语言学人｜柯理思：行走在研究和教学之间

    摘  要：本文是对著名语言学家柯理思教授的访谈。柯理思教授首先介绍了自己如何与不同语言结缘并且巧妙地运用自己的语言背景进行学术研究。然后柯理思教授谈到了她对于汉语研究中不同领域的浓厚兴趣，而且描述了自己看待汉语的独特角度。此外，柯理思教授表示学界需要创造一些多语言的作品从而使汉语语言学研究走向世界。柯理思教授还讲述了她面对东西方学生的汉语教学经历，以及出国留学对于学生未来学术发展的帮助。

    关键词：柯理思  多语言  汉语语言学界  汉语研究  口语  书面语  语言教学

【Interviewee】

Christine Lamarre（柯理思）, Professor of Chinese Language at National Institute for Oriental Languages and Cultures. She graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Bordeaux in 1976. Between 1977 and 1979, she studied at Liaoning University and Fudan University respectively. She completed her Ph.D. degree at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS- the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) in 1985. From 1981 to 1986, she studied for her doctrine degree of Chinese linguistics at University of Tsukuba and received her Ph.D. degree in 1987 there. She was a professor at the University of Tokyo (1998-2009), the president of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics and the European Association of Chinese Linguistics. Her research interests focus on grammars of Mandarin Chinese and Chinese dialects. Published works: A Grammar and Lexicon of Hakka: Historical Materials from the Basel Mission Library (with Hilary Chappell) , etc.

【Interviewer】 

施今语，牛津大学实验心理学博士生，爱丁堡大学语言学硕士，伦敦大学学院心理与语言科学学士（采访时为高中期间）。 

【Time】

07/23/2016 

【Place】

Beijing Language and Culture University

【开场白】

Shi: Good morning, Professor Lamarre! Nice to meet you! I'm a 11th-grade student from the international department of Beijing National Day School. My father is a professor at Beijing Language and Culture University, so under his influence, I've always been interested in linguistics. That's why when I heard about this meeting and knew you were coming to China, I decided to start a project, which is a series of interviews with world-renowned linguists. The project can not only satisfy my own curiosity but can also help high school students who want to learn about linguists and linguistics.

图片来源：陕西师范大学语言资源开发研究中心官网

Shi：During the days I prepared for this interview, I have asked some Chinese linguistic students about you. Most of them are very familiar with you and your works because you often come to China to attend academic meetings or conferences. How do you think Chinese academics and their works may get closer to the rest of the world and be more known abroad?

Lamarre：I think maybe there is still a need to produce more papers and books in English about Chinese studies now. It doesn't mean that everything needs to be written in English. Since I spent a long time in Japan, I noticed that we knew very well what was going on in China because a lot of Japanese scholars frequently went to China and lots of Chinese scholars also came to Japan. In Japan, there are frequent academic meetings in Chinese and we can simply use Chinese to communicate. But when I went back to France, due to family reasons, I found that the number of people who research in Chinese linguistics is reduced. People who teach Chinese in college or middle school, for instance, do not always read academic works and publications, like Studies of The Chinese Language (ZHONGGUO YUWEN) . Somehow, there is a lack of mid-level presentation of Chinese studies, and a need to present recent researches in English, and maybe also in French. Now, I think it is also my responsibility to produce this kind of materials. I have a few colleagues are conscious that we have to produce available academic works and presentations in French too. The Chinese scholars who are able to write in English, for instance, can also help us to produce academic literature in English about Chinese linguistics for linguists who want to know some Chinese specificities but do not read Chinese. Another task is to produce easily understandable literature on Chinese in the mother tongue of people who are studying Chinese or teaching Chinese but who are not academics. These two separate tasks may help to spread Chinese studies. No matter foreign academics or Chinese academics, anyone with the language ability can help with this important job.

Shi：Chinese seems to be one of the hardest languages around the world, and many foreign friends of mine usually complain about it. However, you have taught both French and Japanese people Chinese, what's the difference of your teaching method when you face different groups of people?

Lamarre：You must relativize the difficulty of studying Chinese. For Japanese learners, studying Chinese is not that difficult. I had both experiences in teaching French to Japanese and Chinese to Japanese in similar institutions (Kyoto University and the University of Tokyo) , to the same kind of students that major in other fields like physics, engineering, economics, picking either French or Chinese as their second language. So I can compare the process of studying French or Chinese as L2 for Japanese students. Even a very bright Kyoto University student who has studied two years of L2 French will have many difficulties to understand a daily newspaper such as Le Monde. However, an equally bright student who studied Chinese for the same amount of time and same curriculum can read and understand much more in a Chinese newspaper. Of course, there are historical reasons behind this, like Italians who study French find it very easy, that is the way it is. Still, you can't say that for Japanese it is very easy to study Chinese because the tones are very hard to master for a Japanese learner. But the very difficult words used in Chinese newspapers are easily mastered by Japanese because many of them is commonly, shared since the 19th century, and written with the same characters. The pronunciation of Chinese is very hard for westerners, but it's much easier for Vietnamese because they have similar tones too. So no language is absolutely difficult. The key is the relationship between the learner's mother tongue and the target language.

Shi：Do you think it's necessary for high school students to learn multiple languages?

Lamarre：Yes, I think it is very useful. Actually, in France now, Chinese is very popular in colleges. In our middle and high schools, we had more than forty-thousand students learning Chinese. For France, it's quite a large number. Chinese is getting even more popular than German, for instance. Now we are developing some technics to teach Chinese in middle schools and high schools, like how many characters students should learn, how we dissociate character-teaching from oral practice and still avoid producing people who are iliterate (because writing is also important for Chinese). Nowadays, we have lots of teachers who teach Chinese in middle schools and high schools. That's why I was saying that we must produce materials to help them because we cannot expect them to read academic magazines and study specific academic research about linguistics. But some of the results of recent studies can modify the way we teach Chinese. It's also very important to learn different languages because it makes your head suppler.

Shi：How many languages do you think we should learn?

Lamarre：Like you already learnt two languages, a third language would be very useful because you can look at your own languages with different eyes.

Shi：Nowadays, there are lots of students who choose to study abroad, like me. Do you think it's necessary for a student to have an experience of studying in another country?

Lamarre：From the point of view of academics, I think staying abroad probably helps you to become more fluent in foreign languages, so it won't be difficult for you to read a lot of documents in other languages. Writing in foreign languages masterly takes time, and you need to go through a process of writing and revising your papers. Practicing foreign languages is much easier when you are in the country because it makes the experience more direct. If you stay in your own country, a lot of things will be indirect. Also, you would be exposed to ideas and ways of thinking that are totally different from your own culture by studying abroad. Learning in a foreign country might belp you to communicate with international scholars more easily, which would benefit your academic development.

Shi：At what age do you think is the best time to study abroad?

Lamarre：I think there are a lot of factors that will influence the time you decided to study abroad, like what is going on in your own country. If you go too early, you may have problems to enter the university system, like in China you have Gaokao. There is no objective answer to this question because we all live in specific societies. In some societies, it's easier to go abroad earlier. In some other societies, you might have such constraints on your curiculum, so that you have more difficulties to face. But obviously, if you go abroad earlier, what you get is more direct. You are learning in a different way. It still depends on the occasion, and many people do not have many choices, like when you are a child you are not alone, so you have to consider whether your parents can go with you or not. It depends much more on your private life and opportunities.

本文来源：《国际汉语学报》2018年第9卷第2辑

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