Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese | |
---|---|
Ancient Chinese | |
漢語 hɑnH ŋɨʌX | |
Native to | China |
Era | 4th–12th centuries CE[1] Northern and Southern dynasties, Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Song |
Early forms | |
Tâi-lô | tiong-kóo Hàn-gú |
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the Qieyun, a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren believed that the dictionary recorded a speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties. However, based on the preface of the Qieyun, most scholars now believe that it records a compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Northern and Southern dynasties period. This composite system contains important information for the reconstruction of the preceding system of Old Chinese phonology (early 1st millennium BC).
The fanqie method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid-12th-century Yunjing and other rime tables incorporate a more sophisticated and convenient analysis of the Qieyun phonology. The rime tables attest to a number of sound changes that had occurred over the centuries following the publication of the Qieyun. Linguists sometimes refer to the system of the Qieyun as Early Middle Chinese and the variant revealed by the rime tables as Late Middle Chinese.
The dictionaries and tables describe pronunciations in relative terms, but do not give their actual sounds. Karlgren was the first to attempt a reconstruction of the sounds of Middle Chinese, comparing its categories with modern varieties of Chinese and the Sino-Xenic pronunciations used in the reading traditions of neighbouring countries. Several other scholars have produced their own reconstructions using similar methods.
The Qieyun system is often used as a framework for Chinese dialectology. With the exception of Min varieties, which show independent developments from Old Chinese, modern Chinese varieties can be largely treated as divergent developments from it. The study of Middle Chinese also provides for a better understanding and analysis of Classical Chinese poetry, such as the study of Tang poetry.
Sources
The reconstruction of Middle Chinese phonology is largely dependent upon detailed descriptions in a few original sources. The most important of these is the Qieyun
Rime dictionaries
Chinese scholars of the Northern and Southern dynasties period were concerned with the correct recitation of the classics. Various schools produced dictionaries to codify reading pronunciations and the associated rhyme conventions of regulated verse.[3][a] The Qieyun (601) was an attempt to merge the distinctions in six earlier dictionaries, which were eclipsed by its success and are no longer extant. It was accepted as the standard reading pronunciation during the Tang dynasty, and went through several revisions and expansions over the following centuries.[5]
The Qieyun is thus the oldest surviving rhyme dictionary and the main source for the pronunciation of characters in Early Middle Chinese (EMC). At the time of Bernhard Karlgren's seminal work on Middle Chinese in the early 20th century, only fragments of the Qieyun were known, and scholars relied on the Guangyun (1008), a much expanded edition from the Song dynasty. However, significant sections of a version of the Qieyun itself were subsequently discovered in the caves of Dunhuang, and a complete copy of Wang Renxu's 706 edition from the Palace Library was found in 1947.[6]
The rhyme dictionaries organize Chinese characters by their pronunciation, according to a hierarchy of tone, rhyme and homophony. Characters with identical pronunciations are grouped into homophone classes, whose pronunciation is described using two fanqie characters, the first of which has the initial sound of the characters in the homophone class and second of which has the same sound as the rest of the syllable (the final). The use of fanqie was an important innovation of the Qieyun and allowed the pronunciation of all characters to be described exactly; earlier dictionaries simply described the pronunciation of unfamiliar characters in terms of the most similar-sounding familiar character.[7]
The fanqie system uses multiple equivalent characters to represent each particular initial, and likewise for finals. The categories of initials and finals actually represented were first identified by the Cantonese scholar Chen Li in a careful analysis published in his Qieyun kao (1842). Chen's method was to equate two fanqie initials (or finals) whenever one was used in the fanqie spelling of the pronunciation of the other, and to follow chains of such equivalences to identify groups of spellers for each initial or final.[8] For example, the pronunciation of the character 東 was given using the fanqie spelling 德紅, the pronunciation of 德 was given as 多特, and the pronunciation of 多 was given as 德河, from which we can conclude that the words 東, 德 and 多 all had the same initial sound.[9]
The Qieyun classified homonyms under 193 rhyme classes, each of which is placed within one of the four tones.[10] A single rhyme class may contain multiple finals, generally differing only in the medial (especially when it is /w/) or in so-called chongniu doublets.[11][12]
Rime tables
The Yunjing (c. 1150 AD) is the oldest of the so-called rime tables, which provide a more detailed phonological analysis of the system contained in the Qieyun. The Yunjing was created centuries after the Qieyun, and the authors of the Yunjing were attempting to interpret a phonological system that differed in significant ways from that of their own Late Middle Chinese (LMC) dialect. They were aware of this, and attempted to reconstruct Qieyun phonology as well as possible through a close analysis of regularities in the system and co-occurrence relationships between the initials and finals indicated by the fanqie characters. However, the analysis inevitably shows some influence from LMC, which needs to be taken into account when interpreting difficult aspects of the system.[13]
The Yunjing is organized into 43 tables, each covering several Qieyun rhyme classes, and classified as:[14]
- One of 16 broad rhyme classes (shè)—each described as either "inner" or "outer". The meaning of this is debated but it has been suggested that it refers to the height of the main vowel, with "outer" finals having an open vowel (/ɑ/ or /a/, /æ/) and "inner" finals having a mid or close vowel.
- "Open mouth" or "closed mouth", indicating whether lip roundingis present. "Closed" finals either have a rounded vowel (e.g. /u/) or rounded glide.
Each table has 23 columns, one for each initial consonant. Although the Yunjing distinguishes 36 initials, they are placed in 23 columns by combining palatals, retroflexes, and dentals under the same column. This does not lead to cases where two homophone classes are conflated, as the grades (rows) are arranged so that all would-be
Each initial is further classified as follows:[16]
- sibilants, and laryngeals
- nasal or liquid
Each table also has 16 rows, with a group of 4 rows for each of the four tones of the traditional system in which finals ending in /p/, /t/ or /k/ are considered to be
Each square in a table contains a character corresponding to a particular homophone class in the Qieyun, if any such character exists. From this arrangement, each homophone class can be placed in the above categories.[18]
Modern dialects and Sino-Xenic pronunciations
The rime dictionaries and rime tables identify categories of phonetic distinctions but do not indicate the actual pronunciations of these categories. The varied pronunciations of words in modern
For example, the following table shows the pronunciation of the numerals in three modern Chinese varieties, as well as borrowed forms in Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese:
Modern Chinese varieties | Sino-Vietnamese | Sino-Korean |
Sino-Japanese[20] | Middle Chinese[b] | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Beijing | Suzhou | Guangzhou | Go-on | Kan-on | |||||
1 | 一 | yī | ɤʔ7 | jat1 | nhất | il | ichi | itsu | ʔjit |
2 | 二 | èr | ɲi6 | ji6 | nhị | i | ni | ji | nyijH |
3 | 三 | sān | sɛ1 | saam1 | tam | sam | san | sam | |
4 | 四 | sì | sɨ5 | sei3 | tứ | sa | shi | sijH | |
5 | 五 | wǔ | ŋ6 | ng5 | ngũ | o | go | nguX | |
6 | 六 | liù | loʔ8 | luk6 | lục | [r]yuk | roku | riku | ljuwk |
7 | 七 | qī | tsʰiɤʔ7 | cat1 | thất | chil | shichi | shitsu | tshit |
8 | 八 | bā | poʔ7 | baat3 | bát | phal | hachi | hatsu | pɛt |
9 | 九 | jiǔ | tɕiøy3 | gau2 | cửu | kwu | ku | kyū | kjuwX |
10 | 十 | shí' | zɤʔ8 | sap6 | thập | sip | jū ← jiɸu | dzyip |
Transcription evidence
Although the evidence from Chinese transcriptions of foreign words is much more limited, and is similarly obscured by the mapping of foreign pronunciations onto Chinese phonology, it serves as direct evidence of a sort that is lacking in all the other types of data, since the pronunciation of the foreign languages borrowed from—especially Sanskrit and Gandhari—is known in great detail.[21]
For example, the nasal initials /m n ŋ/ were used to transcribe Sanskrit nasals in the early Tang, but later they were used for Sanskrit unaspirated voiced initials /b d ɡ/, suggesting that they had become
Methodology
The rime dictionaries and rime tables yield phonological categories, but with little hint of what sounds they represent.[24] At the end of the 19th century, European students of Chinese sought to solve this problem by applying the methods of
Karlgren's transcription involved a large number of consonants and vowels, many of them very unevenly distributed. Accepting Karlgren's reconstruction as a description of medieval speech,
Older versions of the rime dictionaries and rime tables came to light over the first half of the 20th century, and were used by such linguists as
The preface of the Qieyun recovered in 1947 indicates that it records a compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late
Although the Qieyun system is no longer viewed as describing a single form of speech, linguists argue that this enhances its value in reconstructing earlier forms of Chinese, just as a cross-dialectal description of English pronunciations contains more information about earlier forms of English than any single modern form.
All reconstructions of Middle Chinese since Karlgren have followed his approach of beginning with the categories extracted from the rime dictionaries and tables, and using dialect and Sino-Xenic data (and in some cases transcription data) in a subsidiary role to fill in sound values for these categories.[19] Jerry Norman and W. South Coblin have criticized this approach, arguing that viewing the dialect data through the rime dictionaries and rime tables distorts the evidence. They argue for a full application of the comparative method to the modern varieties, supplemented by systematic use of transcription data.[39]
Phonology
The traditional analysis of the Chinese syllable, derived from the fanqie method, is into an initial consonant, or "initial", (shēngmǔ 聲母) and a final (yùnmǔ 韻母). Modern linguists subdivide the final into an optional "medial" glide (yùntóu 韻頭), a main vowel or "nucleus" (yùnfù 韻腹) and an optional final consonant or "coda" (yùnwěi 韻尾). Most reconstructions of Middle Chinese include the glides /j/ and /w/, as well as a combination /jw/, but many also include vocalic "glides" such as /i̯/ in a diphthong /i̯e/. Final consonants /j/, /w/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /p/, /t/ and /k/ are widely accepted, sometimes with additional codas such as /wk/ or /wŋ/.[40] Rhyming syllables in the Qieyun are assumed to have the same nuclear vowel and coda, but often have different medials.[41]
Middle Chinese reconstructions by different modern linguists vary.[42] These differences are minor and fairly uncontroversial in terms of consonants; however, there is a more significant difference as to the vowels. The most widely used transcriptions are Li Fang-Kuei's modification of Karlgren's reconstruction and William Baxter's typeable notation.
Initials
The preface of the Yunjing identifies a traditional set of
Early Middle Chinese (EMC) had three types of stops: voiced, voiceless, and voiceless aspirated. There were five series of
affricates
|
Nasals
|
Fricatives
|
Approximants | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tenuis | Aspirate
|
Voiced | Tenuis | Voiced | |||
Labials | 幫 p | 滂 pʰ | 並 b | 明 m | |||
Dentals[d] | 端 t | 透 tʰ | 定 d | 泥 n | |||
Retroflex stops[e] | 知 ʈ | 徹 ʈʰ | 澄 ɖ | 娘 ɳ | |||
Lateral | 來 l | ||||||
Dental sibilants
|
精 ts | 清 tsʰ | 從 dz | 心 s | 邪 z | ||
Retroflex sibilants | 莊 ʈʂ | 初 ʈʂʰ | 崇 ɖʐ | 生 ʂ | 俟 ʐ[f] | ||
Palatals[g] | 章 tɕ | 昌 tɕʰ | 禪 dʑ[h] | 日 ɲ | 書 ɕ | 船 ʑ[h] | 以 j[i] |
Velars | 見 k | 溪 kʰ | 群 ɡ | 疑 ŋ | |||
Laryngeals[j] | 影 ʔ | 曉 x | 匣/云 ɣ[i] |
Old Chinese had a simpler system with no palatal or retroflex consonants; the more complex system of EMC is thought to have arisen from a combination of Old Chinese obstruents with a following /r/ and/or /j/.[52]
Bernhard Karlgren developed the first modern reconstruction of Middle Chinese. The main differences between Karlgren and newer reconstructions of the initials are:
- The reversal of /ʑ/ and /dʑ/. Karlgren based his reconstruction on the Song dynasty rime tables. However, because of mergers between these two sounds between Early and Late Middle Chinese, the Chinese phonologists who created the rime tables could rely only on tradition to tell what the respective values of these two consonants were; evidently they were accidentally reversed at one stage.
- Karlgren also assumed that the EMC retroflex stops were actually palatal stops based on their tendency to co-occur with front vowels and /j/, but this view is no longer held.
- Karlgren assumed that voiced consonants were actually breathy voiced. This is now assumed only for LMC, not EMC.
Other sources from around the same time as the Qieyun reveal a slightly different system, which is believed to reflect southern pronunciation. In this system, the voiced fricatives /z/ and /ʐ/ are not distinguished from the voiced affricates /dz/ and /ɖʐ/, respectively, and the retroflex stops are not distinguished from the dental stops.[53]
Several changes occurred between the time of the Qieyun and the rime tables:
- Palatal sibilants merged with retroflex sibilants.[54]
- /ʐ/ merged with /ɖʐ/ (hence reflecting four separate EMC phonemes).
- The palatal nasal /ɲ/ also became retroflex, but turned into a new phoneme /r/ rather than merging with any existing phoneme.
- The palatal allophone of /ɣ/ (云) merged with /j/ (以) as a single laryngeal initial /j/ (喻).[50]
- A new series of labiodentals emerged from labials in certain environments, typically where both fronting and rounding occurred (e.g. /j/ plus a back vowel in William Baxter's reconstruction, or a front rounded vowel in Chan's reconstruction). However, modern Min dialects retain bilabial initials in such words, while modern Hakka dialects preserve them in some common words.[55]
- Voiced obstruents gained phonetic breathy voice (still reflected in the Wu Chinese varieties).
The following table shows a representative account of the initials of Late Middle Chinese.
affricates
|
Sonorants | Fricatives
|
Approximants | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tenuis | Aspirate |
Breathy voiced | Tenuis | Breathy | |||
Labial stops | 幫 p | 滂 pʰ | 並 pɦ | 明 m | |||
Labial fricatives | 非 f | 敷 f[k] | 奉 fɦ | 微 ʋ[l] | |||
Dental stops | 端 t | 透 tʰ | 定 tɦ | 泥 n | |||
Retroflex stops | 知 ʈ | 徹 ʈʰ | 澄 ʈɦ | 娘 ɳ[m] | |||
Lateral | 來 l | ||||||
Dental sibilants
|
精 ts | 清 tsʰ | 從 tsɦ | 心 s | 邪 sɦ | ||
Retroflex sibilants | 照 ʈʂ | 穿 ʈʂʰ | 牀 (ʈ)ʂɦ[n] | 日 ɻ[o] | 審 ʂ | 禪 ʂɦ | |
Velars | 見 k | 溪 kʰ | 群 kɦ | 疑 ŋ | |||
Laryngeals | 影 ʔ | 曉 x | 匣 xɦ | 喻 j |
The voicing distinction is retained in modern Wu and Old Xiang dialects, but has disappeared from other varieties. In Min dialects the retroflex dentals are represented with the dentals, while elsewhere they have merged with the retroflex sibilants. In the south these have also merged with the dental sibilants, but the distinction is retained in most Mandarin dialects. The palatal series of modern Mandarin dialects, resulting from a merger of palatal allophones of dental sibilants and velars, is a much more recent development, unconnected with the earlier palatal consonants.[63]
Finals
The remainder of a syllable after the initial consonant is the final, represented in the Qieyun by several equivalent second fanqie spellers. Each final is contained within a single rhyme class, but a rhyme class may contain between one and four finals. Finals are usually analysed as consisting of an optional medial, either a semivowel, reduced vowel or some combination of these, a vowel, an optional final consonant and a tone. Their reconstruction is much more difficult than the initials due to the combination of multiple phonemes into a single class.[64]
The generally accepted final consonants are semivowels /j/ and /w/, nasals /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/, and stops /p/, /t/ and /k/. Some authors also propose codas /wŋ/ and /wk/, based on the separate treatment of certain rhyme classes in the dictionaries. Finals with vocalic and nasal codas may have one of three
There is much less agreement regarding the medials and vowels. It is generally agreed that "closed" finals had a rounded glide /w/ or vowel /u/, and that the vowels in "outer" finals were more open than those in "inner" finals. The interpretation of the "divisions" is more controversial. Three classes of Qieyun finals occur exclusively in the first, second or fourth rows of the rime tables, respectively, and have thus been labelled finals of divisions I, II and IV. The remaining finals are labelled division-III finals because they occur in the third row, but they may also occur in the second or fourth rows for some initials. Most linguists agree that division-III finals contained a /j/ medial and that division-I finals had no such medial, but further details vary between reconstructions. To account for the many rhyme classes distinguished by the Qieyun, Karlgren proposed 16 vowels and 4 medials. Later scholars have proposed numerous variations.[66]
Tones
The four tones of Middle Chinese were first listed by
Karlgren interpreted the names of the first three tones literally as level, rising and falling pitch contours, respectively.[68] However, the pitch contours of modern reflexes of these categories vary so widely that it is impossible to reconstruct Middle Chinese contours.[70] The oldest known description of the tones is found in a Song dynasty quotation from the early 9th century Yuanhe Yunpu 元和韻譜 (no longer extant): "Level tone is sad and stable. Rising tone is strident and rising. Departing tone is clear and distant. Entering tone is straight and abrupt."[p] In 880, the Japanese monk Annen described the even tone as "straight and low", the rising tone as "straight and high", and the departing tone as "slightly drawn out".[q]
The tone system of Middle Chinese is strikingly similar to those of its neighbours in the
Around the end of the first millennium AD, Middle Chinese and the southeast Asian languages experienced a
Changes from Old to Modern Chinese
Middle Chinese had a structure similar to many modern varieties, especially conservative ones like Cantonese, with largely monosyllabic words, little or no derivational morphology, three tones, and a syllable structure consisting of initial consonant, glide, main vowel and final consonant, with a large number of initial consonants and a fairly small number of final consonants. Without counting the glide, no clusters could occur at the beginning or end of a syllable.
The main changes leading to the modern varieties have been a reduction in the number of consonants and vowels and a corresponding increase in the number of tones (typically through a Pan-East-Asiatic tone split that doubled the number of tones and eliminated the distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants). That has led to a gradual decrease in the number of possible syllables.
Grammar
The extensive surviving body of Middle Chinese (MC) literature of various types provides much source material for the study of MC grammar. Due to the lack of morphological development, grammatical analysis of MC tends to focus on the nature and meanings of the individual words themselves and the syntactic rules by which their arrangement together in sentences communicates meaning.[75]
See also
Notes
- ^ Karlgren used the French spelling "rime" in his English-language writing, and this practice has been followed by several other authors.[4]
- ^ Middle Chinese forms are given in Baxter's transcription, in which -X and -H denote the rising and departing tones respectively.
- ^ By convention, Middle Chinese reconstructions are shown without an asterisk, while Old Chinese reconstructions are almost always shown preceded by an asterisk.[38]
- ^ It is not clear whether these had an alveolar or dental articulation. They are mostly alveolar in modern Chinese varieties.[45]
- ^ Karlgren reconstructed these as palatal stops, but most scholars now believe they were retroflex stops.[46]
- ^ The ʐ initial occurs in only two words 俟 and 漦 in the Qieyun, and is merged with ɖʐ in the Guangyun. It is omitted in many reconstructions, and has no standard Chinese name.[47]
- ^ The retroflex and palatal sibilants were treated as a single series in the rime tables. Chen Li was the first to realize (in 1842) that they were distinguished in the Qieyun.[48]
- ^ a b The initials 禪 and 船 are reversed from their positions in the rime tables, which are believed to have confused them.[49]
- ^ a b In the rime tables, the palatal allophone of ɣ (云) is combined with j (以) as a single laryngeal initial 喻. However in the Qieyun system j patterns with the palatals.[50]
- ^ The point of articulation of the fricatives is not clear, and varies between the modern varieties.[51]
- ^ This initial was probably indistinguishable from 非 at the LMC stage, but was retained to record its origin from a different Qieyun initial.[57] A distinction between [f] and [fʰ] would be unusual, but the two initials might have been distinguished at an earlier phase as affricates [pf] and [pfʰ].[58]
- ^ This initial becomes [w] in Mandarin dialects and [v] or [m] in some southern dialects.[59]
- ^ This initial, which was not included in the lists of 30 initials in the Dunhuang fragments, later merged with n.[57]
- ^ This initial was not included in the lists of 30 initials in the Dunhuang fragments, and was probably not phonemically distinct from 禪 ʂɦ by that time.[60]
- ^ This initial was derived from the EMC palatal nasal.[61] In northern dialects it has become [ʐ] (or [ɻ]), while southern dialects have [j], [z], [ɲ], or [n].[62]
- ^ 「平聲哀而安,上聲厲而舉,去聲清而遠,入聲直而促」, translated in Ting (1996, p. 152)
- ^ The word translated "straight" (直 zhí) could mean level or rising with a constant slope.[71]
References
Citations
- ^ "A Brief History of the Chinese Language II: From Old Chinese to Middle Chinese Phonetic System". Routledge & CRC Press.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 24–41.
- ^ Coblin (2003), p. 379.
- ^ Branner (2006a), p. 2.
- ^ Norman (1988), p. 25.
- ^ a b Norman (1988), pp. 24–25.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 33–35.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), pp. 142–143.
- ^ Baxter & Sagart (2014), p. 10.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), p. 136.
- ^ Norman (1988), p. 27.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), pp. 78, 142–143.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 29–30.
- ^ a b Norman (1988), pp. 31–32.
- ^ Baxter (1992), p. 43.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 30–31.
- ^ Branner (2006a), pp. 15, 32–34.
- ^ Norman (1988), p. 28.
- ^ a b Norman (1988), p. 34–37.
- ^ Miller (1967), p. 336.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), p. 147.
- ^ Malmqvist (2010), p. 300.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), p. 163.
- ^ a b Stimson (1976), p. 1.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 32, 34.
- ^ Ramsey (1987), pp. 126–131.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 34–39.
- ^ a b Norman (1988), p. 39.
- ^ Ramsey (1987), p. 132.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1970), p. 204.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1971).
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), p. xiv.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), p. 134.
- ^ a b Baxter (1992), p. 37.
- ^ Chan (2004), pp. 144–146.
- ^ Li (1974–1975), p. 224.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 27–32.
- ^ Baxter (1992), p. 16.
- ^ Norman & Coblin (1995).
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 27–28.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 34, 814.
- ^ Branner (2006b), pp. 266–269.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 43, 45–59.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 45–59.
- ^ Baxter (1992), p. 49.
- ^ Baxter (1992), p. 50.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 56–57, 206.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 54–55.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 52–54.
- ^ a b Baxter (1992), pp. 55–56, 59.
- ^ Baxter (1992), p. 58.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 177–179.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), p. 144.
- ^ Baxter (1992), p. 53.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 46–48.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1991), p. 10.
- ^ a b Pulleyblank (1984), p. 69.
- ^ Baxter (1992), p. 48.
- ^ Norman (2006), p. 234.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1970), pp. 222–223.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), p. 66.
- ^ Norman (2006), pp. 236–237.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 45–46, 49–55.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 36–38.
- ^ Baxter (1992), pp. 61–63.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 31–32, 37–39.
- ^ Baxter (1992), p. 303.
- ^ a b Norman (1988), p. 52.
- ^ Ramsey (1987), p. 118.
- ^ Norman (1988), p. 53.
- ^ Mei (1970), pp. 91, 93.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 54–55.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 54–57.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 52–54.
- ^ Stimson (1976), p. 9.
Works cited
- ISBN 978-3-11-012324-1.
- Baxter, William H.; Sagart, Laurent (2014), Old Chinese: A New Reconstruction, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-994537-5.
- Branner, David Prager (2006a), "What are rime tables and what do they mean?", in Branner, David Prager (ed.), The Chinese Rime Tables: Linguistic Philosophy and Historical-Comparative Phonology, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 1–34, ISBN 978-90-272-4785-8. See also List of Corrigenda.
- ——— (2006b), "Appendix II: Comparative transcriptions of rime rable phonology", in Branner, David Prager (ed.), The Chinese Rime Tables: Linguistic Philosophy and Historical-Comparative Phonology, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 265–302, ISBN 978-90-272-4785-8.
- Chan, Abraham (2004), "Early Middle Chinese: towards a new paradigm", T'oung Pao, 90 (1/3): 122–162, JSTOR 4528958.
- JSTOR 3217690.
- JSTOR 40726172.
- ISBN 978-1-61146-001-8.
- JSTOR 2718766.
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- ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.
- ——— (2006), "Common Dialectal Chinese", in Branner, David Prager (ed.), The Chinese Rime Tables: Linguistic Philosophy and Historical-Comparative Phonology, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 233–254, ISBN 978-90-272-4785-8.
- Norman, Jerry L.; Coblin, W. South (1995), "A New Approach to Chinese Historical Linguistics", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 115 (4): 576–584, JSTOR 604728.
- Pulleyblank, Edwin George (1970), "Late Middle Chinese, Part I" (PDF), Asia Major, 15: 197–239.
- ——— (1971), "Late Middle Chinese, Part II" (PDF), Asia Major, 16: 121–166.
- ——— (1984), Middle Chinese: a study in historical phonology, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, ISBN 978-0-7748-0192-8.
- ——— (1991), Lexicon of reconstructed pronunciation in early Middle Chinese, late Middle Chinese, and early Mandarin, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, ISBN 978-0-7748-0366-3.
- Ramsey, S. Robert (1987), The Languages of China, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-01468-5.
- ISBN 978-0-88710-026-0.
- ISBN 978-0-7923-3867-3.
Further reading
- Aldridge, Edith (2013), "Survey of Chinese historical syntax part II: Middle Chinese", Language and Linguistics Compass, 7 (1): 58–77, .
- JSTOR 2717913.
- Chen, Chung-yu (2001), Tonal evolution from pre-Middle Chinese to modern Pekinese: three tiers of changes and their intricacies, Berkeley, CA: Project on Linguistic Analysis, University of California, OCLC 248994047.
- Hashimoto, Mantaro J. (1966), Phonology of ancient Chinese (PhD thesis), Ohio State University.
- .
- ——— (1957), OCLC 1999753.
- Newman, J.; Raman, A. V. (1999), Chinese historical phonology: a compendium of Beijing and Cantonese pronunciations of characters and their derivations from Middle Chinese, LINCOM studies in Asian linguistics, vol. 27, Munich: LINCOM Europa, ISBN 3-89586-543-5.
- Volpicelli, Zenone (1896), Chinese phonology: an attempt to discover the sounds of the ancient language and to recover the lost rhymes of China, Shanghai: China Gazette, OCLC 24264173.
External links
- Introduction to Chinese Historical Phonology, Guillaume Jacques
- Traditional Chinese Phonology, Guillaume Jacques
- Historical Chinese Phonology/Philology at Technical Notes on the Chinese Language Dialects, Dylan W.H. Sung
- Note on Tang pronunciations in Unicode, using the simplification of Karlgren's system used by Hugh M. Stimson in his Fifty-Five T'ang Poems
- Middle Chinese readings for 9000 characters in Baxter's notation
- StarLing website reconstructing Middle Chinese and Old Chinese as well as intermediate forms
- (in Chinese) EastLing form yielding Middle Chinese from character search
- Hugh Stimson's Middle Chinese reconstruction and kTang data from Unicode.