On the Motivations of Some Important Changes of Pronouns in the History of Chinese Language: From the Perspective of Influences of Buddhism and Buddhist Translation on Chinese 漢語代詞在歷史上幾個重要變化之動因研究——以佛教及佛經翻譯對漢語發展演變的影響為視角

Since Buddhism was introduced to China in Han Dynasty, plenty of Buddhist texts were translated into Chinese successively. The spreading of Buddhism in China had a great impact on Chinese culture. As language is the most important medium of culture, influences of Buddhism on Chinese culture were realized through the Chinese language. Therefore, exploring influences of Buddhist translation on the Chinese language is very important not only to the language change itself but also to the change in the culture. This project is a continuation of a previously finished project conducted by the applicant (PI): Assessing the impact of Sanskrit on the Chinese language: Creating a database of Chinese Buddhist translations and their Sanskrit parallels to facilitate research in historical Chinese linguistics through contrastive analysis (HKIEd844710). We will use the database established in this previous project to do some further researches in order to find more facts about influences of translated Buddhist texts on Chinese. This project will focus on the changes of pronouns in the history of Chinese language. We will try to find the relation between Buddhist translation and the motivations of changes of pronouns.

Funding Source: RGC - General Research Fund (GRF)