关于语言身份的识别问题

摘要

The question of how many languages there are in the world is very difficult to answer. The international linguistics community usually determines the number of the world’s languages ac-cording to the information published in SIL International’s Ethnologue.This book,however,lacks a certain seriousness in collecting information on the world’s languages.This is mainly due to the fact that a scientific and quantifiable identifying means by common consent in the international academic circle is still unavailable regarding language indentification.As a starting point,we discuss an article published in the American journal Science in 2009 on the identification of Chinese languages and some problems in the process of language identification.We also refute some false statements on Chinese language identification work found in the American j ournal Science.Finally,in order to start a discus-sion and to develop a theory and means for language identification acceptable to the international lin-guistics community,we propose a method for identifying and distinguishing languages based on de-gree of mutual intelligibility and structural similarity.We hold that it is premature to apply a lan-guage code as introduced by the SIL before the criteria on mutual intelligibility and relevant techniques are fully accepted by the academic community.%全球有多少种语言，这是一个很难回答的问题。国际语言学界通常根据世界少数民族语文研究院（SIL）出版的Ethnologue提供的信息来确定语言的数量，但该书在收录世界语言资料时缺乏一定的严肃性。主要是由于语言身份的鉴定在国际上缺乏一种学术界比较公认的科学的可以量化的识别方法。文章围绕美国《科学》杂志于2009年讨论中国语言识别问题的文章为引子，讨论了语言身份鉴定过程中存在的一些问题，反驳了该文对中国语言识别工作的一些污蔑不实之词，提出需建立一种互通度与语言结构差异度相结合的语言身份鉴定方法，以引起讨论，求得一种国际语言学界都能够接受的语言身份识别的理论和方法。文章还认为在互通度标准以及技术在实践中还没有能够取得学术界一致认可之前，指派最终的语言代码是不成熟的做法。