Old Chinese phonology

The reconstruction of Old Chinese often 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). These dictionaries indicated pronunciation using the fanqie method, dividing a syllable into an initial consonant and the rest, called the final. Rhyme tables from the Song dynasty contain a sophisticated feature analysis of the Qieyun initials and finals, though not a full phonemic analysis. Moreover, they were influenced by the different pronunciations of that later period. Scholars have attempted to determine the phonetic content of the various distinctions by examining pronunciations in modern varieties and loans in Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese (the Sinoxenic materials), but many details regarding the finals are still disputed.[9][10]

The Qieyun distinguishes the following initials, each traditionally named with an exemplary word and classified according to the rhyme table analysis:[11][12]

By studying sound glosses given by Eastern Han authors, the Qing philologist Qian Daxin discovered that the Middle Chinese dental and retroflex stop series were not distinguished at that time.[20][21] The resulting inventory of 32 initials (omitting the rare initial /ʐ/) is still used by some scholars within China, such as He Jiuying.[22] Early in the 20th century, Huang Kan identified 19 Middle Chinese initials that occurred with a wide range of finals, calling them the "original ancient initials", from which the other initials were secondary developments:[23][12]

Page from a copy of a Song dynasty edition of the Shuowen Jiezi, an early source on the structure of characters, showing characters with the 言 element

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 中 (zhōng, 'middle'), which was adapted to write the words chōng ('pour', 沖) and zhōng ('loyal', 忠).[24] 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.[25]

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 *-r-. The Middle Chinese dental sibilants and retroflex sibilants also occur interchangeably in phonetic series, and are similarly traced to a single Old Chinese sibilant series, with the retroflex sibilants conditioned by the Old Chinese medial *-r-.[26][27][lower-alpha 10]

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:[lower-alpha 11]

• 周 tsyuw (< *tj-) 'cycle; Zhou dynasty', 彫 tew (< *t-) 'carve' and 調 dew (< *d-) 'adjust'[30][31]
• 制 tsyejH (< *kj-) 'cut out' and 猘 kjejH (< *krj-) 'mad dog'[32][33]

It is believed that the palatals arose from dentals and velars followed by an Old Chinese medial *-j-, unless the medial *-r- was also present. While all such dentals were palatalized, the conditions for palatalization of velars are only partly understood (see Medials below).[34]

Similarly, it is proposed that the *-r- medial could occur after labials and velars, complementing the instances proposed as sources of Middle Chinese retroflex dentals and sibilants, to account for such connections as:[35][36][lower-alpha 12]

• 筆 pit (< *pr-) 'writing pencil' and 律 lwit (< *br-) 'law; rule'[38][39]
• 監 kaem (< *kr-) 'look at' and 藍 lam (< *ɡr-) 'indigo'[40][41]

Thus the Middle Chinese lateral l- is believed to reflect Old Chinese *-r-. Old Chinese voiced and voiceless laterals *l- and *l̥- are proposed to account for a different group of series such as

• 脫 dwat (< *l-) and thwat (< *l̥-) 'peel off', 悅 ywet (< *lj-) 'pleased' and 說 sywet (< OC *l̥j-) 'speak'[42][43][lower-alpha 13]

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 ⟨烏弋山離⟩, which is reconstructed as *ʔa-ljək-srjan-rjaj.[44][45] Traces of the earlier liquids are also found in the divergent Waxiang dialect of western Hunan.[46]

Voiceless nasal initials *m̥-, *n̥- and *ŋ̊- are proposed (following Dong Tonghe and Edwin Pulleyblank) in series such as:[47]

• 墨 mok 'ink' and 黑 xok (< *m̥-) 'black'[48][49]
• 難 nan 'difficult' and 灘 than (< *n̥-) 'foreshore'[50][51]
• 虐 ngjak 'cruel' and 謔 xjak (< *ŋ̊-) 'to ridicule'[52][53]

Clusters *sn- and so on are proposed (following Karlgren) for alternations of Middle Chinese nasals and s- such as

• 如 nyo (< *nj-) 'resemble' and 絮 sjoH (< *snj-) 'raw silk'[54][55]

Other cluster initials, including *s with stops or stops with *l, have been suggested but their existence and nature remains an open question.[56][57]

The Song dynasty rhyme tables classified Qieyun syllables as either 'open' (開 kāi) or 'closed' (合 hé), with the latter believed to indicate a medial -w- or lip rounding.[58] This medial was unevenly distributed, being distinctive only after velar and laryngeal initials or before -aj, -an or -at. This is taken (following André-Georges Haudricourt and Sergei Yakhontov) to indicate that Old Chinese had labiovelar and labiolaryngeal initials but no labiovelar medial.[59] The remaining occurrences of Middle Chinese -w- are believed to result from breaking of a back vowel before these codas (see Vowels below).[60][61]

As Middle Chinese g- occurs only in palatal environments, Li attempted to derive both g- and h- from Old Chinese *ɡ-, but had to assume irregular developments in some cases. Li Rong showed that several words with Middle Chinese initial h- were distinguished in modern Min dialects. For example, 厚 'thick' and 後 'after' were both huwX in Middle Chinese, but have velar and zero initials respectively in several Min dialects. Most authors now assume both *ɡ- and *ɦ-, with subsequent lenition of *ɡ- in non-palatal environments. Similarly *w- is assumed as the labialized counterpart of *ɦ-.[62][63][64]

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 *ʔ- and fricatives *h- and *ɦ-, he proposed uvular stops *q-, *qʰ- and *ɢ-, and similarly labio-uvular stops *qʷ-, *qʷʰ- and *ɢʷ- in place of *ʔʷ-, *hʷ- and *w-.[65][66]

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:[67][68]

Other points of articulation show similar distinctions within stops and nasals. Proto-Min voicing is inferred from the development of Min tones, but the phonetic values of the initials are otherwise uncertain. The sounds indicated as *-t, *-d, etc. are known as "softened stops" due to their reflexes in Jianyang and nearby Min varieties in northwestern Fujian, where they appear as fricatives or approximants (e.g. [v l h] < *-p *-t *-k in Jianyang) or are missing entirely, while the non-softened variants appear as stops. Evidence from early loans into Yao languages suggests that the softened stops were prenasalized.[69]

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.[70][lower-alpha 14]

A fundamental distinction within Middle Chinese is between syllables with division-III finals and the rest, labelled types B and A respectively by Pulleyblank. Most scholars believe that type B syllables were characterized by a palatal medial -j- in Middle Chinese. Although many authors have projected this medial back to a medial *-j- in Old Chinese, others have suggested that the Middle Chinese medial was a secondary development not present in Old Chinese. Evidence includes the use of type B syllables to transcribe foreign words lacking any such medial, the lack of the medial in Tibeto-Burman cognates and modern Min reflexes, and the fact that it is ignored in phonetic series.[82][83] Nonetheless, scholars agree that the difference reflects a real phonological distinction of some sort, often described noncommittally as a distinction between type A and B syllables using a variety of notations.[84][85][86] The distinction has been variously ascribed to:

• the presence or absence of a prefix. Jakhontov held that type B reflected a prefix *d-,[85][87] while Ferlus suggested that type A arose from an unstressed prefix *Cə- (a minor syllable), which conditioned syllabic tenseness contrasting with laxness in type B syllables.[88]
• a length distinction of the main vowel. Pulleyblank initially proposed that type B syllables had longer vowels.[89] Later, citing cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages, Starostin and Zhengzhang independently proposed long vowels for type A and short vowels for type B.[90][91][92] The latter proposal might explain the description in some Eastern Han commentaries of type A and B syllables as huǎnqì 緩氣 'slow breath' and jíqì 急氣 'fast breath' respectively.[93]
• a prosodic stress-based distinction, as later proposed by Pulleyblank,[89] in which type B syllables were stressed in the first mora, while type A syllables were stressed on the second[94]
• pharyngealization of the initial consonant. Norman suggested that type B syllables (his class C), which comprised over half of the syllables of the Qieyun, were in fact unmarked in Old Chinese. Instead, he proposed that the remaining syllables were marked by retroflexion (the *-r- medial) or pharyngealization, either of which prevented palatalization in Middle Chinese.[95] Baxter and Sagart have adopted a variant of this proposal, reconstructing pharyngealized initials in all type A syllables.[96]