Fanqie
| Fanqie | |
|---|---|
| Chinese name | |
Hanyu Pinyin | fǎnqiè |
| Wade–Giles | fan3-ch'ieh4 |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Yale Romanization | fáan chit |
| Jyutping | faan² cit³ |
| Southern Min | |
| Hokkien POJ | Hoán-chhiat |
| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Revised Romanization | banjeol |
| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Romanization | hansetsu |
Fanqie (Chinese: 反切; pinyin: fǎnqiè; lit. 'reverse cut') is a method in traditional Chinese lexicography to indicate the pronunciation of a monosyllabic character by using two other characters, one with the same initial consonant as the desired syllable and one with the same rest of the syllable (the final). The method was introduced in the 3rd century AD and is to some extent still used in commentaries on the classics and dictionaries.
History
Early dictionaries such as the
The oldest extant sources of significant bodies of fanqie are fragments of the original
During the
Function
In the fanqie method, a character's pronunciation is represented by two other characters. The
In the rhyme dictionaries, there was a tendency to choose pairs of characters that agree on the presence or absence of a palatal medial -j-, but there was no such tendency for the rounded medial -w-, which was represented solely in the final character.[13] There was also a strong tendency to spell words with labial initials using final characters with labial initials.[14]
The third character 反 fǎn "turn back" is the usual marker of a fanqie spelling in the Qieyun. In later dictionaries such as the Guangyun, the marker character is 切 qiè "run together". (The commonly-cited reading "cut" seems to be modern.[3]) The Qing scholar Gu Yanwu suggested that fǎn, which also meant "overthrow", was avoided after the devastating rebellions during the middle of the Tang dynasty.[3] The origin of both terms is obscure.[15] The compound word fǎnqiè first appeared during the Song dynasty.[3]
Analysis
Fanqie provide information about the sounds of earlier forms of Chinese, but its recovery is not straightforward. Several characters could be used for each initial or final, and in particular, no character was ever used to spell itself.
However, it is possible to identify the initials and the finals underlying a large and consistent collection of fanqie by using a method that was first used by the Cantonese scholar Chen Li, in his 1842 study of the Guangyun.[16] For example, in that dictionary,
- 東 was spelled 德 + 紅,
- 德 was spelled 多 + 特, and
- 多 was spelled 德 + 河.
That implies that 東, 德 and 多 must all have had the same initial.[17] By following such chains of equivalence, Chen was able to identify categories of equivalent initial spellers, and a similar process was possible for the finals.[16][18] Unaware of Chen's work, the Swedish linguist
Chen's method can be used to identify the categories of initials and finals, but not their sound values, for which other evidence is required.[16] Thus,
Effects of sound change
The method described the pronunciations of characters in
For example, the characters of formula 東 [tuŋ] = 德 [tək] + 紅 [ɣuŋ] are pronounced dōng, dé and hóng in modern Standard Chinese; thus, the tones no longer match. That is because the voiceless initial [t] and the voiced initial [ɣ] condition different registers of the Middle Chinese level tone, yielding the first and the second tones of the modern language. (The pinyin letter d represents the voiceless and unaspirated stop [t].)
That effect sometimes led to a form of
Use in Cantonese
In Cantonese, fanqie can be found in some dictionaries to this day, often alongside other romanization system or phonetic guides, to indicate the pronunciation of characters lacking a homophone.
For example, in the Sun Ya dictionary the character 攀 is transcribed as pinyin pān and for Cantonese pan¹ and the Cantonese tonal homophone 扳 , whereas 戀, lacking a tonal homophone, is transcribed as lyn² and 〔拉婉切〕 (l-āai + yún) to give lyún.[22] If there is no tonal homophone, the tone is indicated. For example 實用廣州話分類詞典 transcribes 仆 as [pʰok⁶] and fanqie 〔披屋切〕 (p-ēi + ūk) but 𠵿, lacking a tonal homophone is transcribed as [pʰɛ¹] and 〔音披爺切第1聲〕, i.e. p-ēi + y-èh with tone 1 to give pē.[23]
See also
References
- ^ a b c Casacchia (2006), p. 359.
- ^ a b c Chu (1990).
- ^ a b c d Branner (2000), p. 38.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1999), p. 105.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), p. 144.
- ^ Baxter (1992), p. 40.
- ^ Casacchia (2006), p. 360.
- ^ a b Chao (1961), p. 173.
- ^ Yong & Peng (2008), p. 39.
- ^ Yong & Peng (2008), p. 397.
- ^ Casacchia (2006), pp. 359–360.
- ^ Wang (1980).
- ^ Chao (1941), pp. 205–207, 215.
- ^ Chao (1941), pp. 217–218.
- ^ Norman (1988), p. 27.
- ^ a b c Norman (1988), p. 28.
- ^ Baxter & Sagart (2014), p. 10.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), pp. 142–143.
- ^ Pulleyblank (1984), p. 142.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 34–37.
- ^ Norman (1988), pp. 34–36, 52–54.
- ISBN 9789620811883.
- ISBN 9789620703058.
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 (2000), "The Suí–Táng tradition of Fǎnqiè phonology", in Auroux, Sylvain; Koerner, Konrad; Niederehe, Hans-Josef; Versteegh, Kees (eds.), History of the Language Sciences, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 36–46, ISBN 978-3-11-011103-3.
- Casacchia, G. (2006), "Chinese Linguistic Tradition", in Brown, Keith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, vol. 2 (2nd ed.), London: Elsevier, pp. 358–362, ISBN 978-0-08-035943-4.
- JSTOR 2717913.
- ——— (1961), "What is correct Chinese?", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 81 (3): 171–177, ISBN 978-0-8047-0909-5.
- Chu, Chia-Ning 竺家寧 (1990), Shēngyùn xué 聲韻學 [Phonology], Taipei: 五南圖書. (This book pointed out that use of fanqie appeared as early as Eastern Han.)
- ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.
- ISBN 978-0-7748-0192-8.
- ——— (1999), "Chinese traditional phonology", Asia Major, 12 (2): 101–137, JSTOR 41645549.
- ISBN 978-7-101-01553-9.
- Yong, Heming; Peng, Jing (2008), Chinese lexicography: a history from 1046 BC to AD 1911, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-156167-2.