番薯的词汇地理学研究

Chinese Word Geography—A Case Study of Fanshu “Sweet Potato”

摘要: 本文以《汉语方言地图集》(LACD)词汇卷015图为依据，在梳理本字和若干方言语料的基础上，把930个汉语方言点番薯说法的词形重新分为6大类(“薯”类、“芋”类、“地瓜”类、“山药”类、“萝卜”类、“葛”类)47小类，绘制出必要的解释性地图，并结合地图讨论若干相关问题。主要的结论有：1) 指称番薯的“苕”和“茴”本字都是“薯”；2) “薯”类词形是优势词形，拥有930个方言点中的729个(78%)，而“番薯”和“红薯”又在“薯”类词形中占压倒性多数；3) 方言接触往往导致词形的混合，例如“番薯”和“山芋”的接触产生了“番芋”和“山薯”，“山芋”和“红薯”的接触产生了“红芋”；4) 移民和重要的交通线在方言扩散中起着不可忽略的作用，例如山东移民把番薯及番薯的称谓“地瓜”带到了东北，苏沪皖一带的“芋”类词形沿着大运河向北扩散，一直到大运河的起点通县(今通州区)；5) 单纯对词形的地理分布格局进行分析并不一定能把我们引入真理之门，例如ABA分布既可肇因于中心区的创新，也可由平行演变、跳跃式远距离扩散等其他因素导致，如果不结合文献，很难知道ABA分布蕴含着何种历史信息；6) 番薯的学名“甘薯”不具有方言基础，又跟古文献中指称薯蓣的“甘薯”(甘藷)重名，植物学界以“番薯”作为学名的做法是值得赞赏的。

Abstract: According to the Map 015 in the vocabulary volume of Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects (LACD), this paper reclassifies the word forms of fanshu “sweet potato” at 930 Chinese dialects into 6 broad categories (“shu”, “yu”, “digua”, “shanyao”, “luobo”, “ge”) and 47 sub-categories on the basis of analyzing certain original characters and dialect materials. Then we draw necessary interpretive maps and discuss several related issues with these maps. The main conclusions are listed as follows. 1) The original character of the words shao and hui which refer to the sweet potato is shu. 2) In all the 930 dialects, the “shu” category, as the dominant one, is used in 729 dialects (78%), the overwhelming majority of which are fanshu and hongshu. 3) Dialect contact tends to result in the blend of word forms. For example, the contact of fanshu and shanyu results in fanyu and shanshu, while hongyu is also a blend word due to the contact of shanyu and hongshu. 4) Immigrants as well as important traffic lines play a significant role in dialect diffusion. For example, immigrants from Shandong Province brought sweet potatoes and their name “digua” to the northeast China, while the “yu” category in the region of Jiangsu Province, Shanghai City and Anhui Province diffused northward along the Grand Canal till the starting point Tong County (which is called Tongzhou District nowadays). 5) To simply analyze the geographical distribution pattern doesn’t guarantee us a right answer. For instance, the ABA pattern can result from either the innovation of the central area, or other factors such as parallel evolution, jumping diffusion over a long distance, etc. It’s hard to know what historical information the ABA pattern contains without any reference to related documents. 6) Since the scientific name of sweet potato “ganshu” doesn’t have a dialectal foundation and is identical with “ganshu” which refers to a kind of yam in the ancient documents, it is appreciated that the botany academia takes “fanshu” as the scientific name.