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Reconstructing Chinese: Written Sources and Modern Dialects

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Reconstructing Chinese: Written Sources and Modern Dialects Reconstructing Chinese: Written Sources and Modern Dialects Michael Opper 10/14/2011 Things you probably already know about Chinese • Spoken in China, language of the Han ethnicity • Tonal languages • Many are mutually-unintelligible • They constitute one of the two major branches of the Sino-Tibetan languages; namely the Sinitic branch • Written with characters Periods of Chinese • Old Chinese – Zhou Dynasty (1100-771 BC) • Middle Chinese – Language codified in the Qìeyùn • Records of Dialects – Early Mandarin (Zhōngyuán yīnyùn – 1324 CE) – Missionary work • Modern Dialects Subgrouping of Chinese Dialects • 7-8 subgroups over 3 larger groups (Norman 1988) • Based on specific features, not necessarily shared innovations Sinitic Northern Central Southern Mandarin Jìn Wú Gàn Xiāng Yuè Mǐn Hakka 北方 晉 吳 贛 湘 粵 閩 客家 Map of Chinese Dialects Classical Chinese • Primary written language of Chinese civilization until the 20th century • Not homogeneous • The earliest texts probably represented the spoken language, but eventually became codified while the spoken dialects diverged • A substantial subset of characters from Classical Chinese texts are used in Modern Chinese Some Landmarks in the History of Chinese • Oracle Bones – circa 1250 BCE • Shījīng 詩經– Oldest known literary work (circa 6th century BCE) • Unification of China and Chinese Writing System – 221 BCE • Qìeyùn 切韻 – 601 CE • “Rhyme tables” (Song Dynasty 960-1279) • Promotion of Colloquial Chinese (May 4th, 1919) Shījīng • Collection of 305 poems dating approximately between 1000-600 BCE • Not without variation, but exhibit a general pattern of rhyming • A major primary source for Old Chinese • Words that could rhyme are placed in rhyme groups known in Chinese as yùnbù 韻部 An Example Poem 關雎 關關雎鳩，在河之洲。窈窕淑女，君子好逑。 參差荇菜，左右流之。窈窕淑女，寤寐求之。 求之不得，寤寐思服。悠哉悠哉，輾轉反側。 參差荇菜，左右采之。窈窕淑女，琴瑟友之。 參差荇菜，左右芼之。窈窕淑女，鐘鼓樂之。 Old Chinese Rhymes Qìeyùn – Middle Chinese • It was compiled by Lù Fǎyán 陸法言(601 AD) as a “rhyming” dictionary designed for poetry • Divided into different scrolls based on tone, then divided by rhyme. The smallest division is the homonym group. • Glosses pronunciations of characters with a method called fǎnqiè 反切 • The original Qìeyùn is lost, at present we have a revised version by Wáng Rénxù 王仁煦(706 AD) How it works • Example from píng scroll 32/54 • The first of the homonym group provides the pronunciation gloss • A, B C 反 (or 切 in other sources) Syllable Onset Rhyme 豪 = 胡 刀 反 haw = hu taw h- -aw Chinese Tones Píng 平 Shǎng 上 Qù 去 Rù 入 Voiceless (qīng 清) 1 3 5 7 Voiced (zhuó 濁) 2 4 6 8 X H p, t, k Rhyme tables - Yùnjìng • Later rhyme tables name thirty-six initials each named with an example • Manners: – quánqīng 全清 ‘voiceless unaspirated’ – cìqīng 次清 ‘voiceless aspirated’ – quánzhuó 全濁 “fully voiced” – cìzhuó 次濁 ’sonorants’ • Places: chún 唇 ‘labials’, shé 舌‘linguals’, yá 牙 ‘velars’, chǐ 齒 ‘dentals’, hóu 喉 ‘laryngeals’ • Lip rounding kāi-hé開合 Rhyme tables - Yùnjìng • Rhymes divided into 16 categories called shè 摄 • Vowels described in terms of low/high vowels nèi-wài 内外 • Divisions/Categories děng 等 – Too complicated to talk about today Labial Low vowel Sonorant I Voiced VL-aspirated II VL-unaspirated III IV Unrounded Transcriptions 蒙 蓬 〇 〇 muwng buwng 瞢 馮 豐 風 mjuwng bjuwng phjuwng pjuwng Old Chinese (Baxter 1992 - ) • Should account for: – the rhymes of the Shījīng – The xiéshēng ‘phonetic-compound’ characters – Phonological system of the Qìeyùn and the modern dialects Middle Chinese • The phonological system of the Qìeyùn; not a reconstruction • Intended to gloss literary pronunciations for poetry, not a specific variety of Chinese • A conflation of Northern and Southern elements • Most Chinese dialects do not make more phonological distinctions than are found in the Qìeyùn Baxter’s Middle Chinese Initials Baxter’s Middle Chinese Main vowels Codas ↓ Written Sources vs. Modern Dialects • Traditionally, use of written sources was preferred over modern dialects for historical reconstruction • Documentation of Chinese dialects has improved significantly in recent decades • The comparative method was (is) not well understood by Sinologists (and linguists who work on Chinese) Norman’s Common Dialectal Chinese • A proposal to use the comparative method for Chinese dialect reconstruction • His reconstruction does not include the Mǐn dialects; he reconstructed Proto-Mǐn in a series of separate papers • Intended to be contemporary with MC • The idea of CDC is sound, but there are some issues… The Dialects • Beijing – 19 million • Yangzhou – 4 million • Suzhou – 4 million • Wenzhou – 3 million • Changsha – 7 million • Shuangfeng – Unclear on Wikipedia • Nanchang – 5 million • Lichuan – 230,000 • Meixian – Unclear on Wikipedia • Guangzhou – 12 million Inventory • Consonants: • Vowels: [*a, *e, *i, *o, *u]; *i and *u can be pre- and post- vocalic • *iu represents [y] • Tones are the same as described earlier Example Example Main Problem • Norman is using the traditional categories from the MC system and then collapsing them • We should investigate how the dialects are related to each other, not to the Qìeyùn. • If the goal is to look at dialect history after 601 AD we should not consider the Qìeyùn (but then again, the categories are hard to forget!!!) Some ideas • Perhaps comparatively reconstruct many dialects (there would be literally over one hundred)? • Logical way to proceed: – More research on shared innovations for groups – Reconstruct each group – Reconstruct common ancestor from reconstructed groups Misc. Comments • Chinese dialects have been in contact with surrounding languages. Ex. Hmong-Mien substratum in Hakka (Deng 1999, Sagart 2002) • Dialect fieldworkers tend to organize their work (and work around) the historical categories; its part of their training Thanks to Bill Baxter for advice .
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