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Japanese and Modernization of the Chinese Language
SHEN Guowei*

The largest change to Chinese during the process of development into amodern language after the May Fourth Movement was the disyllabization ofthe lexicon. With disyllabization, Chinese changed in the following ways:
1. It became possible for words to shift between substantives and declinable
parts of speech.
2. Through frequent use of auxiliary verbs (jinxing 進行, jiayi 加以, geiyu 給予)
and disyllabic prepositions (duiyu 対于, guanyu 関于, zuowei 作為) adjectival
nominative modifying clauses grew longer and changed sentence structure.
3. The modern transformation into a unified written and spoken language wasachieved. Two possible explanations for disyllabization are the natural,organic evolution of Chinese and contact with foreign languages. Most
previous research has focused on diachronic changes in Chinese that
continued from the Han period; little research has been done on foreign
factors, and in particular on the influence brought upon Chinese by theJapanese language. Recently my academic interests have focused on theinfluence on Chinese disyllabilization from translation of Western works
against the backdrop of modernization of languages in countries using
Sinitic characters. At the same time, I have also been elucidating the influence of Japanese on the disyllabilization process.
Disyllabilization had a tremendous impact not only on the Chinese lexicon,
but as a phenomenon that extended to grammar and literary style it was thelargest change characterizing modernization of the Chinese language.
Disyllabization, which is purported to have begun as early as the Han period,
accelerated through the translations of Buddhist scriptures in the Jin throughTang periods (265–907). In the nineteenth century, and particularly after theMay Fourth New Culture Movement, the number of vocabulary words
increased dramatically, shaping the nature of the language we find today. As	  * Professor, Kansai University

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Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 5 2014is represented by senior scholars Wang Li 王力, Lu Shuxiang 呂叔湘, and others
who are noted for their research on the motivations and mechanisms of thephenomenon of disyllabilism, as well as in more recent years, such as thework by Dong Xiufang 董 秀 芳 entitled Cihuihua: Hanyu shuangyin ci deyansheng he fazhan 詞 彙 化：漢 語 双 音 詞 的 衍 生 和 発 展 (Lexicalization: The
Origin and Evolution of Chinese Disyllabic Words, first edition 2002; revised
edition 2010), there is great interest in this area. Dong claims to examine theprocess of disyllabilization continuously through synchronic and diachronic
methodologies, yet the author does not always consider linguistic phenomena
since the nineteenth century, and it must be concluded that the research isremoved from the modern language. Dong is not alone; there has been a lackof research on the formation of modern Chinese during the nineteenth to thebeginning of the twentieth centuries in general. There has been a dearth ofresearch conducted based on the viewpoint of how Chinese grew from anearly modern to a modern language.
On the other hand, there has been strong interest in the importation of
new concepts and technical loan words in research on early modern SinoJapanese lexical exchange. Yet few have delved into the influence on lexicalsystems or word formation. It is time for a new approach. I received aresearch grant from 2010 to 2012 for my research topic, “Integrated Researchon the Evolution of an Early Modern ‘National Chinese Language’: TheInfluence of Westernized Grammar and the Japanese Language.” My research
involved examination of foreign elements in the modernization of the Chineselanguage, and in particular, the influence of Japanese on a lexical level. In thecourse of my research, I verified 16,292 Sino-Japanese homographs out of56,006 words listed in the Gendai Chūgokugo jōyō shiihyō 現代中国語常用詞
彙 表 (in conformance with the fifth edition of Kōjien 広 辞 苑). Based on thisresearch, I edited the Jindai Rizhong xingyu yuyuan zidian 近代日中新語語源辞典 (to be published by the Commercial Press: Shangwu Yinshuguan 商務印書). Sino-Japanese homographs consist of thousands of disyllabic terms(gakkō/xuexiao 学校, hōan/fangan 方案, kaizen/gaishan 改善, hakujaku/boruo
薄 弱) in addition to Japanese-originated Chinese expressions (tetsugaku/zhexue 哲 学, gimu/yiwu 義 務) and Japanese-originated new synonyms(kakumei/geming 革命, keizai/jingji 経済). The latter are nouns, many of themnominals. The former exist across all parts of speech, characterize the modernlanguage, and form the basis of today’s language culture. Many of them areseen in the character strings of the Chinese classics, and were suddenly activated at the end of the nineteenth century. Activation of this disyllabilization
is a phenomenon seen in various languages in countries using Sinitic characters. It has become clear through research of the exchange of early modern
lexica that chronologically, this phenomenon occurred in Japanese, Chinese,Japanese and Modernization of the Chinese Language﻿

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Korean, and then Vietnamese. Naturally, mutual influences must also beconsidered. In addition, there are many phenomena that suggest metalingualcharacteristics of the notation system of Chinese characters. My researchattempts to illuminate the activation of disyllables in the early modern period
as a phenomenon straddling typologically different languages; at the sametime I examine the influence of Japanese in that process. The Japanese
language contributed not only to Chinese but to other lexical systems in theSinitic notation cultural sphere that once used or still use Chinese characters.
Formerly, research on disyllables before the nineteenth century was forthe most part conducted on the evolution of the usage of individual terms.
There have been sporadic word-formation studies on the development fromcollocation to compound words, but in all cases they focus solely on theinternal causes for developmental trends in the Chinese language. Yet disyllabilization of the contemporary language occurred over a short period oftime. The speed of the increase cannot be explained from simply the viewpoint of lexicalization because an extended period of time is necessary forsuch a process. As Dong points out, realization of lexicalization requires the“prior condition” of “contiguous co-occurrence and high frequency of use.” Inany case, Chinese translations of Japanese texts are profoundly connectedwith the process. That is, the rapid rise of disyllabilization lies in the uniquemodern condition in East Asia of language contact brought about by humanand textual exchanges. This foreign element in language transformation must
be added to any consideration of the issue, and a new perspective on mutual
usage of the languages in the written language in the Sinitic cultural sphere isnecessary. It is my aim to understand changes in early modern Chinese byusing a “peripheral research” approach to examine not only documentationinternal to China but also peripheral materials with a close historical relationship to Chinese and research on the Chinese language and by taking advantage of the methodology of corpus etymology. By following the temporal axisof periods of rapid increase and time lags of disyllabilzation in both Japaneseand Chinese, I have been able to chart the process and analyze each genre oflanguage documentation and style to grasp the influence relationship between
the two languages.
Japanese has had the profoundest influence on the modern Chinese lexicon.
Through an integrated observation of the seemingly unrelated phenomena ofborrowing Japanese translation terms via early modern Sino-Japanese lexicalinteraction, the rapid increase in disyllabilization, appearance of synonyms,and semantic subdivisions, the mechanism of disyllabilization and foreign
elements becomes clear. It goes without saying that Japanese texts translated
into Chinese and Japanese dictionaries used in the compilation of Chinese
dictionaries (Chinese-Chinese dictionaries, English-Chinese dictionaries, tech-130

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 5 2014

nical dictionaries) are important in this process. In addition, I have effectively
utilized modern-language documentation corpora and Sino-Japanese homographs to elucidate developmentally from the viewpoint of auxiliary verbs anddisyllabic prepositional phrases the influence that Japanese has had on activation of modern Chinese disyllabilization. In concrete methodological terms, I
have used the completed chart on “Sino-Japanese homographs,” and haverecorded the changes in frequency of disyllabization in the process of thedevelopment of character strings into compound words through use of thecorpus. I am researching not only each individual term, but the occurrence of
new collocations and differences in the two languages. I am focusing mainlyon the following points:a.	The correlation between the increase in disyllabization and formationof technical terminologyb.	The increase in disyllabization and the appearance of hundreds of word
groups containing the same Sinitic characters (gai 改, gaige 改 革,gaishan 改 善, gailiang 改 良, gaibian 改 変, gaijin 改 進, boruo 薄 弱,
weiruo 微 弱, ruanruo 軟 弱, cuiruo 脆 弱); differences in distribution
between the two languages.
c.	The increase in disyllabization and auxiliary verbs (jinxing 進行, jiayi加 以), occurrence of disyllabic prepositional phrases (duiyu 対 于,guanyu 関于, zuowei 作為) and lengthening of attributive modifiers.
The formation of modern Chinese cannot be discussed without a narrativeon the influence of Japanese or Western languages. Wang Li in his Hanyu
shigao 漢 語 史 稿 (1958) and Beijing Normal University’s Wuxi ilai Hanyu
shumian yuyian de bianqian he fazhan 五 四 以 来 漢 語 書 面 語 言 的 変 遷 和 発 展(1959) pointed out this directionality quite early on, but there has been little
empirical research. I intend to continue pursuing inquiry into the phenomenaof current and continuing modernization of Chinese as a process rather thanresearching the early modern and modern lexica as disparate units, as has
tended to be the case until now.