Although Old Chinese is known from written records beginning around 1200 BC, the logographic script provides much more indirect and partial information about the pronunciation of the language than alphabetic systems used elsewhere.
Several authors have produced reconstructions of Old Chinese phonology, beginning with the Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren in the 1940s and continuing to the present day.
The method introduced by Karlgren is unique, comparing categories implied by ancient rhyming practice and the structure of Chinese characters with descriptions in medieval rhyme dictionaries, though more recent approaches have also incorporated other kinds of evidence.
Although the various notations appear to be very different, they correspond with each other on most points.
By the 1970s, it was generally agreed that Old Chinese had fewer points of articulation than Middle Chinese, a set of voiceless sonorants, and labiovelar and labio-laryngeal initials.
Since the 1990s, most authors have agreed on a six-vowel system and a re-organized system of liquids.
Earlier systems proposed voiced final stops to account for contacts between stop-final syllables and other tones, but many investigators now believe that Old Chinese lacked tonal distinctions, with Middle Chinese tones derived from consonant clusters at the end of the syllable.
and 19 Related for: Reconstructions of Old Chinese information
the pronunciation of the language than alphabetic systems used elsewhere. Several authors have produced reconstructionsofOldChinese phonology, beginning...
disputed, most recent reconstructions agree on the basic structure. It is generally agreed that OldChinese differed from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex...
distinctions in Old Chinese that vanished in Early Middle Chinese but remained in Proto-Min. Until recently, no reconstructionsofOldChinese specifically accounted...
Eastern Han Chinese, Later Han Chinese or Late OldChinese is the stage of the Chinese language revealed by poetry and glosses from the Eastern Han period...
respectively. By convention, Middle Chinesereconstructions are shown without an asterisk, while OldChinesereconstructions are almost always shown preceded...
proposals remain influential outside of academia. He was also the author of a widely respected reconstructionofOldChinese.[citation needed] In 1986, Starostin...
assimilation. OldChinese probably had some constraint governing the shape of disyllables. According to modern reconstructionsofOldChinese phonology,...
Old Chinese have illuminated the etymology of modern Chinese words.[citation needed] Compare these Middle Chinese and OldChinesereconstructionsof 陰;...
reconstructionsofOldChinese generally include liquid medials (/r/ in modern reconstructions, /l/ in older versions), and many reconstructionsof Middle...
Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Chinese characters...
initial clusters such as "tk" and "sn" were analysed in recent reconstructionsofOldChinese, and some were developed as palatalised sibilants. Similarly...
Shangfang (9 August 1933 – 19 May 2018) was a Chinese linguist, known for his reconstructionofOldChinese. Zhengzhang was born as Zheng Xiangfang (郑祥芳...
to reconstruct pronunciations ofold languages, and are used particularly extensively in the reconstructionofOldChinese, whose writing system does not...
Shinpei Ogura pioneering the first reconstructionsof all twenty-five hyangga in 1929. The earliest reconstructions by a Korean scholar were made by Yang...
archaic Chinese loanwords that are crucial for the reconstructionofOldChinese Babaev, Kirill; Samarina, Irina (2021). Sidwell, Paul (ed.). A Grammar of May:...
Chinese (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ; lit. 'Han language' or 中文; Zhōngwén; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages...
of Aix-Marseille 1. His early work focused on Chinese dialectology. He then turned his attention to OldChinese, attempting a reconstructionofOld Chinese...
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