A Phonological History of Chinese
A Phonological History of Chinese
The phonological history of Chinese can be traced back to two main traditions: one starting with the Qieyun of 601, and the other starting with the Zhongyuan Yinyun of 1324. The former marks the beginning of Middle Chinese, and the latter marks the beginning of Old Mandarin. Both of these systems, as well as reconstructed Old Chinese, should be understood as ideal phonological standards and composite in nature. Until modern times, phonological standards were never based strictly on the phonology of a single dialect. This book provides the first study written in English, of the phonological history of Chinese. It provides information about the standard phonological systems for each of the language's major historical periods, drawing on a range of historical materials such as dictionaries, rhyming tables and poetry, and is the reference book for understanding the key developments in the Chinese sound system.
- Introduces new research originally written in Chinese, and makes it accessible to researchers whose dominant language is English
- Source materials are systematically introduced and explained to aid understanding of context
- Covers all major historical periods of the past 2500 years
Reviews & endorsements
'This volume presents a balanced account of what is currently known about the phonological history of Chinese and opens a window for future work in the area with an emphasis on language contact. Much fruitful fundamental research lies ahead! Very few languages in the world offer the kind of time depth and rich cultural history that is presented in this volume. It is a great pleasure for me to highly recommend the volume, not only to readers in linguistics, but to all readers who are interested in a fascinating chapter of human history.' William S-Y. Wang, Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Product details
June 2020Adobe eBook Reader
9781108773294
0 pages
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- Part I. The Keys to Traditional Phonology:
- 1. An introduction to Chinese historical phonology
- Part II. Old Chinese:
- 2. Old Chinese
- Part III. Middle Chinese:
- 3. Middle Chinese: the Tang and Song Dynasties
- 4. Middle Chinese: the Tang and Song Dynasties
- Part IV. The Beginnings of Mandarin:
- 5. Chinese of the Liao, Jun, and Xixia Dynasties
- Part V. A New Standard:
- 6. Old Mandarin: the Ménggǔ Zìyùn 蒙古字韻
- 7. Old Mandarin: the Zhōngyuán Yīnyùn 中原音韻
- 8. Old Mandarin: the Persian transcriptions
- Part VI. Towards Modern Mandarin:
- 9. The Mandarin of the Ming Dynasty
- 10. The Mandarin of the Qing Dynasty and the modern era.
