W. South Coblin

Weldon South Coblin, Jr. (born February 26, 1944) is an American Sinologist, linguist, and educator, best known for his studies of

Early in his career he made many important contributions to Tibetan and Sino-Tibetan linguistics, but since the mid-1990s has worked primarily on alphabetic representations of Chinese. Starting around that time along with Jerry Norman he promoted a new direction in Chinese historical phonology making less use of the Qieyun and other rhyme books, and more use of the traditional comparative method. Coblin is an emeritus professor at the University of Iowa.

Selected works

• Coblin, W. South (1972). "An Introductory Study of Textual and Linguistic Problems in Erh-ya", Ph.D. dissertation (University of Washington).
• "Notes on Tibetan Verbal Morphology," T'oung Pao 52 (1976), pp. 45–70.
• ——— (1983). A Handbook of Eastern Han Sound Glosses. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.
  ISBN 962-201-258-2
  .
• ——— (1986). A Sinologist's Handlist of Sino-Tibetan Lexical Comparisons. Monumenta Serica Monograph Series. Vol. 18. Nettetal: Steyler.
• ——— (1991). Studies in Old Northwest Chinese. Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series. Vol. 4. Berkeley: Project on Linguistic Analysis, University of California.
• ———;
  JSTOR 604728
  .
• ——— (1997). "Notes on the Sound System of Late Ming Guanhua". Monumenta Serica. 45: 261–307.
  doi:10.1080/02549948.1997.11731303
  .
• ——— (2000). "A Brief History of Mandarin". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 120 (4): 537–52.
  JSTOR 606615
  .
• ——— (2000). "A Diachronic Study of Míng Guānhuà Phonology". Monumenta Serica. 48: 267–335.
  S2CID 192485681
  .
• ——— (2005). Comparative Phonology of the Huáng-Xiào Dialects. Taipei: Academia Sinica, Institute of Linguistics.
  ISBN 986-00-3149-5
  .
• ——— (2007). A Handbook of 'Phags-pa Chinese. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
  ISBN 978-0-8248-3000-7
  .

• W. South Coblin, The University of Iowa.