The Seal script characters for "harvest" (later "year") and "person. Seal script ( Chinese: Simplified 篆书 篆書 Pinyin: zhuànshū is an ancient style of Chinese calligraphy. " A hypothesized pronunciation for each character may explain the resemblance. Notice the pharyngealized consonants. Pharyngealization is a Secondary articulation of Consonants or Vowels by which the Pharynx or Epiglottis is constricted during the articulation

Old Chinese (simplified Chinese: 上古汉语; traditional Chinese: 上古漢語; pinyin: shànggǔ hànyǔ), or Archaic Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese spoken from the Shang Dynasty (Chinese Bronze Age, ended in the 11th century BC), well into the Former Han Dynasty (206 BC to 9 AD). Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most common Standard Mandarin Romanization system in use Bernhard Karlgren (1889 - 1978 was a Swedish sinologist, Philologist, and the founder of Swedish sinology as a scholarly discipline The Shang Dynasty ( Chinese: 商[[wiktionary 朝|朝]] or Yin Dynasty ( 殷[[wiktionary 代|代]] was according to traditional sources the The term Bronze Age refers to a period in human cultural development when the most advanced Metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use included techniques for The Han Dynasty ( 206 BC–220 AD followed the Qin Dynasty and preceded the Three Kingdoms in China. There are several distinct sub-periods within that long period of time. The term, in contrast to Middle Chinese and Modern Chinese, is usually used in historical Chinese phonology, which tries to reconstruct the way in which Old Chinese was pronounced. Middle Chinese ( or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Historical Chinese phonology deals with reconstructing the sounds of Chinese from the past

Since Old Chinese was the language spoken by the Chinese when classical works such as the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius, and the Tao Te Ching were written, and was the official language of the unified empire of the Qin Dynasty and long-lasting Han Dynasty, Old Chinese was preserved for the following two millennia in the form of Classical Chinese, a style of written Chinese that emulates the grammar and vocabulary of Old Chinese as presented in those works. Distinguish from The Four Books, which are Shi`a Muslim collections of hadiths The Analects ( also known as the Analects of Confucius, are a record of the words and acts of the central Chinese thinker and philosopher Life Mencius also known by his birth name Meng Ke or Ko, was born in the State of Zou (simp The Tao Te Ching or Dao De Jing ( originally known as Laozi or Lao tzu ( is a Chinese classic Not to be confused with the Qing Dynasty, the last dynasty of China The Han Dynasty ( 206 BC–220 AD followed the Qin Dynasty and preceded the Three Kingdoms in China. A millennium (pl millennia) is a period of Time equal to one thousand Years (from Latin la mille, thousand and la annum Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of Written Chinese based on the Grammar and Vocabulary of ancient Chinese Classical Chinese was for two millennia the usual language used for official purposes in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National Korea is a geographic area composed of two sovereign countries a civilization and a former state situated on the Korean Peninsula in East Asia. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. Vietnam (ˌviːɛtˈnɑːm Việt Nam) officially However, there is great variation within Classical Chinese, based mainly on when something was written, and the Classical Chinese of more recent writers, as well as that found outside of China, would probably be difficult for someone from Confucius's era to understand.

Phonology

For the pronunciation of Classical Chinese, see Classical Chinese: Pronunciation

Since Chinese is written with logographic characters, not letters, it is not easy for the Chinese to notice that the sounds of a language change with time. Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of Written Chinese based on the Grammar and Vocabulary of ancient Chinese A logogram, or logograph, is a Grapheme which represents a word or a Morpheme (a meaningful unit of language A letter is an element in an Alphabetic system of writing such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants Sound change includes any processes of Language change that affect pronunciation ( phonetic change) or sound system structures ( Phonological change The story of the reconstruction of Old Chinese began with the recitation of Shijing, the first and most revered collection of poetry in China. Shi Jing ( translated variously as the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Songs or the Book of Odes, is the earliest Generations of Chinese literati were baffled to find that many lines in Shijing didn't rhyme smoothly, being unaware that the sounds of the Chinese language had long changed. This article is about the poetic technique For the form of ice see Rime ice. Scholars such as Zhu Xi suggested that the ancients had their own way of reciting poems: they would change the reading of a character temporarily to fit the rhyming scheme. Zhu Xi or Chu Hsi (朱熹 born October 18, 1130, Yuxi, Fujian province China &ndash died April 23, 1200 Such a way of reciting or reading poetry is called xieyin (叶音 lit. "harmonizing the sound").

Jiao Hong and Chen Di of the Ming Dynasty were the first persons to argue coherently that the lines in Shijing didn't rhyme just because the sounds had changed. Chen Di (陳第 (1541 - 1617 Courtesy name: Jili (季立 was a Chinese philologist strategist and traveler of the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty ( or Empire of the Great Ming ( was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol -led The reconstruction of Old Chinese began when Gu Yanwu of the Qing Dynasty divided the sounds of Old Chinese into 10 rime groups (韵部 yunbu). Gu Yanwu (顧炎武 (1613 - 1682 also known as Gu Tinglin (顧亭林 was a Chinese philologist and geographer Not to be confused with Qin Dynasty, the first dynasty of Imperial China In the study of Phonology in Linguistics, the rime or rhyme of a Syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda Other Qing scholars followed Gu's steps, refining the division. The Swedish sinologist, Bernhard Karlgren, was the first person to reconstruct Old Chinese with Latin alphabet (not IPA). The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic

The sounds of Old Chinese are difficult to reconstruct, because the way the Chinese writing system indicates pronunciation is much less clear than the way an alphabet does. Scholars who try to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese have to rely on indirect evidence. They heavily rely on those rhymed pre-Qin texts, chiefly Shijing, and the fact that characters sharing the same phonetic component were homophones or near-homophones when the characters were first created. All Chinese characters are Logograms but there are several derivative types

There is much dispute over the phonology of Old Chinese. Today it is agreed that Old Chinese had consonant clusters such as *kl- and gl-, which do not occur in any modern Chinese dialect. In Linguistics, a consonant cluster (or consonant blend) is a group of Consonants which have no intervening Vowel. However, the following issues are still open to debate:

• that Old Chinese had pharyngealized consonants or other rare features. Pharyngealization is a Secondary articulation of Consonants or Vowels by which the Pharynx or Epiglottis is constricted during the articulation ^[1]
• that Old Chinese was not monosyllabic.
• that Early Old Chinese was not a tonal language. A tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words The tones of Middle Chinese evolved from consonants in Old Chinese that had since changed or disappeared. Middle Chinese ( or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern

Lexicon

The traditional view is that Chinese is an analytic language without inflection. In morphological typology (in linguistics an isolating language (also analytic language) is any Language in which words are composed of In Grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice However, since Henri Maspero's pioneering work,^[2] there have been scholars seriously studying the morphology of Old Chinese. Henri Maspero ( December 15, 1882 - March 17, 1945) was a French Sinologist, today particularly remembered for his pioneering Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words Sagart (1999) provides a summary of these efforts, and a word-list based on his work is available at the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database[1].

Grammar

The grammar of Old Chinese is not identical to that of Classical Chinese. Many usages found in Classical Chinese are absent in Old Chinese. For example, the word 其 (qí) can be used as a third-person pronoun (he/she/it/they) in Classical Chinese, but not in Old Chinese, where it serves as a third-person possessive adjective (his/her/its/their).

There is no copula in Old Chinese, the copula 是 (shì) in Middle and modern Chinese being a near demonstrative ("this", which equals 這 (zhè) in modern Chinese) in Old Chinese.

References

• Baxter, William H. (1992). A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 311012324X.
• Karlgren, Bernhard (1957). Grammata Serica Recensa. Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities.
• Pulleyblank, E. G. (1962). "The Consonantal System of Old Chinese," Asia Major 9:58-144, 206-65.
• Sagart, Laurent (1999). The Roots of Old Chinese. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 1556199619.
• Schuessler, Axel (2006). ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824829751.
• Zhengzhang Shangfang 郑张尚芳 (2003). Shanggu yinxi [Old Chinese phonology]. Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe. ISBN 7532092445.

Notes

1. ^ Jerry Norman (1994). "Pharyngealization in Early Chinese". Journal of the American Oriental Society Vol. The Journal of the American Oriental Society is a quarterly journal published by the American Oriental Society, the first volume being released in 1843 -49 114, No. 3, pp. 397-408. Available through JSTOR. JSTOR (short for Journal Storage) is a United States -based online system for archiving Academic journals founded in 1995
2. ^ Henri Maspero (1930). "Préfixes et dérivation en chinois archaïque". Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 23:5. 313-27.

External links

• Odds on the Odes, book review of Baxter's A Handbook of Old Chinese phonology, by Wolfgang Behr
• Introduction to Chinese Historical Phonology, Guillaume Jacques
• Old Chinese Wordlist at the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database