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Middle Chinese

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Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety
of Chinese recorded in the Qieyun, a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several
revised and expanded editions. The Swedish linguist Bernard Karlgren believed that the dictionary
recorded a speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties. However, based on
the more recently recovered preface of the Qieyun, most scholars now believe that it records a
compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Northern and
Southern dynasties period. This composite system contains important information for the
reconstruction of the preceding system of Old Chinese phonology (1st millennium BC).

Middle Chinese

Ancient Chinese

漢語 hɑnH ŋɨʌX

Native to

China

Era

Northern and Southern dynasties, Sui dynasty, Tang dynasty, Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period,
Song dynasty
Language family

Sino-Tibetan

Sinitic

Middle Chinese

Early forms

Old Chinese

Eastern Han Chinese

Writing system

Chinese characters

Language codes

ISO 639-3

ltc

Linguist List

ltc

Glottolog

midd1344

Chinese name

Traditional Chinese

中古漢語

Simplified Chinese

中古汉语

Transcriptions

Standard Mandarin

Hanyu Pinyin Zhōnggǔ Hànyǔ

Wade–Giles chung1-ku3 Han4-yü3

IPA [ʈʂʊ́ ŋkù xânỳ]

Yue: Cantonese

Yale Romanization Jūnggú Honyúh

Jyutping Zung1gu2 Hon3jyu5

IPA [tsóŋkǔː hɔ̄ːnyː̬ ]

Southern Min

Tâi-lô tiong-kóo Hàn-gú

The fanqie method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on
earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid-12th-century Yunjing and other rime tables
incorporate a more sophisticated and convenient analysis of the Qieyun phonology. The rime tables
attest to a number of sound changes that had occurred over the centuries following the publication of
the Qieyun. Linguists sometimes refer to the system of the Qieyun as Early Middle Chinese and the
variant revealed by the rime tables as Late Middle Chinese.

The dictionaries and tables describe pronunciations in relative terms, but do not give their actual
sounds. Karlgren was the first to attempt a reconstruction of the sounds of Middle Chinese, comparing
its categories with modern varieties of Chinese and the Sino-Xenic pronunciations used in the reading
traditions of neighbouring countries. Several other scholars have produced their own reconstructions
using similar methods.[1]

The Qieyun system is often used as a framework for the study and description of various modern
varieties of Chinese. Branches of the Chinese family such as Mandarin (including Standard Chinese,
based on the speech of Beijing), Yue (including Cantonese) and Wu (including Shanghainese) can be
largely treated as divergent developments from it. The study of Middle Chinese also provides for a
better understanding and analysis of Classical Chinese poetry, such as the study of Tang poetry.

Sources Edit

The reconstruction of Middle Chinese phonology is largely dependent upon detailed descriptions in a
few original sources. The most important of these is the Qieyun rime dictionary (601) and its revisions.
The Qieyun is often used together with interpretations in Song dynasty rime tables such as the Yunjing,
Qiyinlue, and the later Qieyun zhizhangtu and Sisheng dengzi. The documentary sources are
supplemented by comparison with modern Chinese varieties, pronunciation of Chinese words borrowed
by other languages (particularly Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese), transcription into Chinese
characters of foreign names, transcription of Chinese names in alphabetic scripts (such as Brahmi,
Tibetan and Uyghur), and evidence regarding rhyme and tone patterns from classical Chinese poetry.[2]

Rime dictionaries Edit

Main article: Rime dictionary

two pages of a Chinese dictionary, comprising the end of the index and the start of the entries

The start of the first rhyme class of the Guangyun (東 dōng "east")

Chinese scholars of the Northern and Southern dynasties period were concerned with the correct
recitation of the classics. Various schools produced dictionaries to codify reading pronunciations and the
associated rhyme conventions of regulated verse.[3][a] The Qieyun (601) was an attempt to merge the
distinctions in six earlier dictionaries, which were eclipsed by its success and are no longer extant. It was
accepted as the standard reading pronunciation during the Tang dynasty, and went through several
revisions and expansions over the following centuries.[5]

The Qieyun is thus the oldest surviving rime dictionary and the main source for the pronunciation of
characters in Early Middle Chinese (EMC). At the time of Bernhard Karlgren's seminal work on Middle
Chinese in the early 20th century, only fragments of the Qieyun were known, and scholars relied on the
Guangyun (1008), a much expanded edition from the Song dynasty. However, significant sections of a
version of the Qieyun itself were subsequently discovered in the caves of Dunhuang, and a complete
copy of Wang Renxu's 706 edition from the Palace Library was found in 1947.[6]

The rime dictionaries organize Chinese characters by their pronunciation, according to a hierarchy of
tone, rhyme and homophony. Characters with identical pronunciations are grouped into homophone
classes, whose pronunciation is described using two fanqie characters, the first of which has the initial
sound of the characters in the homophone class and second of which has the same sound as the rest of
the syllable (the final). The use of fanqie was an important innovation of the Qieyun and allowed the
pronunciation of all characters to be described exactly; earlier dictionaries simply described the
pronunciation of unfamiliar characters in terms of the most similar-sounding familiar character.[7]

The fanqie system uses multiple equivalent characters to represent each particular initial, and likewise
for finals. The categories of initials and finals actually represented were first identified by the Cantonese
scholar Chen Li in a careful analysis published in his Qièyùn kǎo (1842). Chen's method was to equate
two fanqie initials (or finals) whenever one was used in the fanqie spelling of the pronunciation of the
other, and to follow chains of such equivalences to identify groups of spellers for each initial or final.[8]
For example, the pronunciation of the character 東 was given using the fanqie spelling 德紅, the
pronunciation of 德 was given as 多特, and the pronunciation of 多 was given as 德河, from which we
can conclude that the words 東, 德 and 多 all had the same initial sound.[9]

The Qieyun classified homonyms under 193 rhyme classes, each of which is placed within one of the
four tones.[10] A single rhyme class may contain multiple finals, generally differing only in the medial
(especially when it is /w/) or in so-called chongniu doublets.[11][12]

Rime tables Edit

Main article: rime table

The first table of the Yunjing, covering the Guangyun rhyme classes 東 dōng, 董 dǒng, 送 sòng and 屋
wū (-k in Middle Chinese)

The Yunjing (c. 1150 AD) is the oldest of the so-called rime tables, which provide a more detailed
phonological analysis of the system contained in the Qieyun. The Yunjing was created centuries after the
Qieyun, and the authors of the Yunjing were attempting to interpret a phonological system that differed
in significant ways from that of their own Late Middle Chinese (LMC) dialect. They were aware of this,
and attempted to reconstruct Qieyun phonology as well as possible through a close analysis of
regularities in the system and co-occurrence relationships between the initials and finals indicated by
the fanqie characters. However, the analysis inevitably shows some influence from LMC, which needs to
be taken into account when interpreting difficult aspects of the system.[13]

The Yunjing is organized into 43 tables, each covering several Qieyun rhyme classes, and classified as:
[14]

One of 16 broad rhyme classes (shè), each described as either "inner" or "outer". The meaning of this is
debated but it has been suggested that it refers to the height of the main vowel, with "outer" finals
having an open vowel (/ɑ/ or /a,æ/) and "inner" finals having a mid or close vowel.

"open mouth" or "closed mouth", indicating whether lip rounding is present. "Closed" finals either have
a rounded vowel (e.g. /u/) or rounded glide.

Each table has 23 columns, one for each initial consonant. Although the Yunjing distinguishes 36 initials,
they are placed in 23 columns by combining palatals, retroflexes, and dentals under the same column.
This does not lead to cases where two homophone classes are conflated, as the grades (rows) are
arranged so that all would-be minimal pairs distinguished only by the retroflex vs. palatal vs. alveolar
character of the initial end up in different rows.[15]

Each initial is further classified as follows:[16]

Place of articulation: labials, alveolars, velars, affricates and sibilants, and laryngeals

Phonation: voiceless, voiceless aspirated, voiced, nasal or liquid

Each table also has 16 rows, with a group of 4 rows for each of the 4 tones of the traditional system in
which finals ending in /p/, /t/ or /k/ are considered to be entering tone variants of finals ending in
/m/, /n/ or /ŋ/ rather than separate finals in their own right. The significance of the 4 rows within each
tone is difficult to interpret, and is strongly debated. These rows are usually denoted I, II, III and IV, and
are thought to relate to differences in palatalization or retroflexion of the syllable's initial or medial, or
differences in the quality of similar main vowels (e.g. /ɑ/, /a/, /ɛ/).[14] Other scholars view them not as
phonetic categories but formal devices exploiting distributional patterns in the Qieyun to achieve a
compact presentation.[17]

Each square in a table contains a character corresponding to a particular homophone class in the
Qieyun, if any such character exists. From this arrangement, each homophone class can be placed in the
above categories.[18]

Modern dialects and Sino-Xenic pronunciations Edit

The rime dictionaries and rime tables identify categories of phonetic distinctions, but do not indicate the
actual pronunciations of these categories. The varied pronunciations of words in modern varieties of
Chinese can help, but most modern varieties descend from a Late Middle Chinese koine and cannot very
easily be used to determine the pronunciation of Early Middle Chinese. During the Early Middle Chinese
period, large amounts of Chinese vocabulary were systematically borrowed by Vietnamese, Korean and
Japanese (collectively known as Sino-Xenic vocabularies), but many distinctions were inevitably lost in
mapping Chinese phonology onto foreign phonological systems.[19]

For example, the following table shows the pronunciation of the numerals in three modern Chinese
varieties, as well as borrowed forms in Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese:
Modern Chinese varieties Sino-Vietnamese Sino-Korean

(Yale) Sino-Japanese[20] Middle Chinese[b]

Beijing Suzhou Guangzhou Go-on Kan-on

1 一 yī iɤʔ7 jat1 nhất il ichi itsu ʔjit

2 二 èr ɲi6 ji6 nhị i ni ji nyijH

3 三 sān sɛ1 saam1 tam sam san sam

4 四 sì sɨ5 sei3 tứ sa shi sijH

5 五 wǔ ŋ6 ng5 ngũ o go nguX

6 六 liù loʔ8 luk6 lục yuk roku riku ljuwk

7 七 qī tsʰiɤʔ7 cat1 thất chil shichi shitsu tshit

8 八 bā poʔ7 baat3 bát phal hachi hatsu pɛt

9 九 jiǔ tɕiøy3 gau2 cửu kwu ku kyū kjuwX

10 十 shí zɤʔ8 sap6 thập sip jū < jiɸu dzyip

Transcription evidence Edit

Although the evidence from Chinese transcriptions of foreign words is much more limited, and is
similarly obscured by the mapping of foreign pronunciations onto Chinese phonology, it serves as direct
evidence of a sort that is lacking in all the other types of data, since the pronunciation of the foreign
languages borrowed from—especially Sanskrit and Gāndhārī—is known in great detail.[21] For example,
the nasal initials /m n ŋ/ were used to transcribe Sanskrit nasals in the early Tang, but later they were
used for Sanskrit unaspirated voiced initials /b d ɡ/, suggesting that they had become prenasalized stops
[ᵐb] [ⁿd] [ᵑɡ] in some northwestern Chinese dialects.[22][23]

Methodology

Phonology

Grammar

See also

Notes

References
Further reading

External links

Last edited 14 days ago by Headbomb

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