of tongues.[7]

Inspired by these ideas, Leibniz and Bacon, among others, dreamt of inventing a characteristica universalis modelled on Chinese.[8] Thus wrote Bacon:

“

it is the use of China and the kingdoms of the High Levant to write in Characters Real, which express neither letters nor words in gross, but Things or Notions...[9]

”

Leibniz placed high hopes on the Chinese characters:

“

j'ai pensé qu'on pourrait peut-être accommoder un jour ces caractères, si on en était bien informé, non pas seulement à représenter comme font ordinairement les caractères, mais même à cal-culer et à aider l'imagination et la méditation d'une manière qui frapperait d'étonnement l'ésprit de ces peuples et nous donnerait un nouveau moyen de les instruire et gagner.[10]

”

The serious study of the language in the West began with the missionaries coming to China during the late 16th century. Among them were the Italian Jesuits Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci. They mastered the language without the aid of any grammar books or dictionaries, and became the first sinologists. The former set up a school in Macao, the first school for teaching foreigners Chinese, translated part of the Great Learning into Latin, the first translation of a Confucius classic in any European language, and wrote a religious tract in Chinese, the first Chinese book written by a Westerner. The latter brought Western sciences to China, and became a prolific Chinese writer. With his amazing command of the language, Ricci impressed the Chinese literati and was accepted as one of them, much to the advantage of his missionary work. Several scientific works he authored or co-authored were collected in Siku Quanshu, the imperial collection of Chinese classics; some of his religious works were listed in the collection's bibliography, but not collected. Another Jesuit Nicolas Trigault produced the first system of Chinese Romanisation in a work of 1626.

Matteo Ricci, a Westerner who mastered the Chinese language

The earliest Chinese grammars were produced by the Spanish Dominican missionaries. The earliest surviving one is by Francisco Varo (1627–1687). His Arte de la Lengua Mandarina was published in Canton in 1703.[11] This grammar was only sketchy, however. The first important Chinese grammar was Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare's Notitia linguae sinicae, completed in 1729 but only published in Malacca in 1831. Other important grammar texts followed, from Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat's Élémens (sic) de la grammaire chinoise in 1822 to Georg von der Gabelentz's Chinesische Grammatik in 1881. Glossaries for Chinese circulated among the missionaries from early on. Robert Morrison's A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, noted for its fine printing, is one of the first important Chinese dictionaries for the use of Westerners.

In 1814, a chair of Chinese and Manchu was founded at the Collège de France, and Abel-Rémusat became the first Professor of Chinese in Europe. In 1837, Nikita Bichurin opened the first European Chinese-language school in the Russian Empire. Since then sinology became an academic discipline in the West, with the secular sinologists outnumbering the missionary ones. Some of the big names in the history of linguistics took up the study of Chinese. Sir William Jones dabbled in it;[12]instigated by Abel-Rémusat, Wilhelm von Humboldt studied the language seriously, and discussed it in several letters with the French professor.[13]

The teaching of Chinese as a foreign language started in the People's Republic of China in 1950 at Tsinghua University, initally serving students from Eastern Europe. Starting with Bulgaria in 1952, China also dispatched Chinese teachers abroad, and by the early 1960s had sent teachers afar as Congo, Cambodia, Yemen and France. In 1962, with the approval of the State Council, the Higher Preparatory School for Foreign Students was set up, later renamed to the Beijing Language and Culture University. The programs were disrupted for several years during the Cultural Revolution.

According to the Chinese Ministry of Education, there are 330 institutions teaching Chinese as a foreign language, receiving about 40,000 foreign students. In addition, there are almost 5,000 Chinese language teachers. Since 1992 the State Education Commission has managed a Chinese language proficiency exam program, which has tested over 142,000 persons. [12]

[edit] Difficulty

Chinese is rated as one of the most difficult languages to learn, together with Arabic, Japanese and Korean, for people whose native language is English.[14] A quote attributed to William Milne, Morrison's colleague, goes that learning Chinese is

“

a work for men with bodies of brass, lungs of steel, heads of oak, hands of springsteel, hearts of apostles, memories of angels, and lives of Methuselah.[15]

”

Two major difficulties stand out:

[edit] The characters

The Kangxi dictionary contains 47,035 characters. However, most of the characters contained there are archaic and obscure. The Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese (现代汉语常用字表 Xiandai Hanyu Changyong Zibiao), promulgated in People's Republic of China, lists 2,500 common characters and 1,000 less-than-common characters, while the Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese (现代汉语通用字表 Xiandai Hanyu Tongyong Zibiao) lists 7,000 characters, including the 3,500 characters already listed above. Moreover, most Chinese characters belong to the class of semantic-phonetic compounds, which means that one can know the basic meaning and the approximate reading of most Chinese characters, after acquiring some elementary knowledge of the language.

Still, Chinese characters pose a problem for learners of Chinese. To the 17th-century protestant theologian Elias Grebniz, the Chinese characters were simply diabolic. He thought they were

“

durch Gottes Verhängniss von Teuffel eingeführet/ damit er die elende Leute in der Finsterniss der Abgötterei destomehr verstricket halte.[16]

”

In Gautier's novella Fortunio, a Chinese professor from the Collège de France, when asked by the protagonist to translate a love letter suspected to be written in Chinese, replies that the characters in the letter happen to all belong to that half of the 40,000 characters which he has yet to master.[17]

[edit] The tones

Mandarin has four tones. Other Chinese dialects have more, for example, Cantonese has nine (in six distinct tone contours). In most Western languages, tones are only used to express emphasis or emotion, not to distinguish meanings as in Chinese. A French Jesuit, in a letter, relates how the Chinese tones cause a problem for understanding:

“

I will give you an example of their words. They told me chou signifies a book: so that I thought whenever the word chou was pronounced, a book was the subject. Not at all! Chou, the next time I heard it, I found signified a tree. Now I was to recollect, chou was a book, or a tree. But this amounted to nothing; chou, I found, expressed also great heats; chou is to relate; chou is the Aurora; chou means to be accustomed; chou expresses the loss of a wager, &c. I should not finish, were I to attempt to give you all its significations.[18]

”

[edit] Where to learn

Chinese courses have been blooming internationally since 2000 at every level of education.[19] Still, in most of the Western universities, the study of the Chinese language is only a part of Chinese Studies or sinology, instead of an independent discipline. The teaching of Chinese as a foreign language is known as duiwai Hanyu jiaoxue (对外汉语教学) in Chinese. The Confucius Institute, supervised by Hanban (汉办),[20] or the National Office For Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, is responsible for promoting the Chinese language in the West and other parts of the world.

The People's Republic of China began to accept foreign students from the communist countries (in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa) from the 1950s onwards. Foreign students were forced to leave the PRC during the Cultural Revolution.[21] Today's popular choices for the Westerners who want to study Chinese abroad include the Center for Chinese Language and Cultural Studies in Taiwan and Beijing Language and Culture University in Beijing. The former was especially popular before the 1980s when China had yet to open to the other parts of the world.

Several Mandarin courses are available online through various commercial web sites specifically catering to native English speakers. Free and Paid-for courses are also offered via podcasts.

Edmonton in Alberta Canada, is the first city in North America to incorporate Chinese language and cultural education within the context of the Alberta curriculum in public school system from kindergarden to high school education. The English-Chinese bilingual program is accessible to all children of chinese or non-chinese descent.

[edit] Notable non-native speakers of Chinese

· Frederick W. Baller: British missionary, linguist, translator, educator and sinologist

· L. Nelson Bell: American Missionary father-in-law of Billy Graham

· John Birch: American missionary and namesake of the John Birch Society

· Arthur Calwell: Australian politician

· Cường Để: Vietnamese prince

· Wolfram Eberhard: German sociologist

· Herbert Hoover: American President

· Bernhard Karlgren: Swedish Sinologist

· Kenneth Scott Latourette: American academic historian

· Walter Henry Medhurst British missionary and translator

· Ho Chi Minh: Vietnamese revolutionary

· Michiko Nishiwaki: Japanese actress

· Timothy Richard: American Baptist missionary

· Kevin Rudd: Australian Prime Minister

· Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky: Russian-born Bishop of Shanghai

· Richard Sorge: Soviet spy

· Hudson Taylor: British missionary and founder of the China Inland Mission

· Elsie Tu: British-born Hong Kong politician

· Samuel Wells Williams: American missionary, linguist, and diplomat

· Ruth Weiss: Austrian-born Chinese-naturalised journalist

[edit] See also

· Edmonton Chinese Bilingual Education Association

· Japanese language education in Russia

· Japanese language education in the United States

· Language teaching

[edit] Notes

1. ^ (Chinese) "汉语水平考试中心：2005年外国考生总人数近12万",[1] Xinhua News Agency, January 16, 2006.

2. ^ "Get Ahead, Learn Mandarin", [2] Time Asia, vol. 167, no. 26, June 26, 2006.

3. ^ "How hard is it to learn Chinese?",[3] BBC, January 17, 2006.

4. ^ There are disputes over which is the earliest European book containing Chinese characters. One of the candidates is Juan González de Mendoza's Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China published in 1586.

5. ^ Cf. John DeFrancis, "The Ideographic Myth".[4] For a sophisticated exposition of the problem, see J. Marshall Unger, Ideogram, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004.

6. ^ Cf. David E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology, Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1985, pp. 143-157; Haun Saussy, Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural China, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001, pp. 49-55.

7. ^ Cf. Christoph Harbsmeier, "John Webb and the Early History of the Study of the Classical Chinese Language in the West", in Ming Wilson & John Cayley (ed.s), Europe Studies China: Papers from an International Conference on the History of European Sinology, London: Han-Shan Tang Books, 1995, pp. 297-338.

8. ^ Cf. Umberto Eco, "From Marco Polo to Leibniz: Stories of Intercultural Misunderstanding".[5] Eco devoted a whole monograph to this topic in his The Search for the Perfect Language, trans. James Fentress, Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell, 1995.

9. ^ The Advancement of Learning, XVI, 2.

10. ^ "Lettre au T.R.P. Verjus, Hanovre, fin de l'année 1698".[6] Cf. Franklin Perkins, Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Machine translation: I thought we could perhaps one day accommodate these characters, if they were well informed, not only are usually represented as characters, but even at calculate and assist the imagination and meditation in a way that would affect astonishment the spirit of these people and give us a new way to educate and win.

11. ^ For more about the man and his grammar, see Matthew Y Chen, "Unsung Trailblazers of China-West Cultural Encounter".[7] Varo's grammar has been translated from Spanish into English, as Francisco Varo's Grammar of the Mandarin Language, 1703 (2000).

12. ^ Cf. Fan Cunzhong (范存忠), "Sir William Jones's Chinese Studies", in Review of English Studies, Vol. 22, No. 88 (Oct., 1946), pp. 304–314, reprinted in Adrian Hsia (ed.), The Vision of China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1998.

13. ^ Cf. Jean Rousseau & Denis Thouard (éd.s), Lettres édifiantes et curieuses sur la langue chinoise, Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 1999.

14. ^ According to a study by the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California in the 1970s, quoted on William Baxter's site.[8]

15. ^ Quoted in "The Process of Translation: The translation experience"[9] on Wycliffe's site.

16. ^ Quoted in Harbsmeier, op. cit., p. 300.

17. ^ "Sans doute les idées contenues dans cette lettre sont exprimées avec des signes que je n'ai pas encore appris et qui appartiennent aux vingt derniers mille" (Chapitre premier). Cf. Qian Zhongshu, "China in the English Literature of the Eighteenth Century", in Quarterly Bulltein of Chinese Bibliography, II (1941): 7-48; 113-152, reprinted in Adrian Hsia (ed.), op. cit., pp. 117-213.

18. ^ Translated by Isaac D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature.[10] The original letter, in French, can be found in Lettres édifiantes et curieuses de Chine par des missionnaires jésuites (1702–1776), Paris: Garnier-flammarion, 1979, pp. 468–470. chou is written shu in modern pinyin. The words he refers here are: 書, 樹, 暑, 述, 曙, 熟 and 輸, all of which have the same vowel and consonant but different tones in Mandarin.

19. ^ Cf. "With a Changing World Comes An Urgency to Learn Chinese",[11] Washington Post, August 26, 2006, about the teaching of Chinese in the US.

20. ^ Abbreviated from Guojia Hanyu Guoji Tuiguang Lingdao Xiaozu Bangongshi (国家汉语国际推广领导小组办公室).

21. ^ Cf. Lü Bisong (呂必松), Duiwai Hanyu jiaoxue fazhan gaiyao (对外汉语敎学发展槪要 "A sketch of the development of teaching Chinese as a foreign language"), Beijing: Beijing yuyanxueyuan chubanshe, 1990.

[edit] External links

· "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard", David Moser

· Official site of Hanban

· Study abroad in Chinese at Everything2

· "Learn Chinese," (Learn Chinese - the social way)

Unsung Trailblazers of China-West Cultural Encounter

Matthew Y Chen

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the publication of the first grammar of Chinese in a European vernacular, Arte de la lengua mandarina [Grammar of the Mandarin language] (Canton, 1703). To commemorate this landmark event in the history of western sinology, the Beijing Foreign Studies University, in conjunction with Peking University, Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is sponsoring an International Conference on Western Chinese Studies (September 12–14, 2003, Beijing). It is an opportune time to pay tribute to the relatively obscure author of this groundbreaking work, Francisco Varo, and other unsung trailblazers of China-West cultural encounter.

From the earliest days of Sino- European contacts in the 16th century, the Jesuits took the central stage and played a leading role. But, away from the limelight, there were other significant players, notably Augustinians , Dominicans , Franciscans and the Missions Étrangères de Paris. In this article I will limit myself mainly to Francisco Varo and his fellow Dominicans. First, a few words about the Dominican Order. Officially known as Order of Preachers, it was founded in 1216 by St. Dominic of Guzman (1170–1221). Within decades of its foundation, the order had established itself at major universities of Europe, including Paris, Bologna, and Oxford. Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274), a favorite son of this religious organization, epitomized medieval Christian thinking, and has exercised a profound and lasting influence on catholic philosophy and theology. In 1582 the Dominicans launched a new province for the express purpose of preaching the Christian faith to the ‘most august kingdom of China’.1 Soon after they set foot on the Philippines, the Dominicans founded the University of Sto. Tomás in 1619, almost three hundred years before 上海震旦大學 (Aurora), the first catholic university in China, came into existence in 1903.

Francisco Varo (1627–1687) was born in Seville, Spain. At the tender age of 15, he joined the Dominican Order, and devoted his entire adult life to missionary work in China (1649– 87). Varo’s long forgotten Arte de la lengua mandarina [Grammar of the Mandarin Language]2 has now been translated into English and made widely available by Coblin and Levi (2000). To put Varo in historical context, here are, in chronological order, some of the most notable early grammars of Chinese:3

· 1703. Arte de la Lengua Mandarina, by Francisco Varo. Canton (xylographic edition). (Completed in 1682)

· 1814. Clavis Sinica by Joshua Marshman. Serampore: Mission Press.

· 1815. A Grammar of the Chinese Language, by Robert Morrison. Serampore: Mission Press.

· 1822. Éléments de la grammaire chinoise, by Jean-Pierre Abel- Rémusat. Paris: Imprimerie Royale.

· 1831. Notitia linguae sinicae, by Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare. Malacca. (Completed in 1729).

· 1870. Syntaxe nouvelle de la langue chinoise, by Stanislas Julien. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.

· 1881. Chinesische Grammatik, by Georg von der Gabelentz. Leipzig: Weigel.

· 1898. 《馬氏文通》, by 馬建忠 Beijing.

Not surprisingly, the earliest grammars (Varo , Prémare , Marshman, Morrison) are compiled by missionaries, designed primarily for pedagogical purposes. In particular, Marshman and Morrison are best described as textbooks rather than real grammars. In Peyraube’s words, Abel-Rémusat’s Éléments represents “the first attempt at a logical synthesis and well-reasoned construction of the Chinese language” (Peyraube 2001:345), and heralded the dawning of (secular) academic sinology.

This is not the place for a critical assessment of Varo’s Arte, for which I refer the reader to Breitenbach’s doctoral dissertation (1996). I wish only to highlight some of the innovative elements in this pioneering work. Phonologically speaking, Chinese as a tonal language presented a novel challenge to European descriptivists. Matteo Ricci 利馬竇 (1552–1610) and his fellow Jesuits compiled dictionaries, and developed a notational system for transcribing Chinese sounds (including tone marks). Nicolas Trigault’s 金尼閣 (1577–1628) 《西儒耳目資》 (1626), in particular, fleshed out the phonological system of late Ming ‘guanhua’ 官話 using European alphabets. But they provided only scant information on the phonetics of tone, and were completely silent on how tones change in connected speech (a phenomenon known as ‘tone sandhi’ or 連讀變調)4. Varo was the first among European sinologists to give a detailed description of the phonetics of tone, formulate precise rules of tone sandhi, and make astute observations on the relationship between tone, syllable structure and compounding (複音辭) as a strategy to avoid lexical ambiguity. Furthermore, he offered plausible phonetic explanations for the subtle tonal behavior he observed. If some of his phonetic speculations proved to be factually incorrect, they nevertheless evince a keen and inquisitive mind that exerted itself mightily to explain novel linguistic phenomena by means of physiological mechanism of speech articulation as a 17th century man understood it.5

Naturally, the significance of Varo’s grammar lies chiefly in its place in the history of linguistic thought, esp. from a cross-cultural perspective. Varo’s Arte instantiates the first systematic rapprochement between Western linguistic categories and an ‘alien’ language like Chinese, which lacks the characteristic morphological and syntactic features of European languages. It is difficult for us to imagine the daunting task of grappling with an alien tongue without the familiar ‘handles’ of Latin or Spanish. Judging by today’s standards, Varo did little more than forcing Chinese syntax into the straitjacket of Latinbased grammatical categories such as parts of speech, subject-predicateobject, case, tense, aspect, and so forth. While this obvious criticism is well justified, one should bear in mind the historical context in which Varo labored. In contrast to lexicography, etymology, phonology and stylistics, which have flourished since Classical times in China, ‘reflections about grammar have been practically nonexistent’ in Chinese tradition (Peyraube 2001:341). In the absence of indigenous models, Varo made use of the prevailing taxonomy and conceptual framework at the time, namely that of Elio Antonio de Nebrija (1441–1522), whose intellectual debt he acknowledged by name.6 In truth, this practice is not very different from 馬建忠 two hundred years later, or latter day grammarians, influenced variously by Otto Jespersen, Henry Sweet, or Noam Chomsky and other contemporary theorists. What the modern linguist Zhu Dexi 朱德熙 (1982) said of馬建忠 fits Varo as well, only a fortiori:

《馬氏文通》往往因其模仿拉丁語法而為人詬病。其實作為第一系統地研究漢語語法的書，能有如此的水平和規模，已經大大出人意表，我們不應苛求馬氏了

Mr. Ma’s Wentong is often criticized for aping Latin grammar. In fact, as the first book to systematically investigate Chinese syntax, its scope and level of sophistication far exceed our expectations. We must not be too harsh on Mr. Ma. — Tr. MC

Actually, Varo’s Arte is only the first Chinese grammar to appear in print. Varo's confrères in the Dominican order have left for posterity at least 30 grammars, and 57 dictionaries or 'vocabularios'. Some of the pre-1900 Dominican grammars are listed below. Since the time of completion / publication of these grammars are unknown, I have included the authors' dates of birth and death for reference.

· Arte de la lengua china, (also cited as Lingua sinica ad certam revocata methodum) by Juan Cobo (?–1592).

· Arte de la lengua china, by Domingo de Nieva (?–1607).

· Gramática española-mandarina, by Juan Bautista de Morales (1597–1664).

· Gramática española-china, by Francisco Diez (1606–1646).

· Arte de la lengua chinchea,7 by Victorio Ricci8 (1621–1685).

· Gramática española-china del dialecto de Amoy, by Francisco Márquez (?–1706).

· Arte de lengua china, by Francisco Frias (?–1706).

· Arte de la lengua mandarina, by Juan de la Cruz (1645–1721).

· Gramática y vocabulario españolchinos, by Francisco González de San Pedro (?–1730).

· Arte sínico de Fogan, by Esteban Jordá (1803–55)9 .

· Gramática española-china, by Felipe Ontoria (1861–1892).

Most of these grammars have languished unedited for years in the archives, some have been lost for ever, and all of them remain unknown except to a handful of specialists. Victorio Ricci’s Arte de la lengua chinchea and Márquez’s Gramática española-china del dialecto de Amoy must be among the oldest grammars of any local dialect. More importantly, it is worth noting that several of these grammars predate that of Varo, in some cases by nearly a century. Citing an unpublished 1602 source,10 González (1966, p. 387) asserts that Cobo’s Lingua sinica is the first grammar of Chinese ever written by a foreigner.11 González also quotes (p.15) Varo as saying that Morales wrote a grammar of Chinese shortly after he landed on Chinese soil (in 1633). As for Diez, he apparently began his Gramática around 1640– 41 in the Philippines (p.35). The existence of some early grammar or grammars predating Varo is not in doubt. In his Arte Varo alluded on several occasions to an earlier grammar or grammars. For instance, speaking on the difficulties beginners encountered in learning Chinese, he stated:

Knowing this inconvenience, the priests of St. Dominic compiled a grammar as soon as they could; and the present grammar adheres to that former one in its basic rules. (Varo 1703, p.83 [2000, p.181]).

In contrast, the first Jesuit grammar (by Prémare, completed in 1726) did not appear until 1831. This comes as somewhat of a surprise, given the extraordinary breadth of Jesuit scholarship in all fields of sinology. Breitenbach (2000) attributes this to the oral tradition of language pedagogy that prevailed among the Jesuits.

The long succession of descriptive grammars is in keeping with the Dominican tradition of developing linguistic tools to serve their missionary goals. Thus when they set foot in the New World, they immediately went about writing grammars for the American Indian languages. One eminent linguist from the ranks of this religious order, Domingo de Santo Tomás (1499– 1570), wrote the first grammar of the newly discovered Americas, Gramática o arte de la lengua general de los indios de los reynos del Perú, and compiled the first dictionary Lexicón o Vocabulario de la lengua general del Perú (both published in 1560, Valladolid), thereby earning himself recognition as the father of American philology. Likewise, when the Dominicans landed in the Philippines, they produced, in short order, the first grammar of Tagalog, Arte y reglas de la lengua Tagala in 1610, by Francisco Blancas de San José.12

It goes without saying that the driving force behind the missionaryscholars was first and foremost their desire to win over the hearts and minds of the Chinese for the Christian religion. To this end, they produced catechisms, learned tracts and other literature of a religious nature in the Chinese language. Of this genre of religious literature, Matteo Ricci’s 《天主實義》 [The True Meaning of God] occupies a deservedly prominent place of honour. What is less well known is the fact that soon after their arrival in the Philippines (in 1587), the Dominican friars were entrusted with the care of the local Chinese immigrants in Manila, learned the Chinese language, and published a number of religious tracts in this language. The earliest of these are listed below, together with two influential books by the Jesuits Michele Ruggieri 羅明堅 (1543–1607) and Matteo Ricci for comparison.

· 1584. 《天主實錄》by Michele Ruggieri.

· 1593. 《辯正教真傳實錄》, by Juan Cobo, Manila.13

· 1593? Doctrina Christiana en letra y lengua china, by Miguel Benavides.14 Manila.

· 1603. 《天主實義》, by Matteo Ricci. Beijing.

· 1606 .《新刊僚氏正教便覽》 Memorial de la vida christiana en lengua china, by Domingo de Nieva. Manila.

The significance of these early tracts is fourfold. First of all, as soon as the Dominicans found a permanent residence in the Philippines, they established a printing press in Manila, with the help of the local Chinese craftsmen. All three of their earliest works (Cobo 1593, Benavides 1593?, Nieva 1606) were produced by means of wood block printing. They represent the earliest incunabula philippiniana.15 Second, unlike the other early catechisms, Benavides’ Doctrina is composed in the Hokkien (southern Min, 閩南) dialect. As such, it constitutes a rare source of information on the pronunciation, vocaulary and syntax of Hokkien spoken in Late Ming.16 More importantly, these tracts represent the earliest attempts of Christian missionaries to present to the Chinese readers not only the Christian faith but also a western worldview and belief/value system. Finally, it is remarkable that, despite its title, only three out of nine chapters of Cobo’s 《辯正教真傳實錄》pertain to Christian theology proper, the remaining six chapters are concerned with ‘secular’ subjects such as astronomy and natural history. Chapter 4 is dovoted to geography. The universe Cobo depicted remains the Ptolemaic geocentric system — half a century after De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium of Copernicus (1543). More interesting, he used various types of observations and empirical evidence to demonstrate that the planet we inhabit is round — contrary to the Chinese belief of a spherical heaven and square earth (天圓地方). One of these demonstrations derives from the round shadow cast by the earth on the moon in an eclipse. Chapters 5–9 are devoted to a description of the flora and fauna. Thus, it was Juan Cobo that has the distinction of being the first to introduce European philosophy and science to China, at least in print.17 Why Cobo devoted such a disproportionate amount of space in his Apología or 《辯正教真傳實錄》to science and natural history is a question I will return to below.

In the broader cultural sphere, the early Dominicans broke new grounds as well. Here I will single out a few notable examples.

· 1569. Tractado em que se cõtam muito por estêso as cousas da China, by Gaspar da Cruz. Evora.

· 1592. Beng sim po cam 明心寶鑑, by Juan Cobo. Manila.

· 1607. Símbolo de la Fe, en lengua y letra China 《格物窮理便覽》, by Tomás Mayor. Manila.

· n.d. Tien Kai [天階 ?] or Escala del cielo, by Domingo Coronado (1615–1665).

· 1676. Tratados históricos, políticos, éthicos, y religiosos de la monarchía de China, by Domingo Fernández Navarrete. Madrid.

Gaspar da Cruz’s Tractado (in Portuguese) is the first European book written on China since the earliest sustained East-West contact that began in the 16th century. Apparently it soon fell into oblivion18 — except as a source of later works, including Bernardino de Escalante’s Discursos de la navegación que los Portugueses hazen a los Reinos y Provincias del Oriente, y de la noticia q se tiene de las grandezas del Reino de la China (Sevilla, 1577), and Ioan González de Mendoça’s Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran Reyno de la China (Rome, 1585). Escalante never set foot on China, and pieced together his Discursos from published ‘relaciones’ or reports and what he could glean from Portuguese sailors and Chinese migrants that settled in Portugal (cf. Sanz, p.44).19 Mendoça’s Historia proved to be a bestseller of his time. It was promptly translated into Italian (1586), French (1588), and English (1588).20

The title-page of the first European book on China. The Tractado of Gaspar da Cruz, Evora, 1569.

Cobo’s Beng sim po cam 《明心寶鑑》 (1592) and Mayor’s Símbolo de la Fe 《格物窮理便覽》 (1607) are mirror images: the former being the first translation of a Chinese book into an European vernacular, the latter in reverse. 《明心寶鑑》, compiled by the Ming scholar 范立本 in 1393 (date of preface), is an anthology of aphorisms and proverbs (in a tradition similar to ‘ catena ’ or ‘florilegium’ in the West). This book was presented by Miguel Benavides21 to the future King Philip III of Spain in 1595. The dedicatory note is worth quoting in part:22

The frontispiece of Beng Sim Po Cam 《明心寶鑑》 the first Chinese book translated into an European vernacular, by Juan Cobo, 1592.

‘La religión de Santo Domingo ofrece a V.A., como en parias, las primicias de la riqueza de aquel grande reino de la China. Juzgan los chinos por sus grandes y verdaderas riquezas, no el oro, ni la plata, ni las sedas, sino los libros, y la sabiduría, y las virtudes y el gobierno justo de su república: esto estiman, esto engrandecen, de esto se glorian y de esto tratan en sus conversaciones la gente bien compuesta (que es mucha). Ofrece, pues, a V.A. la religión de Santo Domingo este libro chino, traducido en lengua castellana... El primer libro que en el mundo se ha traducido de lengua y letras chinas en otra lengua y letras es este...

The order of St. Dominic presents in homageto your Royal Highness, the first fruits of the wealth of that great kingdom of China. The Chinese take to be their great and true wealth not gold, nor silver, nor silk, but books, wisdom, virtues and just government of their country: this is what the well-bred people (of whom there are many) esteem, aggrandize, take pride in, and talk about. The Order of St. Dominic, therefore, presents to your Royal Highness this Chinese book, translated into the Castillian language... The first book ever translated from the Chinese language and characters into a foreign language and alphabets any where in the world is none other than this one...’ —Tr. MC

The original Introducción del Símbolo de la Fe (1583, Salamanca) was written by the Dominican Fray Luis de Granada (1504–1588), the preeminent essayist of the Spanish Golden Century. Its Chinese translation appeared in 1607, thus predating by one year Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi’s 徐光啟 translation of Euclid’s Elements 《幾何原本》 (1608). It is of some interest to note that Símbolo de la Fe is encyclopedic in nature, embracing subject matters ranging from astronomy to zoology, from an investigation into the human mind (‘del anima intelectiva’) to the digestive system. The all-embracing list of contents may seem at odds with the title and apologetic nature of ‘Introduction to the Symbol of Faith’. In fact, Símbolo de la Fe expands on a leitmotif in natural theology, i.e. that the universe of creation is nothing but a reflection of God, an open book in which man can catch a glimpse of the creator. This basic tenet finds an eloquent expression in chapter 2 of the Símbolo ([1989] p.145f):

‘¿Qué es, Señor, todo este mundo visible sino un espejo que pusistes delante de nuestros ojos para que en él contemplásemos vuestra hermosura? ... ¿qué es todo este mundo visible sino un grande y maravilloso libro que vos, Señor, escribistes y ofrecistes a los ojos de todas las naciones del mundo, así de griegos como de bárbaros, así de sabios como de ignorantes, para que en él estudiasen todos, y conociesen quién vos érades? ¿Qué serán luego todas las criaturas deste mundo, tan hermosas y tan acabadas sino unas como letras quebradas y iluminadas, que declaran bien el primor y la sabiduría de su autor?’

‘What is, Lord, the whole visible world if not a mirror that you set before our eyes so that we can contemplate in it your beauty?... What is this entire visible world if not a big and wondrous book that you, Lord, have written and offered to the eyes of all nations of the world, Greek or heathen, learned or ignorant, so that in it all may inquire and understand who you are? What then are all the creatures of this world, so beautiful and perfect if not as though they were richly illuminated letters23 that proclaim the elegance and wisdom of its author?’ —Tr. MC

There is no question that the Símbolo de la Fe is the subtext of extended paragraphs and chapters of Juan Cobo’s Apología or 《辯正教真傳實錄》 (1593), which explains the prominent place it accorded to such ‘mundane’ matters as cosmography and natural history. This God-through-nature approach is very much in keeping with the Dominican tradition initiated by such leading medieval thinkers as St. Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas. It is this tradition that informed the earliest Dominican missionaries in China like Juan Cobo, Tomás Mayor and Domingo Coronado, author of 天階.24 Whether Cobo exerted any influence on the Jesuit missionary approach is a matter of conjecture. In commenting on Cobo’s 《辯正教真傳實錄》, the historian of science, Liu Dun 劉鈍 writes: ‘...Cobo’s was the first book to appear in China, in Chinese, with any scientific content, and therefore it is worth further studying the possible influence of Cobo’s work on Matteo Ricci’s proselytization methods in China.’ (Liu 1998, p.4). Perhaps a more promising line of inquiry may be to ascertain whether the kind of natural theology, of which Luis de Granada is a major exponent, was very much part of the Zeitgeist that informed Matteo Ricci’s formative years.

Illustration from Juan Cobo’s《辯正教真傳實錄》(1593), the first book to introduce Western science to China. It shows the round shadow cast by the earth on the moon in an eclipse — as a proof of a spherical earth.

Of all the early Dominican authors on China, Navarrete exerted most impact on his contemporaries.25 His Tratados has been translated into English, German, French, and Italian, and attracted the attention of Bossuet, Leibniz, Quesnay, Voltaire, Locke (cf. Cummins 1962, 1993). Navarrete and his confrères played a pivotal role in the famous Chinese Rites controversy or 禮儀之爭, a cause célèbre that, according to Cummins (1993, p.7), lasted 350 years, involved 9 popes , 2 emperors, 3 kings, the Roman & Spanish Inquisitions, the Propaganda Fide, Sorbonne, and some of the best minds of Europe. Cummins (1993, p.226) cites the Jesuit Henri Bernard-Maitre as saying that ‘it was almost exclusively due to Navarrete that Europe came to learn of the Rites Controversy in East Asia.’

There is considerable renewed interest in this matter, not as an arcane theological debate mainly of historical import, rather as a prism through which we can see refracted the many hues of ideologies and attitudes when religions come into contact and conflict, ranging from the exclusivist ‘extra ecclesiam nulla salus’ [no salvation outside the church] through inclusivism (Christianity teaches the full truth, and is the fulfillment of what other religions have only dimly glimpsed), to pluralism (all religions are equally valid paths to salvations), and relativism (no unique or absolute truth). Clearly, these religious isms have broader cultural resonances. The Jesuit position on this matter is well articulated, richly documented and amply represented in the literature — to the point of virtually drowning out all dissenting voices. In order to reconstruct the intellectual debate — minus the fratricidal feuds, political rivalries and curial intrigues — we need to revisit the underlying philosophical and theological arguments. In this regard, the early Dominicans have left valuable documents. Unfortunately, few of these tracts are widely known, and only two of them, namely Navarrete’s Controversias (1679) and Alexandre’s Apologie (1700) are even published at all. In my recent visit to the Provincial Archives of Avila, Spain, I was able to examine a fair sample of 16–17th century documents. Among the unpublished manuscripts, I single out three, all written by Francisco Varo.26 Varo’s manuscripts are fairly extensive. For instance, the 1681 Tratado en que se ponen los fundamentos runs to 327 folios (recto and verso, or 654 pages). A close study of these sources can no doubt shed new light on the intellectual issues surrounding the first serious clash between Chinese and European world views.

· 1664. Tratado sobre los ritos chinos, by Francisco Varo. Ms.

· 1671. Manifiesto y declaraciones de la verdad de algunas cosas..., by Francisco Varo. Ms.

· 1679. Controversias antiguas y modernas de la mission de la gran China, by Domingo Fernández  Navarrete. Madrid.

· 1680. Tratado en que se ponen los fundamentos que los PP. misioneros dominicos de China tienen para prohibir a sus neófitos cristianos algunas ceremonias en honor de Confucio, by Francisco Varo. Ms.

· 1699. Apologie des Dominicains missionnaires de la Chine, by Noël Alexandre. Cologne.

By way of conclusion, it is fair to say that while the Dominican missionaries have had an auspicious beginning as cultural emissaries in China, their efforts have declined some what in the subsequent periods. Over the last four and half centuries or so, the totality of the Dominican contribution to Western sinology pales in comparison to that of the Jesuits. In terms of scope and instant popularity, there is nothing in the Dominican scholarship that remotely approaches, for instance, Jean- Baptiste Du Halde’s Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de l’empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise (1735, 4 vols), or Lettres édifiantes et curieuses des Missions étrangères par quelques missionnaires de la Compagnie de Jésus (1702–1776, 34 vols.), or its sequel Mémoires concernant l’Histoire, les Sciences, les Arts, les Moeurs, les Usages, etc., des Chinois (1776–1791, 15 vols.). In terms of originality and lasting impact, Matteo Ricci’s 《天主實義》 stands head and shoulders above the rest. Ricci’s predecessors like Michele Ruggieri and Juan Cobo presented the Christian beliefs and values from an essentially Euro-centric perspective. In contrast, Ricci took the unprecedented step of attempting to meld Christianity with Chinese culture, in the process radically re-inventing Confucianism.27 Just as St. Thomas Aquinas baptized Aristotle, Ricci sought to christen Confucius and, simultaneously, sinicize Christianity. It was an act of imaginative daring — or, some may say, hermeneutic adventurism. Whichever it may be, Ricci has profoundly changed the way we think and talk about cross-cultural encounters.

Having said that, we should not let the dazzling achievements of some to blind us to the contributions of the others. As we look back at the dawn of modern East-West cultural contact, let us remember the early Dominican friars who blazed the trail in many spheres of Western sinology.

Acknowledgements:

I am grateful to Frs. Bonifacio Solís and Donato González for facilitating my access to the Dominican Archivo de la Provincia, Avila, Spain. Dr. Alicia Relinque, visiting Professor at the City University of Hong Kong (2003), has been very helpful with library research at the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid.

References

Benavides, Miguel (et al.). 1583? [1951]. Doctrina christiana en letra y lengua china. Manila. Facsimile version, with Spanish translation by Antonio Domínguez, and a historicobibliographical essay by Jesus Gayo Aragon. Manila. 1951.

Boxer, C.R. 1953. South China in the Sixteenth Century. London: the Hakluyt Society.

Breitenbach, Sandra. 2000. Introduction to Francisco Varo 1703 [2000], ed. by W. South Coblin & Joseph Levi.

Breitenbach, Sandra. 1996. Die chinesische Grammatik des Dominikaners Francisco Varo (1627–1687): Arte de la Lengua Mandarina (Kanton 1703). Ph.D. dissertation, University of Göttingen.

Chen, Matthew Y. 2000. Tone Sandhi: Patterns across Chinese Dialects. Cambridge University Press.

Chen, Matthew Y. 2003. “Francisco Varo (1627–1687), a pioneer in the history of Chinese linguistics.” Paper presented at the International Conference on Western Chinese Study, Beijing Foreign Studies University, September 12–14. To appear in Journal of Chinese Linguistics.

Chen Qinghao 陳慶浩. 1990. “第一部翻譯成西方文字的中國書 --- 《明心寶鑑》.” 《中外文學》. 21.4: 73–87.

Cobo, Juan. 1593 [1986]. 《辯正教真傳實錄》 [Apología de la Verdadera Religion / Testimony of the True Religión], Canton 1583. Facsimile edition, prepared by Fidel Villaroel. University of S. Tomás Press, Manila, 1986. With English and Spanish translations, and introductions by Alberto Santamaría, Antonio Domínguez, and Fidel Villaroel.

Cobo, Juan. 1593 [1959]. Beng sim po cam 《明心寶鑑》 Espejo Rico del Claro Corazón. Manila. Facsimile edition, by Carlos Sanz, Madrid: Librería General. 1959.

Cummins, J.S. 1962. The Travels and Controversies of Friar Domingo Navarrete 1618-1686. Cambridge: the Hakluyt Society. 2 vols.

Cummins, J.S. 1993. A Question of Rites. Friar Domingo Navarrete and the Jesuits in China. Cambridge: Scolar Press.

Da Cruz, Gaspar. 1569. Tractado em que se cõtam muito por estêso as cousas da China. Evora. English translation in Boxer 1953.

Gayo Aragón, Jesús. 1951. Ensayo histórico-bibliográfico. In Benavides 1593 [1951]. University of Sto. Tomas, Manila, p.1-104.

González, José-María. 1964. Historia de las Misiones Dominicanas en China. Vol.1: 1632–1700. Madrid: Juan Bravo.

González, José-María. 1966. Historia de las Misiones Dominicanas en China. Vol.5: Bibliografías. Madrid: Juan Bravo.

Jensen, Lionel M. 1997. Manufacturing Confucianism. Duke University Press.

Jiménez, J.A.C. 1998. “Spanish friars in the Far East: Fray Juan Cobo and his book Shi Lu.” Historia Scientiarum vol. 7–3, pp. 181– 198.

Liu Dun. 1998. “Western knowledge of geography reflected in Juan Cobo’s Shilu 《實錄》 (1593).” Paper presented at the Conference on the History of Mathematics: Portugal and the East II, Macao, October 11-12, 1998.

Luis de Granada. 1583 [1989]. Introducción del Símbolo de la Fe. Salamanca. Edited by José María Balcells. Madrid: Catedra. 1989.

Missions étrangères de Paris. 1997. Missions étrangères & langues orientales : contribution de la Société des Missions Étrangères à la connaissance de 60 langues d’Asie : bibliographie. Archives & Bibliothèques Asiatique, Missions étrangères de Paris. Series Recherches asiatiques. Montréal (Quebec): l’Harmattan.

Peverelli, Peter J. 1986. The History of Modern Chinese Grammar Studies. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leiden. Peyraube, Alain. 2001. “Some reflections on the sources of the Mashi Wentong.” In Michael Lackner, Iwo Amelung and Joachim Kurtz (eds.). New Terms for New Ideas. We s t e rn Knowledge and Lexical Change in Late Imperial China. pp. 341–356.

Quétif, Jacobus and Jacobus Echard. 1719–21. Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum. Paris. 2 volumes. Supplement by Remigius Coulon and Antonius Papillon. Rome and Paris, 1909–1934.

Sanz, Carlos. 1958. Primitivas relaciones de España con Asia y Oceanía. Madrid: Librería General.

Sun Chaofen (ed.). 1997. Studies on the History of Chinese Syntax. Berkeley: Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Monograph series, n.10.

Van der Loon, P. 1966–67. “The Manila incunabula and early Hokkien studies.” Asia Major v.12:1–42, v.13:95–186.

Varo, Francisco. 1703 [2000]. Arte de la lengua mandarina. Canton. Facsimile edition, with English translation by Coblin, W. South & Joseph Levi. Francisco Varo’s Grammar of the Mandarin Language (1703). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2000.

Zhu Dexi 朱德熙 1982. “漢語語法蕞書序.” 商務印書館.

Notes:

1 Cf. González 1964, v.1, p.31.

2 The term ‘arte’ in the Spanish original derives from Lat. ‘ars grammatica’, or the art of grammar.

3 For a historical survey, see González (1966), Peverelli (1986), Sun Chaofen (1997), Breitenbach (2000), Peyraube (2001).

4 For an overview, see Chen 2000.

5 For a detailed analysis of Varo’s chapter on tone sandhi, see Chen 2003.

6 Varo left Europe on his China-bound journey through Mexico in 1646, and was unlikely to have been acquainted with the Grammaire de Port-Royal or Grammaire générale et raisonnée, of Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot, published in 1660.

7 There is a long debate concerning which locality the name Chincheo refers to in the 17th century documents: today’s Quanzhou / Chuanchow 泉州 or Zhangzhou / Changchow 漳州? Boxer (1953) devotes an entire appendix (p.313–326) to this question, and concludes that it was used as a generic term to refer to the Bay of Amoy / Xiamen 廈門 in general. The dialect in question is then the Amoybased lingua franca of Southern Ming.

8 A relative of Matteo Ricci.

9 I examined a microfilm version of Jordá’s Arte sinico in the Archivo de la Provincia of Sto.Tomás, Avila, Spain. Its basic descriptive schema resembles that of Varo.

10 De la propagación de la fe en las Filipinas, by Francisco Montilla, a Franciscan. Cobo’s Lingua sinica is also registered in Quétif-Echard 1721, v.2:306a–307a. However, P. van der Loon (1966–67, p. 18) notes that “no other contemporary author makes mention of a grammar or dictionary by Cobo” and that “such a work may never have been completed.”

11 Jiménez (1998:182) claims Martín de Rada (1535-1578), an Augustinian, wrote an Arte y vocabulario de la lengua chinense.

12 The linguistic contribution of the Missions Étrangères de Paris seems to be quite substantial as well, as documented in a recent bibliography. See Missions Étrangères de Paris 1997.

13 A modern facsimile edition is now available, prepared by Fidel Villarroel, with Spanish and English translations and an extensive introduction.

14 This booklet in Chinese characters carries no date, and no Chinese title. J. Gayo Aragón (1951) pegs the date at 1593, and proclaims Benavides’ Doctrina as the first book ever printed in the Philippines. P. van der Loon (1966-67, p.25) on the other hand, dates it between 1587 and 1607.

15 The Dominicans are also credited with having produced in 1604 the first typographic (movable types) book in the Philippines, Ordinationes Generales Provinciae Sanctissimi Rosarii Philippinarum. See P. van der Loon (1966-67, op. cit., p.25ff).

16 For a philological study of Hokkien based on philippine incunabula, see P. van der Loon (1966-67), and philological notes by Antonio Domínguez to Benavides 1593? [1951].

17 See Jiménez 1998, and Liu 1998, esp. introductions by Alberto Santamaría, Antonio Domínguez and Fidel Villaroel to Cobo 1593 [1986].

18 His Tractado is available in English translation, as part of Boxer (1953).

19 Gaspar da Cruz himself was allowed to stay in Canton for only one month in 1556 (see González, 1966, p.12)

20 González (1966, p.12) remarks that Mendoza (Mendoça) ‘borrowed’ extensively from Gaspar da Cruz: ‘El P. Juan González de Mendoza copia, en gran parte, el libro de P. de la Cruz, en su célebre Historia de las cosas más notables... de China, 1585. No hay más que confrontar los dos libros para convencerse de ello.’

21 Incidentally, Benavides (1552–1605) was the first Dominican to minister to the Chinese in the Philippines (1587– 90), and later Archbishop of Manila (1603-05).

22 From the introduction to the facsimile edition prepared by Sanz 1959. For a recent paper on Beng sim po cam, see Chen Q.H. 1990.

23 ‘letras quebradas y iluminadas’, literally ‘broken and illuminated letters’, refers to the way copyists cut up in two halves an initial letter in a manuscript for decorative purposes. See Balcells’ footnote 16 on p.146.

24 The full title cited by González (1966, p.70) reads: ‘Escala del cielo, “en el cual por el conocimiento de las creaturas se da a conocer el Creador de todas ellas”.’ [Ladder to Heaven: in which by means of the knowledge of the creatures one attains the knowledge of the Creator of them all]. Little else is known about the content of this work.

25 Navarrete is the subject of a recent book by Cummins (1993). Book VI (Tratado Sexto) of Navarrete’s Tratados históricos, políticos etc. is available in English translation by Cummins (1962).

26 Varo’s manuscripts are located in the Provincial Archives of the Dominican order in Avila.

27 Jensen (1997, p.9) went so far as asserting that Confucius is ‘a figment of the Western imagination’. He adds: ‘There is as much that is genuinely Chinese in Confucianism [i.e. as ‘ manufactured ’ by Western intellectuals] as there was in chinoiserie.’ (p.144)

Professor Matthew Chen has studied in Hong Kong, Rome, and obtained his Ph. D. in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1972. He has taught for many years at the University of California, San Diego, before joining CityU in 1999. He is currently CityU’s Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and a member of the Core Team of our Centre for Cross- Cultural Studies. His publications focus mainly on phonology, historical linguistics, and tonology in particular, with a recent book entitled Tone Sandhi: Patterns across Chinese Dialects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Holding a degree in philosophy and theology, he has an abiding interest in the intellectual issues surrounding the early cultural contacts between China and the West.

金尼閣 (Nicolas Trigault，1577-1629）

（http://baike.baidu.com/view/493633.html, http://form.nlc.gov.cn/sino/show.php?id=22）

金尼閣，字四表，原名Nicolas Trigault（尼古拉·特裏戈），1577年3月3日生於今法國的杜埃城，它位於佛蘭德斯境內。佛蘭德斯為西歐歷史地名，金尼閣生活的時代處在西班牙統治下。人們按照古代居住在這裏的比利時人部落稱此地為「比利時」。1615 年，金尼閣在德意志的奧格斯堡出版他翻譯並增寫的利瑪竇中國劄記《基督宗教遠征中國史》（Nicolas Trigault: Histoire de l'expedition Chrestienne au royaume de la Chine, entreprinse par les PP. de la compagnie de Iesus, comprinse en cinq livres, esquels est traicte fort exactement et fidelement des moeurs, loix, & coustumes du pays, & des commencemens tres-difficiles de l'eglise naissante en ce royaume. Tiree des commentaires du Matthieu Riccius, et nouvellement traduicte en francois par D. F. de Riquebourg-Trigault. Lyons, for Horace Cardon, 1616）時，在封面上就明確自署「比利時人」。但是，金尼閣的故鄉杜埃在其去世半個多世紀後被法國征服並劃入法國版圖， 不過，其宗教生活的重要地點圖爾內仍在比利時境內。因而自今日言， 金尼閣被看作法國人固然也無不可。然而這是金尼閣與他的同時代人所始料不及， 金尼閣的墓誌也絕不會依據後代歷史地理的變遷而把他寫作「法國人」。

　　1594年11月9日入耶穌會，是第一位來華的法籍耶穌�