Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics Volume 3 Men–Ser For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV General Editor Rint Sybesma (Leiden University) Associate Editors Wolfgang Behr (University of Zurich) Yueguo Gu (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) Zev Handel (University of Washington) C.-T. James Huang (Harvard University) James Myers (National Chung Cheng University) For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CHINESE LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Volume 3 Men–Ser General Editor Rint Sybesma Associate Editors Wolfgang Behr Yueguo Gu Zev Handel C.-T. James Huang James Myers LEIDEN • BOSTON 2017 For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISBN 978-90-04-18643-9 (hardback, set) ISBN 978-90-04-26227-0 (hardback, vol. 1) ISBN 978-90-04-26223-2 (hardback, vol. 2) ISBN 978-90-04-26224-9 (hardback, vol. 3) ISBN 978-90-04-26225-6 (hardback, vol. 4) ISBN 978-90-04-26226-3 (hardback, vol. 5) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhofff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV Northwestern Medieval Chinese 218 Bradley, David, “Introduction: Language Policy and Sūn Hóngkāi 孫宏开, ed., Zhōngguó xīn fāxiàn yǔyán Language Endangerment in China”, in: David Bradley yánjiū cóngshū 中国新发现语言研究丛书 [Newly and Joshua A. Fishman, eds., International Journal discovered minority languages in China series], of the Sociology of Language 173, 2005, 1–21. Běijīng 北京: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Bradley, David, “The Characteristics of the Burmic 中國社會科學院, 1997–present. Family of Tibeto-Burman”, Language and Linguis- Stilo, Donald L., “Iranian as Bufffer Zone between the tics 13/1, 2012, 171–192. Universal Typologies of Turkic and Semitic”, in: Dryer, Matthew S., “Word Order in Tibeto-Burman Éva Agnes Csató, Bo Isaksson and Carina Jahani, Languages”, Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area eds., Linguistic Convergence and Areal Difffusion: 31/1, 2008, 1–83. Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic, Lon- Chirkova, Katia, “What Defijines Qiang-ness: A Look don: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005, 35–63. from Southern Qiangic Languages”, Language and Wang, Xianpu, Zhouhuai Yang, Jye-Su Hong, Iwat- Linguistics 13/1, 2012, 133–170. suki Kunio, Yong-Shik Kim, Alan C. Hamilton and Giersch, Patterson C., Asian Borderlands: The Trans- Stephen D. Davis, “Regional Overview: China formation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier, Cam- and East Asia”, in: Stephen D. Davis, Vernon H. bridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Heywood and A.C. Hamilton, eds., Centres of Plant Guo, Xiaolin, State and Ethnicity in China’s Southwest, Diversity, vol. II, Oxford: Information Press, 1995, Leiden: Brill, 2008. 145–200. Hé Jírén 和即仁, Zàngyǔ yǔyán wénzì 藏语语言文字 Zhōngguó shǎoshù mínzú yǔyán jiǎnzhì cóngshū [Tibetan language and script], in: Yúnnánshěng 中国少数民族语言简志丛书 [Outlines of minor- Dìfāngzhì Biānzuǎn Wěiyuánhuì 雲南省地方志編 ity languages of China series], Běijīng 北京: Mínzú 纂委員會 [Yúnnán Gazetteers editing and compil- 民族出版社, 1950s–1980s. ing committee], eds., Yúnnánshěng zhì 云南省志 [Gazetteers of Yúnnán], Kūnmíng 昆明: Yúnnán Katia Chirkova Rénmín 雲南人民出版社, 1998, 421–441. Jacques, Guillaume, Jiāróngyǔ yánjiū 嘉戎语研究 [A study of the rGyalrong Language], Běijīng 北京: Mínzú 民族出版社, 2008. Northwestern Medieval Chinese LaPolla, Randy J., “The Role of Migration and Lan- guage Contact in the Development of the Sino- “Northwestern Medieval Chinese” (NWMC) here Tibetan Language Family”, in: R.M.W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, eds., Areal Difffusion refers to the variety (or possibly varieties) of and Genetic Inheritance: Case Studies in Language Chinese spoken in and around the Héxī 河西 Change, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, Corridor (situated in today’s Gānsù Province) 225–254. in the northwest of the Yellow River in late- LaPolla, Randy J. and Huang Chenglong, A Grammar of Qiang with Annotated Texts and Glossary, Berlin: and post-Táng times (roughly 9th–12th centuries Mouton de Gruyter, 2003. CE). Connecting the Tarim Basin with Northern Lee, James, “The Legacy of Immigration in Southwest China, the corridor constituted an important China, 1250–1850”, Annales de démographie histo- part of the Northern Silk Route, with Dūnhuáng rique, 1983, 279–304. 敦煌 (or Shāzhōu 沙州) as its most important Lǐ Lán 李蓝, “Sìchuān Mùlǐ xiàn fāngyán jìlüè 四川 木里县方言记略” [The Chinese dialect of Mùlǐ, center. Consequently, the variety of Chinese Sìchuān: A survey], Fāngyán 方言 2, 2010, 114–133. spoken throughout this area is also known as Lustig, Anton, A Grammar and Dictionary of Zaiwa, the Shāzhōu Dialect (e.g., Coblin 1988) or alter- Brill Tibetan Studies Library 5/11, Leiden: Brill, natively Héxī Dialect (e.g., Takata 1988a). 2010. Myers, Norman, Russell A. Mittermeier, Cristina G. Northwestern Medieval Chinese merits our Mittermeier, Gustavo A.B. da Fonseca and Jenni- attention for several reasons: For one, this vari- fer Kent, “Biodiversity Hotspots for Conservation ety of Chinese was a major player in the multi- Priorities”, Nature 403, 2000, 853–858. lingual and -scriptal environment in Dūnhuáng Nagano Yushiko, ed., Issues in Tibeto-Burman Histori- cal Linguistics, Osaka: National Museum of Ethnog- and Turfan, characterized by textual remains raphy, 2009, 319–328. in various languages, recorded in a multitude Nichols, Johanna, Linguistic Diversity in Space and of diffferent scripts (for an overview of attested Time, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. combinations see, e.g., the table in Yoshida Sūn Hóngkāi 孫宏开, “Guānyú bīnwēi yǔyán wèntí 关于濒危语言问题” [On the endangered lan- 2004:25). The sources on Northwestern Medi- guages in China], Yǔyán Jiàoxué yǔ Yánjiū 语言教 eval Chinese as the fijirst larger corpus of Chinese 学与研究 1, 2001, 1–7. written in segmental scripts may therefore not For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV 219 Northwestern Medieval Chinese only complement the traditional ones in histori- Turfan, e.g., in the Sogdian and Uighur scripts, cal phonology, such as normative rime diction- provide evidence for the use of Northwestern aries and rime tables. Its study is also crucial, Medieval Chinese further to the northwest (also for instance, in order to understand the ratio- cf. Takata 2004:333). nale behind phonetic loan characters frequently According to Takata (1987, 1988a, 2000), there are met with in Dūnhuáng manuscripts and thus to actually two diffferent varieties of Chinese reflected explain part of the textual variation observed in the Dūnhuáng materials: among these, one vari- among diffferent witnesses of a given Chinese ety is deemed to have been based on the language text. of Cháng’ān, which was also current in Dūnhuáng Secondly, the variety of Chinese spoken in the prior to the period of Tibetan rule (787–848). The Táng period capital Cháng’ān 長安 (modern- other variety was Northwestern Medieval Chinese day Xī’ān 西安) likewise “belonged to the great proper as spoken in medieval Dūnhuáng, which northwestern dialect”, occupying the status of began to prosper after relations with central China “a somewhat refijined version” of it in Takata’s had diminished in the northwestern regions and (2004:333) words. A certain distance between constant exchange with other areas of China had these varieties of Chinese notwithstanding, been cut offf. The use of this local dialect in writing Northwestern Medieval Chinese data is hence proliferated after the middle of the 9th century and of paramount importance in the study of con- in manuscript copies of the 10th century, phonetic temporary Chinese transcriptions of foreign lan- loans betraying their Northwestern Medieval Chi- guages as well as of the so-called → Sino-Xenic nese basis can be encountered more frequently reading traditions of Chinese characters. (see the example of the Platform Sūtra below). Dur- As a consequence of the nature of the sources ing the rule of the Cáo 曹 family over the quasi- at our disposal—often transcriptions of preex- independent Dūnhuáng region in the 10th century, isting texts not originally written in Northwest- Northwestern Medieval Chinese is thought to ern Medieval Chinese—grammatical and lexical have acquired the role of a “standard language” in features of colloquial Northwestern Medieval Dūnhuáng (Takata 2000). Chinese are comparatively difffijicult to recover Takata (2000) has also drawn attention to from the texts (see especially Takata 1988a:ch. 4 the heavy influence of Tibetan, not only dur- for a conspectus of its grammar). It is therefore ing the period of the Dūnhuáng occupation, unsurprising that research in this fijield has been but also afterwards, especially during the 10th dominated by the level of phonology, which will century when Dūnhuáng was semi-autonomous also be the focus of the present article. and communication to Central China reduced The reconstruction of the phonological fea- to a minimum. The copying of scriptures was tures of Northwestern Medieval Chinese has initiated on a large scale by the Tibetans during focused on two periods due to the availability of the fijirst half of the 9th century when bilingual sources, namely approximately the 9th to 10th Chinese-Tibetan communities were prospering. centuries and the 12th century. In studies of the Notably, the custom of using the Tibetan script later period (Post-Shāzhōu in Coblin’s terms), to write Chinese was also retained in the 10th a central role is occupied by a Tangut–Chinese century after the end of Tibetan rule.