Goals for this Topic Introduction to Middle Chinese • We will talk about Middle Chinese in detail toward the end of the course • Today is a brief introduction to key CHIN 342/442 features of Middle Chinese phonology • Knowing these features will help us understand the history of the major Autumn 2019 dialect groups, and help us identify cognates and regular sound correspondences
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Middle Chinese Phonology Middle Chinese Phonology
• Middle Chinese is the high-prestige • Its pronunciations can be recovered language of northern China during the from data that is preserved in texts, such Táng dynasty (and a bit earlier) as dictionaries, that survive from the • How do we know what 6th century period Chinese sounded like? • We will learn how later in the course • For now, you will have to take this description of Middle Chinese on faith — trust me!
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Middle Chinese: tones, Middle Chinese: initials endings • Middle Chinese had four tones; they are • Initials: three-way distinction NOT the direct ancestor of the four tones p ph b 屏 [beŋ平] ‘screen’ of Modern Standard Mandarin: t th d 桃 [dau平] ‘peach’ h 平 • 平 píng ‘level’, 上 shǎng ‘rising’, k k g 騎 [gi ] ‘ride’ 平 去 qù ‘departing’, 入 rù ‘entering’ ts tsh dz 前 [dzen ] ‘front’ s z 祥 [ziaŋ平] ‘lucky’ • MC had six ending consonants: [-p, -t, -k; -m, -n, -ŋ] (3 stops, 3 nasals) • There was an initial velar nasal [ŋ-] h h • Rù-tone syllables correspond to [-p, -t, -k] • Syllables: [ts ts s] and [k k x] combined with high front vowels: 即 [tsik入], 起 [khi上] 5 6
p. 1 Middle Chinese Developments Middle Chinese #1-10 • A conventional way to think about 1 2 3 4 5 dialect phonology is to investigate how 入 去 平 去 上 the sounds of Middle Chinese [MC] ʔit ȵi sam si ŋu developed in each dialect • What happened to MC voiced initials? to 6 7 8 9 10 endings [p,t,k]? to initial [ŋ]? to [k,kʰ,x] 入 入 入 上 入 before [i,y]? liuk tsʰit pat kiu ʒip • Quick sense: use #1-10 (Course Packet)
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Middle Chinese Developments Next
• Here’s what happened in Mandarin: • We look at non-Mandarin Chinese • MC voiced initials devoiced (#10) languages, beginning with Yuè 粵. • MC [-p -t -k] > Ø (#1, 6, 7, 8, 10) • We will begin practicing listening to • MC [-m] > [-n] (#3) unfamiliar forms of Chinese and transcribing and analyzing what we hear • MC [ŋ-] > Ø (#5) • For each Chinese dialect, we will think • MC [ts- tsh- s-] and [k- kh- x-] palatalized to about developments from MC and [tɕ- tɕʰ- ɕ-] before high front [i, y] (#9) regular correspondences to Mandarin
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End
• Your course packet has more detail and more explanations. You should review this material outside of class, and fill in the blanks and exercises.
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