pronounced as /notice/Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence. Although the writing system does not describe sounds directly, shared phonetic components of the most ancient Chinese characters are believed to link words that were pronounced similarly at that time. The oldest surviving Chinese verse, in the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), shows which words rhymed in that period. Scholars have compared these bodies of contemporary evidence with the much later Middle Chinese reading pronunciations listed in the Qieyun rime dictionary published in 601 AD, though this falls short of a phonemic analysis. Supplementary evidence has been drawn from cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages and in Min Chinese, which split off before the Middle Chinese period, Chinese transcriptions of foreign names, and early borrowings from and by neighbouring languages such as Hmong–Mien, Tai and Tocharian languages.
Although many details are disputed, most recent reconstructions agree on the basic structure. It is generally agreed that Old Chinese differed from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless sonorants. Most recent reconstructions also posit consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese.
See also: Reconstructions of Old Chinese. Each character of the script represented a single Old Chinese morpheme. Most scholars believe that these morphemes were overwhelmingly monosyllabic, though some have recently suggested that a minority of them had minor presyllables.
Although many details of the sound system are still disputed, recent formulations are in substantial agreement on the core issues.For example, the Old Chinese initial consonants recognized by Li Fang-Kuei and William Baxter are given below, with Baxter's (mostly tentative) additions given in parentheses:
Labial | Dental | Palatal | Velar | Laryngeal | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plain | sibilant | plain | labialized | plain | labialized | ||||
Stop or affricate | voiceless | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| |
aspirate | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| ||||
voiced | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| ||||
Nasal | voiceless | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| ||||
voiced | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| |||||
Lateral | voiceless | pronounced as /
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voiced | pronounced as /
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Fricative or approximant | voiceless | pronounced as /(*r̥)/ | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /(*j̊)/ | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| |||
voiced | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /(*z)/ | pronounced as /(*j)/ | pronounced as /(*ɦ)/ | pronounced as /(*w)/ |
In recent reconstructions, such as the widely accepted system of, the rest of the Old Chinese syllable consists of
pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| |
pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
|
In such systems, Old Chinese has no tones; the rising and departing tones of Middle Chinese are treated as reflexes of the Old Chinese post-codas.
See also: Rime dictionary and Rime table. The reconstruction of Old Chinese typically starts from "Early Middle Chinese", the phonological system of the Qieyun, a rhyme dictionary published in 601, with many revisions and expansions over the following centuries.According to its preface, the Qieyun did not record a single contemporary dialect, but set out to codify the pronunciations of characters to be used when reading the classics, incorporating distinctions made in different parts of China at the time (a diasystem).
The Qieyun and its successors grouped characters by tone class, rhyme group and homophone group.The pronunciation of each group of homophonous characters was indicated using the fanqie method, using a pair of other words with the same initial consonant and final (the rest of the syllable) respectively.Analysis of the fanqie spellings allows one to enumerate the initials and finals of the system, but not to determine their phonetic values.The rhyme tables from the Song dynasty contain a sophisticated feature analysis of the Qieyun initials and finals, though they were influenced by the different pronunciations of that later period.Scholars have attempted to determine the phonetic content of the initials and finals by comparing them with the rhyme tables and by examining pronunciations in modern varieties and loans in Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese (the Sinoxenic materials), but many details regarding the finals are still uncertain.
In the rhyme table tradition, initials were classified by place and manner of articulation.The initials of the Qieyun are slightly different from the rhyme tables, but generally agreed and each traditionally named with an exemplary word as follows:
Labial | Dental | Retroflex stop | Dental sibilant | Retroflex sibilant | Palatal | Velar | Laryngeal | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stop or affricate | voiceless | Chinese: 幫 | Chinese: 端 | Chinese: 知 | Chinese: 精 | Chinese: 莊 | Chinese: 章 | Chinese: 見 | Chinese: 影 | |
aspirate | Chinese: 滂 | Chinese: 透 | Chinese: 徹 | Chinese: 清 | Chinese: 初 | Chinese: 昌 | Chinese: 溪 | |||
voiced | Chinese: 並 | Chinese: 定 | Chinese: 澄 | Chinese: 從 | Chinese: 崇 | Chinese: 禪 | Chinese: 群 | |||
Nasal | Chinese: 明 | Chinese: 泥 | Chinese: 娘 | Chinese: 日 | Chinese: 疑 | |||||
Fricative | voiceless | Chinese: 心 | Chinese: 生 | Chinese: 書 | Chinese: 曉 | |||||
voiced | Chinese: 邪 | Chinese: 俟 | Chinese: 船 | Chinese: 匣/云 | ||||||
Approximant | Chinese: 來 | Chinese: 以 |
Many potential combinations of initial and final did not occur.To save space, the designers of the rhyme tables separated finals with different patterns of co-occurrence, effectively identifying cases of complementary distribution.Finals were spread across four rows within each tone.Some finals occurred only in a single row (1, 2 or 4), and are said to belong to divisions (Chinese: 等) I, II and IV respectively.The remaining division III finals occurred in row 3, but also rows 2 and 4.Division III finals occur in more than half of the syllables of the Qieyun.Some authors call them type B finals, with type A encompassing all the other divisions.Most scholars believe that type B syllables were characterized by a palatal medial in Middle Chinese.The division III finals were further subdivided into distributional classes, including the chongniu, pairs of finals placed in rows 3 and 4 of the rhyme tables respectively.The two are generally identical in modern Chinese varieties, but Sinoxenic forms often have a palatal element for III-4 but not III-3.
Comparing placement in the rhyme tables with distribution in the Qieyun, the linguist Li Rong identified seven distinct classes of finals.Some of these distinctions are found only in the rhyme tables.When considering the Qieyun only, Li's seven classes reduce to four distinct patterns of co-occurrence with initials at various places of articulation:
Qieyun final type | Qieyun initial type | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labial | Dental | Retroflex stop | Dental sibilant | Retroflex sibilant | Palatal | Velar | Laryngeal | ||
Type A | Divisions I and IV | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||
Division II | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | ||||
Type B (div. III) | Pure and chongniu-4 | yes | yes | yes | |||||
Mixed and chongniu-3 | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
The Song dynasty rhyme tables classified Qieyun syllables as either 'open' (Chinese: 開) or 'closed' (Chinese: 合), with the latter believed to indicate a medial or lip rounding.
The primary sources of evidence for the reconstruction of the Old Chinese initials are medieval rhyme dictionaries and phonetic clues in the Chinese script.
Early in the 20th century, Huang Kan proposed that the division I and IV finals, and the initials with which they occurred, namely labials, dentals, dental sibilants, velars and laryngeals, were primitive.Most scholars believe that finals of divisions I and IV contained back and front vowels respectively.Division II is believed to represent retroflexion, and is traced back to the Old Chinese pronounced as /
It is possible to account for the combinations of initials and finals of the Qieyun by combining these initials with Old Chinese medials *pronounced as /-r-/ and *pronounced as /-j-/.The following table shows Baxter's account of the Old Chinese initials and medials leading to the combinations of initial and final types found in Early Middle Chinese.
Qieyun final type | Qieyun initial type | ||||||||
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Labial | Dental | Retroflex stop | Dental sibilant | Retroflex sibilant | Palatal | Velar | Laryngeal | ||
Type A | Divisions I and IV |
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Division II |
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Type B (div. III) | Pure and chongniu-4 |
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Mixed and chongniu-3 |
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Here pronounced as /
The Middle Chinese medial was unevenly distributed, being distinctive only after velar and laryngeal initials or before, or .This is taken (following André-Georges Haudricourt and Sergei Yakhontov) to indicate that Old Chinese had labiovelar and labiolaryngeal initials but no labiovelar medial.The remaining occurrences of Middle Chinese are believed to result from breaking of a back vowel before these codas (see).
Although the Chinese writing system is not alphabetic, comparison of words whose characters share a phonetic element (a phonetic series) yields much information about pronunciation.Often the characters in a phonetic series are still pronounced alike, as in the character Chinese: 中 ('middle'), which was adapted to write the words ('pour', Chinese: 沖) and ('loyal', Chinese: 忠).[1] In other cases the words in a phonetic series have very different sounds in any known variety of Chinese, but are assumed to have been similar at the time the characters were chosen.
A key principle, first proposed by the Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren, holds that the initials of words written with the same phonetic component had a common point of articulation in Old Chinese.For example, since Middle Chinese dentals and retroflex stops occur together in phonetic series, they are traced to a single Old Chinese dental series, with the retroflex stops conditioned by an Old Chinese medial pronounced as /
However, there are several cases where quite different Middle Chinese initials appear together in a phonetic series.Karlgren and subsequent workers have proposed either additional Old Chinese consonants or initial consonant clusters in such cases.For example, the Middle Chinese palatal sibilants appear in two distinct kinds of series, with dentals and with velars:
It is believed that Old Chinese dentals followed by an Old Chinese medial pronounced as /
Similarly, it is proposed that the pronounced as /
Thus the Middle Chinese lateral is believed to reflect Old Chinese pronounced as /
This treatment of the Old Chinese liquids is further supported by Tibeto-Burman cognates and by transcription evidence.For example, the name of a city (Alexandria Ariana or Alexandria Arachosia) was transcribed in the Book of Han chapter 96 as ⟨Chinese: 烏弋山離⟩, which is reconstructed as pronounced as /
Voiceless nasal initials pronounced as /
Clusters pronounced as /
Other cluster initials, including pronounced as /
As Middle Chinese occurs only in palatal environments, Li attempted to derive both and from Old Chinese pronounced as /
Pan Wuyun has proposed a revision of the above scheme to account for the fact that Middle Chinese glottal stop and laryngeal fricatives occurred together in phonetic series, unlike dental stops and fricatives, which were usually separated.Instead of the glottal stop initial pronounced as /
Modern Min dialects, particularly those of northwest Fujian, show reflexes of distinctions not reflected in Middle Chinese.For example, the following dental initials have been identified in reconstructed proto-Min:
Voiceless stops | Voiced stops | Nasals | Laterals | ||||||||
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Example word | |||||||||||
Proto-Min initial |
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Middle Chinese initial | t | th | d | n | l |
These distinctions are assumed by most workers to date from the Old Chinese period, but they are not reflected in the widely accepted inventory of Old Chinese initials given above.For example, although Old Chinese is believed to have had both voiced and voiceless nasals, only the voiced ones yield Middle Chinese nasals, corresponding to both sorts of proto-Min nasal.The Old Chinese antecedents of these distinctions are not yet agreed, with researchers proposing a variety of consonant clusters.
Although many authors have projected the Middle Chinese palatal medial back to a medial pronounced as /
A reconstruction of Old Chinese finals must explain the rhyming practice of the Shijing, a collection of songs and poetry from the 11th to 7th centuries BC.Again some of these songs still rhyme in modern varieties of Chinese, but many do not.This was attributed to lax rhyming practice until the late-Ming dynasty scholar Chen Di argued that a former consistency had been obscured by sound change.The systematic study of Old Chinese rhymes began in the 17th century, when Gu Yanwu divided the rhyming words of the Shijing into ten rhyme groups (Chinese: 韻部).These groups were subsequently refined by other scholars, culminating in a standard set of 31 in the 1930s.One of these scholars, Duan Yucai, stated the important principle that characters in the same phonetic series would be in the same rhyme group, making it possible to assign almost all words to rhyme groups.
Assuming that rhyming syllables had the same main vowel, Li Fang-Kuei proposed a system of four vowels pronounced as /
The following table illustrates these analyses, listing the names of the 31 traditional rhyme groups with their Middle Chinese reflexes and their postulated Old Chinese vowels in the systems of Li and Baxter.Following the traditional analysis, the rhyme groups are organized into three parallel sets, depending on the corresponding type of coda in Middle Chinese.For simplicity, only Middle Chinese finals of divisions I and IV are listed, as the complex vocalism of divisions II and III is believed to reflect the influence of Old Chinese medials pronounced as /
Shijing rhyme groups and Middle Chinese reflexes in divisions I and IV | OC vowels | |||||||||
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MC vocalic coda Chinese: 陰聲 | MC stop coda Chinese: 入聲 | MC nasal coda Chinese: 陽聲 | Li | Baxter | ||||||
Chinese: 緝 | Chinese: 侵 | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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Chinese: 葉 / Chinese: 盍 | Chinese: 談 | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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Chinese: 脂 | Chinese: 質 | Chinese: 真 | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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Chinese: 微 | Chinese: 物 / Chinese: 術 | Chinese: 文 / Chinese: 諄 | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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Chinese: 祭 | Chinese: 月 | Chinese: 元 / Chinese: 寒 | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| ||||||
Chinese: 歌 | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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Chinese: 支 / Chinese: 佳 | Chinese: 錫 | Chinese: 耕 | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| ||||||
Chinese: 之 | Chinese: 職 | Chinese: 蒸 | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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Chinese: 魚 | Chinese: 鐸 | Chinese: 陽 | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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Chinese: 侯 | Chinese: 屋 | Chinese: 東 | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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Chinese: 幽 | Chinese: 覺 / Chinese: 沃 | Chinese: 冬 / Chinese: 中 | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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Chinese: 宵 | Chinese: 藥 | ,, | pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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pronounced as /-ʷ/ Old Chinese finals reconstructed with labiovelar codas |
There has been much controversy over the relationship between final consonants and tones, and indeed whether Old Chinese lacked the tones characteristic of later periods, as first suggested by the Ming dynasty scholar Chen Di.
The four tones of Middle Chinese were first described by Shen Yue around AD 500.They were the 'level' (Chinese: 平), 'rising' (Chinese: 上), 'departing' (Chinese: 去), and 'entering' (Chinese: 入) tones, with the last category consisting of the syllables ending in stops (or).Although rhymes in the Shijing usually respect these tone categories, there are many cases of characters that are now pronounced with different tones rhyming together in the songs, mostly between the departing and entering tones.This led Duan Yucai to suggest that Old Chinese lacked the departing tone.Wang Niansun (1744–1832) and Jiang Yougao (d.1851) decided that the language had the same tones as Middle Chinese, but some words had later shifted between tones, a view that is still widely held among linguists in China.
Karlgren also noted many cases where words in the departing and entering tones shared a phonetic element within their respective characters, e.g.
He suggested that the departing tone words in such pairs had ended with a final voiced stop (pronounced as /
Another perspective is provided by Haudricourt's demonstration that the tones of Vietnamese, which have a very similar structure to those of Middle Chinese, were derived from earlier final consonants.The Vietnamese counterparts of the rising and departing tones derived from a final glottal stop and pronounced as /
Pulleyblank took Haudricourt's suggestion to its logical conclusion, proposing that the Chinese rising tone had also arisen from a final glottal stop.Mei Tsu-lin supported this theory with evidence from early transcriptions of Sanskrit words, and pointed out that rising tone words end in a glottal stop in some modern Chinese dialects, e.g. Wenzhounese and some Min dialects.In addition, most of the entering tone words that rhyme with rising tone words in the Shijing end in .
Together, these hypotheses lead to the following set of Old Chinese syllable codas:
MC vocalic coda | MC stop coda | MC nasal coda | ||||||
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Chinese: 平 | Chinese: 上 | Chinese: 去 | Chinese: 入 | Chinese: 平 | Chinese: 上 | Chinese: 去 | ||
pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
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pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| |
pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| |
pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
| pronounced as /
|
To account for phonetic series and rhymes in which MC alternates with, Sergei Starostin proposed that MC in such cases derived from Old Chinese pronounced as /
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