Zev Handel
University of Washington, Asian Languages and Literature, Faculty Member
Edited by ILONA ZSOLNAY TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. ILONA ZSOLNAY SECTION ONE: EXPERIENTIAL WRITING CHAPTER ONE. TEXT IN CONTEXT: RELIEF AND HIERARCHY ON PIEDRAS NEGRAS PANEL 3 CLAUDIA BRITTENHAM, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO... more
Edited by
ILONA ZSOLNAY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. ILONA ZSOLNAY
SECTION ONE: EXPERIENTIAL WRITING
CHAPTER ONE. TEXT IN CONTEXT: RELIEF AND HIERARCHY ON PIEDRAS NEGRAS PANEL 3
CLAUDIA BRITTENHAM, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
CHAPTER TWO. THE ICONICITY OF THE VERTICAL: HIEROGLYPHIC ENCODING
AND THE AKHET IN ROYAL BURIAL CHAMBERS OF EGYPT’S NEW KINGDOM
JOSHUA ROBERSON, UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS
CHAPTER THREE. FOR THE EYE ONLY: ASPECTS OF THE VISUAL TEXT IN ANCIENT EGYPT
ANDRÉAS STAUDER, ÉCOLE PRATIQUE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES, UNIVERSITÉ PARIS SCIENCES ET LETTRES (UMR 8167 AOROC)
SECTION TWO: CLASSIFIERS
CHAPTER FOUR. ANIMAL CATEGORIZATION IN MESOPOTAMIA AND THE ORIGINS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
GEBHARD SELZ, VIENNA UNIVERSITY
CHAPTER FIVE. WAS THERE AN “ANIMAL” IN ANCIENT EGYPT? STUDIES IN LEXICA AND CLASSIFIER SYSTEMS, WITH A GLIMPSE TOWARDS SUMER
ORLY GOLDWASSER, HEBREW UNIVERSITY
CHAPTER SIX. THE COGNITIVE ROLE OF SEMANTIC CLASSIFIERS IN MODERN CHINESE WRITING
AS REFLECTED IN NEOGRAM CREATION
ZEV HANDEL, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE
CHAPTER SEVEN. ICONIC AND GRAMMATICAL DIMENSIONS OF SIGN LANGUAGE CLASSIFIERS
DIANE BRENTARI, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
SECTION THREE: SCRIPT EVOLUTIONS
CHAPTER EIGHT. ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN SCRIPTS IN BRONZE AGE ASIA MINOR
ELISABETH RIEKEN AND ILYA YAKUBOVICH, UNIVERSITY OF MARBURG
CHAPTER NINE. ICONICITY, COMPOSITION AND SEMANTICS:
A STRUCTURAL INVESTIGATION OF PICTURES IN AN EARLY WRITING ENVIRONMENT
HOLLY PITTMAN, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
CHAPTER TEN. ABa AND ABb, A MEMOIR, OR THE CURIOUS CASE OF NIĜIN/NANŠE SIGNIFICATION
ILONA ZSOLNAY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
SECTION FOUR: RESPONSE
HAICHENG WANG, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE
ILONA ZSOLNAY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. ILONA ZSOLNAY
SECTION ONE: EXPERIENTIAL WRITING
CHAPTER ONE. TEXT IN CONTEXT: RELIEF AND HIERARCHY ON PIEDRAS NEGRAS PANEL 3
CLAUDIA BRITTENHAM, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
CHAPTER TWO. THE ICONICITY OF THE VERTICAL: HIEROGLYPHIC ENCODING
AND THE AKHET IN ROYAL BURIAL CHAMBERS OF EGYPT’S NEW KINGDOM
JOSHUA ROBERSON, UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS
CHAPTER THREE. FOR THE EYE ONLY: ASPECTS OF THE VISUAL TEXT IN ANCIENT EGYPT
ANDRÉAS STAUDER, ÉCOLE PRATIQUE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES, UNIVERSITÉ PARIS SCIENCES ET LETTRES (UMR 8167 AOROC)
SECTION TWO: CLASSIFIERS
CHAPTER FOUR. ANIMAL CATEGORIZATION IN MESOPOTAMIA AND THE ORIGINS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
GEBHARD SELZ, VIENNA UNIVERSITY
CHAPTER FIVE. WAS THERE AN “ANIMAL” IN ANCIENT EGYPT? STUDIES IN LEXICA AND CLASSIFIER SYSTEMS, WITH A GLIMPSE TOWARDS SUMER
ORLY GOLDWASSER, HEBREW UNIVERSITY
CHAPTER SIX. THE COGNITIVE ROLE OF SEMANTIC CLASSIFIERS IN MODERN CHINESE WRITING
AS REFLECTED IN NEOGRAM CREATION
ZEV HANDEL, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE
CHAPTER SEVEN. ICONIC AND GRAMMATICAL DIMENSIONS OF SIGN LANGUAGE CLASSIFIERS
DIANE BRENTARI, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
SECTION THREE: SCRIPT EVOLUTIONS
CHAPTER EIGHT. ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN SCRIPTS IN BRONZE AGE ASIA MINOR
ELISABETH RIEKEN AND ILYA YAKUBOVICH, UNIVERSITY OF MARBURG
CHAPTER NINE. ICONICITY, COMPOSITION AND SEMANTICS:
A STRUCTURAL INVESTIGATION OF PICTURES IN AN EARLY WRITING ENVIRONMENT
HOLLY PITTMAN, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
CHAPTER TEN. ABa AND ABb, A MEMOIR, OR THE CURIOUS CASE OF NIĜIN/NANŠE SIGNIFICATION
ILONA ZSOLNAY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
SECTION FOUR: RESPONSE
HAICHENG WANG, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE
Research Interests:
In the more than 3,000 years since its invention, the Chinese script has been adapted many times to write languages other than Chinese, including Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Zhuang. "Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the... more
In the more than 3,000 years since its invention, the Chinese script has been adapted many times to write languages other than Chinese, including Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Zhuang. "Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script" provides a comprehensive analysis of how the structural features of these languages constrained and motivated methods of script adaptation. This comparative study reveals the universal principles at work in the borrowing of logographic scripts. By analyzing and explaining these principles, the study advances our understanding of how early writing systems have functioned and spread, providing a new framework that can be applied to the history of scripts beyond East Asia, such as Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform.
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The Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics offers a systematic and comprehensive overview of the languages of China and the different ways in which they are and have been studied. It provides authoritative treatment of all... more
The Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics offers a systematic and comprehensive overview of the languages of China and the different ways in which they are and have been studied. It provides authoritative treatment of all important aspects of the languages spoken in China, today and in the past, from many different angles, as well as the different linguistic traditions they have been investigated in.
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The Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics offers a systematic and comprehensive overview of the languages of China and the different ways in which they are and have been studied. It provides authoritative treatment of all... more
The Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics offers a systematic and comprehensive overview of the languages of China and the different ways in which they are and have been studied. It provides authoritative treatment of all important aspects of the languages spoken in China, today and in the past, from many different angles, as well as the different linguistic traditions they have been investigated in.
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Recent decades have seen considerable advances in the reconstruction of the pronunciation of Old Chinese [OC], the language underlying Chinese texts of the first millennium BCE, and in the reconstruction of Proto-Tibeto-Burman [PTB], the... more
Recent decades have seen considerable advances in the reconstruction of the pronunciation of Old Chinese [OC], the language underlying Chinese texts of the first millennium BCE, and in the reconstruction of Proto-Tibeto-Burman [PTB], the hypothetical ancestor of Tibetan, Burmese, and the dozens of other languages which constitute the Tibeto-Burman [TB] language family.
The aim of this study is to carry out a new comparison between OC and TB, taking into account these advances, in order to refine our understanding of OC, and to arrive at a clearer picture of Proto-Sino-Tibetan [PST], the presumed common ancestor of OC and PTB.
The study focuses on one of the components of the Old Chinese syllable that is presently least well understood, since it is precisely where internal Chinese evidence is inconclusive that we can appeal most profitably to the application of Sino-Tibetan comparison. There is general agreement in the field of Old Chinese historical phonology about the nature of simple initial consonants and endings. It is the intervening elements—medials and vowels—about which the greatest uncertainty and controversy still exists. Clarifying the reconstruction of these elements in Old Chinese would help us to better understand the structure of the Old Chinese syllable, the nature of the vowel system as a whole, and the type and extent of consonant cluster initials. I have chosen to structure the study around medial elements, since these are in a very concrete sense central to the Old Chinese syllable, and their reconstruction touches directly on a number of crucial issues in OC reconstruction.
It is hoped that this study will be of value both to specialists in the fields of Chinese and Tibeto-Burman historical linguistics and to the general Sinologist. New proposals regarding the reconstruction of Old Chinese words are placed at the beginning of each chapter for easy reference, and are also summarized in the final chapter. Supporting data and detailed discussion follow these proposals. All Chinese and Tibeto-Burman forms referenced in the study, along with my proposed reconstructions for the Chinese forms, can be found in the indices and appendices.
The aim of this study is to carry out a new comparison between OC and TB, taking into account these advances, in order to refine our understanding of OC, and to arrive at a clearer picture of Proto-Sino-Tibetan [PST], the presumed common ancestor of OC and PTB.
The study focuses on one of the components of the Old Chinese syllable that is presently least well understood, since it is precisely where internal Chinese evidence is inconclusive that we can appeal most profitably to the application of Sino-Tibetan comparison. There is general agreement in the field of Old Chinese historical phonology about the nature of simple initial consonants and endings. It is the intervening elements—medials and vowels—about which the greatest uncertainty and controversy still exists. Clarifying the reconstruction of these elements in Old Chinese would help us to better understand the structure of the Old Chinese syllable, the nature of the vowel system as a whole, and the type and extent of consonant cluster initials. I have chosen to structure the study around medial elements, since these are in a very concrete sense central to the Old Chinese syllable, and their reconstruction touches directly on a number of crucial issues in OC reconstruction.
It is hoped that this study will be of value both to specialists in the fields of Chinese and Tibeto-Burman historical linguistics and to the general Sinologist. New proposals regarding the reconstruction of Old Chinese words are placed at the beginning of each chapter for easy reference, and are also summarized in the final chapter. Supporting data and detailed discussion follow these proposals. All Chinese and Tibeto-Burman forms referenced in the study, along with my proposed reconstructions for the Chinese forms, can be found in the indices and appendices.
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This article explores the role of unpronounced semantic classifiers, also known as graphemic classifiers or determinatives, in three ancient complex scripts: Egyptian, Chinese and Sumerian. These classifiers are silent hieroglyphs,... more
This article explores the role of unpronounced semantic classifiers, also known as graphemic classifiers or determinatives, in three ancient complex scripts: Egyptian, Chinese and Sumerian. These classifiers are silent hieroglyphs, Chinese characters or cuneiform signs that are combined with other signs that carry phonetic information to form a complete written representation of a word. While these classifiers are written and visible, they are not pronounced. They add silent, motivated semantic information related to the meaning of the word. These classifiers can be found in various positions within words, reflecting cultural and referential information. Classifier studies, in general, have gained significant interest at the intersection of linguistic typology, cognitive linguistics, semiotics of scripts and neuroscience. The research field examines classifiers in oral languages, signed languages and complex scripts, emphasizing that regardless of modality they reflect a shared cognitive effort to organize knowledge. It is our hope that the scholarly contributions in this issue will open up a new chapter in classifier studies and in comparative script analysis. Theoretical and analytical work undertaken in the last few decades has been done primarily by individual researchers specializing in one language or script. Our approach combines large-scale corpus data with comparative script analysis carried out by teams of collaborators who can contribute specialized expertise in different ancient writing systems. The research possibilities opened by our newly developed digital tool iClassifier are presented in detail in the other contributions in this issue. This work has laid a strong comparative foundation that we can now build on, to develop new insights into the early history of script development and the commonalities and differences among ancient cultural conceptualizations of the world.
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This article explores the role of unpronounced semantic classifiers, also known as graphemic classifiers or determinatives, in three ancient complex scripts: Egyptian, Chinese and Sumerian. These classifiers are silent hieroglyphs,... more
This article explores the role of unpronounced semantic classifiers, also known as graphemic classifiers or determinatives, in three ancient complex scripts: Egyptian, Chinese and Sumerian. These classifiers are silent hieroglyphs, Chinese characters or cuneiform signs that are combined with other signs that carry phonetic information to form a complete written representation of a word. While these classifiers are written and visible, they are not pronounced. They add silent, motivated semantic information related to the meaning of the word. These classifiers can be found in various positions within words, reflecting cultural and referential information. Classifier studies, in general, have gained significant interest at the intersection of linguistic typology, cognitive linguistics, semiotics of scripts and neuroscience. The research field examines classifiers in oral languages, signed languages and complex scripts, emphasizing that regardless of modality they reflect a shared cognitive effort to organize knowledge. It is our hope that the scholarly contributions in this issue will open up a new chapter in classifier studies and in comparative script analysis. Theoretical and analytical work undertaken in the last few decades has been done primarily by individual researchers specializing in one language or script. Our approach combines large-scale corpus data with comparative script analysis carried out by teams of collaborators who can contribute specialized expertise in different ancient writing systems. The research possibilities opened by our newly developed digital tool iClassifier are presented in detail in the other contributions in this issue. This work has laid a strong comparative foundation that we can now build on, to develop new insights into the early history of script development and the commonalities and differences among ancient cultural conceptualizations of the world.
Research Interests: Semiotics, Egyptology, Digital Humanities, Comparative Linguistics, Chinese Language and Culture, and 15 moreCognitive Linguistics, Lexical Semantics, Linguistics, Writing Systems (Languages And Linguistics), Categorization, Writing systems, Language Typology, Cuneiform, Ancient Egyptian language, Sumerian Language, Ancient Scripts, History of Writing Systems, Classifier Systems, Script, and Scripts
Co-authored with John Christopher Hamm.
Review of Yurou Zhong. Chinese Grammatology: Script Revolution and Literary Modernity, 1916-1958. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
Review of Yurou Zhong. Chinese Grammatology: Script Revolution and Literary Modernity, 1916-1958. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
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This article provides additional evidence supporting the claim made in Handel 2014 concerning Sin Sukju’s 15th-century use of the Korean letter ㅸ <f> to transcribe the coda of the Míng 明-era Guānhuà 官話 (Mandarin) rime [-awʔ]. Handel 2014... more
This article provides additional evidence supporting the claim made in Handel 2014 concerning Sin Sukju’s 15th-century use of the Korean letter ㅸ <f> to transcribe the coda of the Míng 明-era Guānhuà 官話 (Mandarin) rime [-awʔ]. Handel 2014 argued that ㅸ <f> was used to indicate the abrupt (rù 人 tone) counterpart of Mandarin coda [w], transcribed withㅱ <w>. This use was parallel to that of ㆆ <ʔ> to indicate the abrupt counterparts of Mandarin zero-coda syllables. Additional evidence based on orthographic practice seen in mid-15th-century Korean texts like Hunmin Jeong’eum Haerye shows that the ㅸ <f> ~ㅱ <w> alternation is just one of a set of notational pairings of abrupt and non-abrupt counterparts. The use of ㅸ <f> to represent an early Mandarin rù 人 tone rime can therefore be understand in the broader context of Korean alphabetic notation of that period.
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In a recent article, Fellner & Hill (this volume) level a strong critique against what they view as the misguided prevailing methodology of historical-comparative reconstruction in the Sino-Tibetan (aka Trans-Himalayan) language family.... more
In a recent article, Fellner & Hill (this volume) level a strong critique against what they view as the misguided prevailing methodology of historical-comparative reconstruction in the Sino-Tibetan (aka Trans-Himalayan) language family. The central focus of their criticism is the assembling of "word families" and the reconstruction of ST proto-forms exhibiting variation to account for those word families. In this response, I argue that the methodology is basically sound and is appropriate to the current state of our knowledge. At the same time, I dispute some of the assertions made by Fellner & Hill, which I believe are mischaracterizations of the methods and assumptions underlying the work of Sino-Tibetan scholars. Keywords historical reconstruction-Trans-Himalayan-Sino-Tibetan-Indo-European-methodology word families In an article in the current issue, Fellner and Hill (hereafter "F&H") level a strong critique against what they view as the misguided prevailing methodology of historical-comparative reconstruction in the Sino-Tibetan (ST) (aka Trans-Himalayan) language family.1 At the center of their criticism is the assem-1 Scholars who prefer "Sino-Tibetan" generally adhere to the hypothesis that the family contains two main branches: Tibeto-Burman (TB) and Chinese (aka Sinitic). How one names, or conceptualizes the internal structure of, the family is not relevant to the points made in F&H's article or this response. For convenience, I will use TB to refer to all of the languages of Downloaded from Brill.com11/30/2019 07:33:35PM via SOAS University of London
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This chapter provides an overview of the synchronic and diachronic phonology of the Chinese language family. It describes common features of modern varieties of Chinese and salient features of the major dialect groups. Trends of... more
This chapter provides an overview of the synchronic and diachronic phonology of the Chinese language family. It describes common features of modern varieties of Chinese and salient features of the major dialect groups. Trends of historical development are described along with key features of the reconstructed Old Chinese and Middle Chinese stages. The chapter also includes an explanation of many notational and terminological conventions of the field of Chinese dialect phonology.
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The Chinese zodiac, an ordered cycle of twelve animal names, has been associated with the duodenary cycle known as the “earthly branches” for at least 2000 years. This article explores the hypothesis that the association is due to the... more
The Chinese zodiac, an ordered cycle of twelve animal names, has been associated with the duodenary cycle known as the “earthly branches” for at least 2000 years. This article explores the hypothesis that the association is due to the origin of the earthly branch names in the names of animals from a non-Chinese language.
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The English-language term “rhyme group” (also spelled “rime group”) is commonly seen as a translation of three distinct terms in traditional Chinese phonology: yùn 韻, yùnbù 韻部, and shè 攝. The various meanings of these terms are discussed... more
The English-language term “rhyme group” (also spelled “rime group”) is commonly seen as a translation of three distinct terms in traditional Chinese phonology: yùn 韻, yùnbù 韻部, and shè 攝. The various meanings of these terms are discussed and clarified in this article.
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This article provides an overview of the large and complex field of Chinese phonology, giving cross-references to other articles in the ECLL that provide more detailed information. It summarizes three main aspects of Chinese phonology:... more
This article provides an overview of the large and complex field of Chinese phonology, giving cross-references to other articles in the ECLL that provide more detailed information. It summarizes three main aspects of Chinese phonology: synchronic, historical, and traditional. The phonology of non-Chinese languages spoken in China is not covered.
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This article outlines the role of palatalization in both the synchronic phonologies and the historical development of ancient and modern varieties of Chinese. Palatalization in Chinese is a commonly occurring process, just as in many... more
This article outlines the role of palatalization in both the synchronic phonologies and the historical development of ancient and modern varieties of Chinese. Palatalization in Chinese is a commonly occurring process, just as in many languages around the world. But it has special significance in that it has played a key role in debates about the reconstruction of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese as well as in mid 20th-century structuralist analyses of the phonemicization of Běijīng Mandarin.
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Chinese linguists typically make use of a number of phonetic symbols that are not part of the official International Phonetic Alphabet [IPA] standard (International Phonetic Association 1999). These symbols are commonly encountered in... more
Chinese linguists typically make use of a number of phonetic symbols that are not part of the official International Phonetic Alphabet [IPA] standard (International Phonetic Association 1999). These symbols are commonly encountered in introductory textbooks in phonetics, and are frequently used in works of descriptive linguistics. They are seldom explicitly acknowledged as non-IPA symbols, and it is unclear to what degree their non-official status is recognized within the Chinese linguistic community. Many Western linguists who work in the field of Chinese linguistics also make use of these symbols. This article describes their historical origin and current usage.
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This article discusses the various meanings of the term "fifth tone" as applied to the description and analysis of Mandarin Chinese.
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This article provides an overview of the factors that have influenced the development of the ancient Chinese language spoken 3,000 years ago into the large and varied language family, sometimes known as Sinitic, now spoken by over a... more
This article provides an overview of the factors that have influenced the development of the ancient Chinese language spoken 3,000 years ago into the large and varied language family, sometimes known as Sinitic, now spoken by over a billion people distributed across a huge geographic area. The differences among the so-called Chinese “dialects”, which are great enough that the major varieties such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese and Taiwanese are actually mutually unintelligible languages, result from large-scale expansions of Chinese-speaking peoples and their linguistic culture, followed by internal and contact-induced diversification. The article gives cross-references to other articles in the ECLL that provide more detailed information.
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English today contains dozens of loanwords that are ultimately of Chinese origin. The earliest layers of loanwords are shared with other European languages, but in the 19th and 20th centuries the unique circumstances of British and... more
English today contains dozens of loanwords that are ultimately of Chinese origin. The earliest layers of loanwords are shared with other European languages, but in the 19th and 20th centuries the unique circumstances of British and American interactions with Chinese speakers led to the importation of a number of words not found in other languages of Europe. This article gives examples of the major categories of loanwords, considering their dialectal origins and pathways of borrowing, and also treats the special cases of Sino-Japanese and Sino-Korean loans. Finally, some interesting and problematic cases of loanwords of uncertain provenance are examined.
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Chinese characters are the indigenous writing system of China. That writing system is among the handful of independent inventions of writing by human beings, along with Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan hieroglyphs. But... more
Chinese characters are the indigenous writing system of China. That writing system is among the handful of independent inventions of writing by human beings, along with Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan hieroglyphs. But Chinese characters are unique in being the only such writing system to have been in continuous use up to the present day. For thousands of years they have not only functioned to write Sinitic languages, they have been borrowed and adapted to write many other languages of Asia. They remain a component of other modern writing systems, most notably (as kanji) in Japanese. Chinese characters have figured prominently in the cultural and esthetic history of China and its neighbors. The nature of Chinese writing (especially as compared to alphabetic writing), and the structure and function of Chinese characters and their components, have been matters of fascination and debate in Western philosophy, philology, and religion for centuries. In the contemporary era, the nascent fields of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience are providing new and exciting perspectives on these topics.
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Over the last 20 years, stimulated by William G. Boltz’s influential monograph The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System, a number of scholars in the West have engaged in a debate over the historical status of the... more
Over the last 20 years, stimulated by William G. Boltz’s influential monograph The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System, a number of scholars in the West have engaged in a debate over the historical status of the traditional huìyì 會意 (‘conjoined meaning’) category of Chinese characters. While the existence of such characters within the Chinese writing system at various points in its history is not in dispute, the role of huìyì characters in the formative stages of the script remains a matter of controversy.
In this paper I draw on some recent significant publications on Chinese writing in order to advance a theoretical argument in defense of the existence of huìyì graphs during the formative stages of the script. I argue that iconic combinations of graphs are well motivated and meaningful to script users, and therefore could well have played a role in the formation of the Chinese script. Comparative evidence from other early logographic writing systems as well as evidence from later stages of Chinese both support this argument, and provide an explanation for some early Chinese characters that would seem to defy any interpretation that assigns a phonetic role to one of the components.
In this paper I draw on some recent significant publications on Chinese writing in order to advance a theoretical argument in defense of the existence of huìyì graphs during the formative stages of the script. I argue that iconic combinations of graphs are well motivated and meaningful to script users, and therefore could well have played a role in the formation of the Chinese script. Comparative evidence from other early logographic writing systems as well as evidence from later stages of Chinese both support this argument, and provide an explanation for some early Chinese characters that would seem to defy any interpretation that assigns a phonetic role to one of the components.
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In response to Unger (2014), I argue that Chinese does not merely lie along one end of an undifferentiated continuum of writing systems plotted according to the degree of phonological representation found in its graphs. Rather, two... more
In response to Unger (2014), I argue that Chinese does not merely lie along one end of an undifferentiated continuum of writing systems plotted according to the degree of phonological representation found in its graphs. Rather, two features of Chinese writing make it categorically distinct from even orthographically “deep” alphabetic writing systems like English: (1) the high prevalence of graphs that represent distinct meaningful linguistic units (i.e. morphemes) and (2) the use of graphic components (variously termed significs, determinatives, taxograms, classifiers, radicals) to represent the general semantic domains of those represented morphemes. These features have implications for how Chinese writing is processed in the brain, how it changes over time, and how it has been adapted for the written representation of other languages. For these reasons we should recognize that Chinese writing is distinct from phonographic systems of writing. Any dispute over which term is most appropriate for characterizing Chinese and the other writing systems of its type—logographic, morphographic, morphosyllabic, etc.—is secondary in importance to the recognition of the validity of this categorical distinction.
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为了对使用比较法构拟汉语史进行辩护,尤其是阐明比较法在闽语史中的作用,本文强调两个要点: (1) 原始语言“单一性”的含义, (2) 罗杰瑞原始闽语构拟的“自然性” (naturalness)。
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In this paper, a new method of “fuzzy identification” is proposed for circumstances in which an exact match of an epigraphic written word with later attested forms is not possible (for example, because the word has been lost from the... more
In this paper, a new method of “fuzzy identification” is proposed for circumstances in which an exact match of an epigraphic written word with later attested forms is not possible (for example, because the word has been lost from the language). Based on our increasingly sophisticated understanding of early Chinese morphological patterns and word families, it is sometimes possible to achieve an approximate understanding of pronunciation and meaning in the absence of a precise identification.
As an illustration of this approach, I consider the oracle-bone graph X as it appears in a famous eclipse inscription. This graph has been identified as 斲 zhuó and 剅 dōu (among others). I argue that any such identification is overly precise. A fuzzy identification, as a member of the word family based on root *tok with meaning ‘cut, chop’, is a more accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge and provides greater insight into the possible pronunciations and range of meaning and function of the word.
在某些情況下，早期出土文獻裡出現的有的字無法被精確地隶定為古汉语中已存在的字詞。本文提出，根據现在對早期漢語詞族與詞法結構的研究，有時候最有效的辦法是作一種“模糊辨識”來得出大概的字義和字音。本文以甲骨文「X」字為例。這個字出現于甲骨文兩個日期中间時，或被認為代表“斲”字，或被認為代表“剅”字，还有其他不同的看法存在。但是这些結論恐怕都過度精確。用模糊辨識法，可以認為「X」字屬於*tok（斬）詞族，卻無法更精确地将其隶定為任何一個後期存在的字詞。這樣的模糊辨認既可以得出不會超出已有證據所能支持的結論，又可以提供一個比較可靠的关於此字可能的發音以及功能的瞭解。
As an illustration of this approach, I consider the oracle-bone graph X as it appears in a famous eclipse inscription. This graph has been identified as 斲 zhuó and 剅 dōu (among others). I argue that any such identification is overly precise. A fuzzy identification, as a member of the word family based on root *tok with meaning ‘cut, chop’, is a more accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge and provides greater insight into the possible pronunciations and range of meaning and function of the word.
在某些情況下，早期出土文獻裡出現的有的字無法被精確地隶定為古汉语中已存在的字詞。本文提出，根據现在對早期漢語詞族與詞法結構的研究，有時候最有效的辦法是作一種“模糊辨識”來得出大概的字義和字音。本文以甲骨文「X」字為例。這個字出現于甲骨文兩個日期中间時，或被認為代表“斲”字，或被認為代表“剅”字，还有其他不同的看法存在。但是这些結論恐怕都過度精確。用模糊辨識法，可以認為「X」字屬於*tok（斬）詞族，卻無法更精确地将其隶定為任何一個後期存在的字詞。這樣的模糊辨認既可以得出不會超出已有證據所能支持的結論，又可以提供一個比較可靠的关於此字可能的發音以及功能的瞭解。
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The Korean sinologist and linguist Sin Sukju (1417-1475) devised transcriptions for contemporary Mandarin pronunciation using the then newly-invented Korean alphabet which is today known as Hangul. These transcriptions have been preserved... more
The Korean sinologist and linguist Sin Sukju (1417-1475) devised transcriptions for contemporary Mandarin pronunciation using the then newly-invented Korean alphabet which is today known as Hangul. These transcriptions have been preserved in a number of texts. Sin’s transcriptions clearly reflect a Mandarin variety in which words having the ancient entering tone had lost their -p -t -k endings but were still pronounced abruptly, possibly accompanied by a glottal-stop coda [ʔ]. While Sin transcribed the coda of most Chinese entering-tone syllables using the Hangul letter ㆆ <ʔ>, he transcribed the coda of one syllable type, that found in the Yào 藥 rhyme, with the Hangul letter ㅸ <f>. Sin’s own explanation of his transcriptional practice reveals no reason for this apparent discrepancy; in both cases it would seem that the letter is intended to represent abrupt glottal closure. This aspect of Sin’s notational practice has perplexed scholars up to the present day.
I argue that the explanation for the puzzling discrepancy can be found in factors related to the orthographic structure of Hangul. Taking these factors as a starting point, it is concluded that Sin’s use of ㅸ <f> is a logical and elegant solution to the orthographic and transcriptional challenge he faced. Sin’s coda <ʔ> and coda <f> have the same function of representing the abrupt quality of the entering tone. His use of distinct letters is motivated by graphic as well as phonetic factors.
朝鮮時代的漢學家及語言學家申叔舟(1417-1475)利用當時問世不久的朝鮮諺文字母對明代官話語音進行了對音轉寫，這些轉寫至今仍見於許多傳世文獻中。申叔舟清楚地表明瞭在他所轉寫的明代官話中，入聲韻尾-p, -t, -k已近消失，但是還是與非入聲字有明顯的發音區別，可能帶喉塞韻尾[ʔ]。大部分的入聲韻尾申叔舟都用諺文ㆆ<ʔ>轉寫，惟在“藥”韻中，他使用諺文ㅸ<f>表示其韻尾。兩個字母都被用來表示緊喉促尾，而字母差別的原因，申叔舟並未具體解釋。學界迄今為之困惑不已。
本文認為這種字母運用上的差異實際是為了符合諺文的造字條理。在此認識基礎上，本文進一步推論使用ㅸ<f>韻尾，是申叔舟面臨轉寫挑戰所使用的一種合理而巧妙的手段。無論是韻尾<ʔ>或韻尾<f>，其表現入聲促音色彩的作用是一致的。
I argue that the explanation for the puzzling discrepancy can be found in factors related to the orthographic structure of Hangul. Taking these factors as a starting point, it is concluded that Sin’s use of ㅸ <f> is a logical and elegant solution to the orthographic and transcriptional challenge he faced. Sin’s coda <ʔ> and coda <f> have the same function of representing the abrupt quality of the entering tone. His use of distinct letters is motivated by graphic as well as phonetic factors.
朝鮮時代的漢學家及語言學家申叔舟(1417-1475)利用當時問世不久的朝鮮諺文字母對明代官話語音進行了對音轉寫，這些轉寫至今仍見於許多傳世文獻中。申叔舟清楚地表明瞭在他所轉寫的明代官話中，入聲韻尾-p, -t, -k已近消失，但是還是與非入聲字有明顯的發音區別，可能帶喉塞韻尾[ʔ]。大部分的入聲韻尾申叔舟都用諺文ㆆ<ʔ>轉寫，惟在“藥”韻中，他使用諺文ㅸ<f>表示其韻尾。兩個字母都被用來表示緊喉促尾，而字母差別的原因，申叔舟並未具體解釋。學界迄今為之困惑不已。
本文認為這種字母運用上的差異實際是為了符合諺文的造字條理。在此認識基礎上，本文進一步推論使用ㅸ<f>韻尾，是申叔舟面臨轉寫挑戰所使用的一種合理而巧妙的手段。無論是韻尾<ʔ>或韻尾<f>，其表現入聲促音色彩的作用是一致的。
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This article critically explores William G. Boltz's claim that, in respect to the earliest stages of the Chinese writing system, "As a rule, we cannot but insist that ‘phonetic-less’ characters simply do not exist."
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Ersu, Lizu and Duoxu (collectively ELD) are three closely related, little-studied Tibeto-Burman [TB] languages of Sichuan Province in China. Their position within the broader TB family is a matter of dispute. Recent analyses variously... more
Ersu, Lizu and Duoxu (collectively ELD) are three closely related, little-studied Tibeto-Burman [TB] languages of Sichuan Province in China. Their position within the broader TB family is a matter of dispute. Recent analyses variously link them to other lesser-known TB languages of Sichuan (known under the term Qiangic, Sūn 2001a) or consider them more closely related to the Naish languages (Bradley 2008, 2012; Jacques & Michaud 2011). This study presents one significant new finding for the reconstruction of Proto-ELD (going beyond the conclusions of Yu 2012): the existence of voiceless nasal onsets. This finding not only illuminates the broader problem of classification of the languages of the area, it also suggests the existence of a universal pathway of sequenced changes related to the development and loss of voiceless nasals in languages of the world.
The study makes use of a significant amount of new data arising from recent fieldwork. The conclusions are based on a combination of (i) the techniques of the comparative method within the ELD cluster, (ii) external comparison with cognates elsewhere in Tibeto-Burman, and (iii) analysis of universal phonetic mechanisms and constraints.
Voiceless nasals are posited based on cognate sets like the following for ‘ripe’, showing a correspondence between a voiceless fricative in Ersu, a voiceless nasal approximant in Lizu, and a nasal stop in Duoxu:
Ersu /(dɛ³¹-)xe⁵¹/, Lizu /(de³³-)h̃e⁵¹/, Duoxu /me³⁴/
The reconstruction is supported by cognate forms elsewhere in TB (for example, Written Burmese /m̥ɛ1/ ‘ripe’ and Written Tibetan smyin ‘ripe’). In combination with recent acoustic studies of voiceless nasals in several different TB languages, it is argued that ELD developments are part of a general pathway of change that can be schematized as:
*sN > *N̥N > *N̥ > h̃ > x
While the development of voiceless nasals within Tibeto-Burman is not uncommon, the high degree of consistency within ELD that allows for the regular reconstruction of Proto-ELD voiceless nasals in a particular subset of lexical items constitutes an innovation that suggests that the ELD cluster is a legitimate taxonomic node within TB that may not be as closely aligned with other TB languages of Sichuan as previously thought. We further suggest that the developments of nasal initials may be used as a general diagnostic tool to help sort out the relationships among lesser-known languages of Sichuan whose genetic and contact affiliations remain obscure.
More generally, the study provides further insights into the synchronic and diachronic aspects of voiceless nasals, a type of sound that remains somewhat poorly described and poorly understood due to its relative rarity in languages of the world.
The study makes use of a significant amount of new data arising from recent fieldwork. The conclusions are based on a combination of (i) the techniques of the comparative method within the ELD cluster, (ii) external comparison with cognates elsewhere in Tibeto-Burman, and (iii) analysis of universal phonetic mechanisms and constraints.
Voiceless nasals are posited based on cognate sets like the following for ‘ripe’, showing a correspondence between a voiceless fricative in Ersu, a voiceless nasal approximant in Lizu, and a nasal stop in Duoxu:
Ersu /(dɛ³¹-)xe⁵¹/, Lizu /(de³³-)h̃e⁵¹/, Duoxu /me³⁴/
The reconstruction is supported by cognate forms elsewhere in TB (for example, Written Burmese /m̥ɛ1/ ‘ripe’ and Written Tibetan smyin ‘ripe’). In combination with recent acoustic studies of voiceless nasals in several different TB languages, it is argued that ELD developments are part of a general pathway of change that can be schematized as:
*sN > *N̥N > *N̥ > h̃ > x
While the development of voiceless nasals within Tibeto-Burman is not uncommon, the high degree of consistency within ELD that allows for the regular reconstruction of Proto-ELD voiceless nasals in a particular subset of lexical items constitutes an innovation that suggests that the ELD cluster is a legitimate taxonomic node within TB that may not be as closely aligned with other TB languages of Sichuan as previously thought. We further suggest that the developments of nasal initials may be used as a general diagnostic tool to help sort out the relationships among lesser-known languages of Sichuan whose genetic and contact affiliations remain obscure.
More generally, the study provides further insights into the synchronic and diachronic aspects of voiceless nasals, a type of sound that remains somewhat poorly described and poorly understood due to its relative rarity in languages of the world.
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""In the 1950s and 1960s, the government of the People’s Republic of China undertook, in two stages, a carefully planned “simplification” of the logographic Chinese script. Drawing on a variety of historical precedents, over 2,000... more
""In the 1950s and 1960s, the government of the People’s Republic of China undertook, in two stages, a carefully planned “simplification” of the logographic Chinese script. Drawing on a variety of historical precedents, over 2,000 individual graphs were modified in an attempt to make the script easier to learn and use. This was the first significant change in the official form of the Chinese script in nearly two millennia, and resulted in the script variety that is widely used today in mainland China, commonly termed “simplified Chinese characters.” Drawing on recent psycholinguistic experiments that attempt to characterize the cognitive functions involved in Chinese script processing, this study revisits long-standing questions about the efficacy of character simplification and provides some additional theoretical insights into the nature of logographic writing.
The central conclusion of this study is that meaningful simplification of a logographic script is possible, but that today’s simplified character script cannot be characterized as an effective reform by any reasonable metric—it is only “simpler” in the crudest of senses. After evaluating the results of recent studies on the cognitive processing of Chinese characters, I introduce the concept of semantic orthographic depth and argue that a true simplification of a logographic script should be based on regularization of semantic and phonetic components, rather than on reduction of the number of graphs or the reduction of the number of strokes per graph. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that a well functioning logographic script has cognitive advantages over purely phonographic scripts. As a thought experiment, I apply these conclusions to sketch out a scheme for what genuinely effective logographic reform of the Chinese script might have looked like.""
The central conclusion of this study is that meaningful simplification of a logographic script is possible, but that today’s simplified character script cannot be characterized as an effective reform by any reasonable metric—it is only “simpler” in the crudest of senses. After evaluating the results of recent studies on the cognitive processing of Chinese characters, I introduce the concept of semantic orthographic depth and argue that a true simplification of a logographic script should be based on regularization of semantic and phonetic components, rather than on reduction of the number of graphs or the reduction of the number of strokes per graph. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that a well functioning logographic script has cognitive advantages over purely phonographic scripts. As a thought experiment, I apply these conclusions to sketch out a scheme for what genuinely effective logographic reform of the Chinese script might have looked like.""
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A voicing alternation in the Middle Chinese pronunciation of the initial consonant of Chinese verbs has long been recognized as the reflection of a morphological process dating to the Old Chinese period or earlier. As illustrated by the... more
A voicing alternation in the Middle Chinese pronunciation of the initial consonant of Chinese verbs has long been recognized as the reflection of a morphological process dating to the Old Chinese period or earlier. As illustrated by the pair of words zhāng 張 (MC trjang) ‘to stretch (trans.)’ : cháng 長 (MC drjang) ‘to be long (intr.)’, this morphological process is associated with transitive/intransitive word pairs. There is disagreement among historical phonologists about whether this alternation should be attributed to a detransitivizing nasal voicing prefix *N- or to a causativizing sibilant devoicing prefix *s-. In this paper I summarize the internal and comparative evidence and review the recent arguments put forth by specialists in support of both views, and conclude that both explanations are not entirely satisfactory. I propose that further research must consider the possibility that several processes were at work, and that productive and frozen morphological processes may have co-existed with analogical leveling at various points before and during the Old Chinese period.
中古漢語動詞聲母清濁別義的現象，例如:“張”和“長～短”，被認為是上古音或者更早構詞現象的反映。這種清濁別義的現象，有的學者認為其上古音的來源是起濁化作用的去及物性前綴*N-，也有的學者認為是起清化作用的使動化前綴*s-。本文總結介紹來自漢語內部的證據和來自比較語言學的證據，以及學者就這兩種假設提出的最新的意見。由於這兩方面假設都不能令人完全滿意，本文作者根據以上材料進一步提出新的看法, 認為上古漢語時期可能有不同的構詞過程並存，但各種詞綴不一定都同時具備構詞能力，有的到了上古時期可能已經失去了構詞能力。
中古漢語動詞聲母清濁別義的現象，例如:“張”和“長～短”，被認為是上古音或者更早構詞現象的反映。這種清濁別義的現象，有的學者認為其上古音的來源是起濁化作用的去及物性前綴*N-，也有的學者認為是起清化作用的使動化前綴*s-。本文總結介紹來自漢語內部的證據和來自比較語言學的證據，以及學者就這兩種假設提出的最新的意見。由於這兩方面假設都不能令人完全滿意，本文作者根據以上材料進一步提出新的看法, 認為上古漢語時期可能有不同的構詞過程並存，但各種詞綴不一定都同時具備構詞能力，有的到了上古時期可能已經失去了構詞能力。
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Jerry Norman is one of the world’s most widely acknowledged and respected experts on the Min dialects. Yet his crowning achievement in the field, his reconstruction of Proto-Min phonology, has not received widespread acceptance. Many... more
Jerry Norman is one of the world’s most widely acknowledged and respected experts on the Min dialects. Yet his crowning achievement in the field, his reconstruction of Proto-Min phonology, has not received widespread acceptance. Many scholars have argued that Norman’s reliance on the comparative method is misguided, and that in researching the history of peculiar features in Chinese dialects emphasis must be placed on uncovering the lexical layers resulting from dialect contact. Yet the opposition between a comparative-reconstructive approach and a lexical layering approach, which appears to lie at the heart of the disagreement, is not sufficient to account for the different conclusions of these scholars. I argue that a major reason lies instead in fundamental differences of opinion about data collection and interpretation, rather than in differences of methodology and analysis. Because these differences in underlying assumptions have for the most part not been explicitly addressed in the academic literature, it has not been possible to reconcile the two competing storylines about the history of the Min dialects.
This study focuses in particular on Norman’s proposal for the reconstruction of a series of Proto-Min “softened” stop initials and on the data that appears to support or refute the proposal. Refutations by scholars like Hirata Shōji, Lǐ Rúlóng, and Wáng Fútáng appear to simply present alternative explanations for the same phenomena that Norman seeks to explain. In fact, however, the data sets on which these and other scholars’ work is based overlap only partially with the supporting data presented by Norman. It is only through a careful examination of how these data sets differ that the basic differences in assumptions, and the way they shape methodology, can be brought out into the open. By doing so, I hope to take a step toward providing a common framework that will allow competing hypotheses to stop “talking past each other” and instead to contribute to the development of a comprehensive natural history of Chinese dialects."
This study focuses in particular on Norman’s proposal for the reconstruction of a series of Proto-Min “softened” stop initials and on the data that appears to support or refute the proposal. Refutations by scholars like Hirata Shōji, Lǐ Rúlóng, and Wáng Fútáng appear to simply present alternative explanations for the same phenomena that Norman seeks to explain. In fact, however, the data sets on which these and other scholars’ work is based overlap only partially with the supporting data presented by Norman. It is only through a careful examination of how these data sets differ that the basic differences in assumptions, and the way they shape methodology, can be brought out into the open. By doing so, I hope to take a step toward providing a common framework that will allow competing hypotheses to stop “talking past each other” and instead to contribute to the development of a comprehensive natural history of Chinese dialects."
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The Min dialects are known to have split off of from mainstream Chinese before the Middle Chinese period. This paper explores the implications of this split in terms of the possible relationship between Min and Old Chinese. Through a... more
The Min dialects are known to have split off of from mainstream Chinese before the Middle Chinese period. This paper explores the implications of this split in terms of the possible relationship between Min and Old Chinese. Through a comparison of Norman’s Proto-Min reconstruction with the most recent Old Chinese reconstruction system of Baxter and Sagart, including references to early Chinese borrowings in Tai and Hmong-Mien, it is argued that Norman’s “softened initials” *-p and *-b have their origin in Old Chinese iambic nasal pre-initials, which developed into prenasalized initials.
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"This comparative study of the adaptation of Chinese characters for writing the languages of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam concludes that language-typological similarities and differences were a primary motivator and constraint. The Chinese... more
"This comparative study of the adaptation of Chinese characters for writing the languages of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam concludes that language-typological similarities and differences were a primary motivator and constraint. The Chinese writing system at the time it was first borrowed was primarily logographic. In Japan and Korea, where the indigenous languages were typologically distinct from the isolating, monosyllabic Chinese language but similar to each other, the processes of adaptation were remarkably parallel (although also marked by small but significant differences). In Vietnam, where the indigenous language was typologically similar to Chinese, the development of writing took a notably different path.
Through a systematic analysis of the methods by which logographs in one writing system can be repurposed as logographs or phonographs in a second writing system, it is argued that typological factors played a crucial role in shaping what may be called the major sinographic writing systems of Asia: Japanese man’yōgana, Korean hyangchal, and Vietnamese chữ nôm. Typological factors also shaped subsequent script developments, explaining why kana syllabaries developed in Japan but not in Korea and accounting for the complexity of Vietnamese nôm graphs. These conclusions have broader implications for our understanding of the general mechanisms of script change."
Through a systematic analysis of the methods by which logographs in one writing system can be repurposed as logographs or phonographs in a second writing system, it is argued that typological factors played a crucial role in shaping what may be called the major sinographic writing systems of Asia: Japanese man’yōgana, Korean hyangchal, and Vietnamese chữ nôm. Typological factors also shaped subsequent script developments, explaining why kana syllabaries developed in Japan but not in Korea and accounting for the complexity of Vietnamese nôm graphs. These conclusions have broader implications for our understanding of the general mechanisms of script change."
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The Northern Min dialects have two unusual and interrelated features: the presence (in some dialects) of voiced or lenited initials which do not correspond to the voiced initials of Middle Chinese, and a pattern of tonal splits that... more
The Northern Min dialects have two unusual and interrelated features: the presence (in some dialects) of voiced or lenited initials which do not correspond to the voiced initials of Middle Chinese, and a pattern of tonal splits that cannot be accounted for by conditioning factors of the Middle Chinese phonological system. Various scholars have proposed different hypotheses concerning the origin of these two features. Through analysis of their phonetic aspects, it is argued that the features cannot be the result of recent contact with nearby Wu dialects, but must have been conditioned by a feature found in Proto-Northern Min, most likely a series of voiced aspirate initials. The historical origin of those initials, including the possibility that they entered Proto-Northern Min from another dialect source, is explored.
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Sino-Tibetan is one of the great language families of the world, containing hundreds of languages spoken by over 1 billion people, from Northeast India to the Southeast Asian peninsula. The best-known languages in the family are Chinese,... more
Sino-Tibetan is one of the great language families of the world, containing hundreds of languages spoken by over 1 billion people, from Northeast India to the Southeast Asian peninsula. The best-known languages in the family are Chinese, Tibetan, and Burmese. Although the existence of the family has been recognized for nearly 200 years, significant progress in reconstructing the history of the family was not achieved until the latter half of the twentieth century. In recent decades, this progress has accelerated, thanks to an explosion of new data and new approaches. At the same time, a number of interesting controversies have emerged in the field, centered on such issues as subgrouping and reconstruction methodology.
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It has long been recognized that the codas of the words fēng風 ‘wind (n.)’ and xióng 熊 ‘bear (n.)’ underwent dissimilation from Old Chinese *-m to Middle Chinese *-ŋ. The change is also recognized to have occurred in some other words... more
It has long been recognized that the codas of the words fēng風 ‘wind (n.)’ and xióng 熊 ‘bear (n.)’ underwent dissimilation from Old Chinese *-m to Middle Chinese *-ŋ. The change is also recognized to have occurred in some other words whose characters are in phonetic series with fēng風. This paper proposes that this change affected more lexical items than has previously been recognized, and that the Old Chinese ending *-m should also be reconstructed for yōng 邕 ‘city moat’, gōng 宮 ‘palace’ and gōng 躳 ‘body, person’. This proposal is based on diverse but complementary types of evidence, including early graphic forms, graphic variants, phonetic series connections, word family relationships, and Tibeto-Burman cognates. The proposal conforms with some suggestions made by previous scholars such as Paul K. Benedict. It may be possible in the future to identify by similar means additional lexical items that participated in this sound change.
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Duoxu, Lizu, and Ersu are three closely related Tibeto-Burman (TB) languages spoken in close proximity in Sichuan. They are recognized to be a close-knit taxonomic cluster sharing a high proportion of their lexicons and exhibiting a high... more
Duoxu, Lizu, and Ersu are three closely related Tibeto-Burman (TB) languages spoken in close proximity in Sichuan. They are recognized to be a close-knit taxonomic cluster sharing a high proportion of their lexicons and exhibiting a high degree of regularity of correspondence across cognate sets (Sūn 1983, 2001; Yu 2012; Chirkova 2014a).
Until recently, reliable data on Duoxu, which is moribund, was not available, hampering the systematic comparison of Duoxu with the better-described and analyzed Lizu and Ersu languages. But in recent years, the ongoing collection, analysis, and publication of Duoxu data (e.g. Huang & Yin 2012; Chirkova 2014a; 2015; Chirkova & Han 2016) has opened up new avenues of historical-comparative analysis, which in turn provide an opportunity to re-evaluate the genetic position of the cluster within Tibeto-Burman.
The first part of this paper makes use of the most accurate and up-to-date data on Duoxu (including Chirkova 2015, a sketch of Duoxu accompanied by sound files) to provide a systematic comparison of the tone systems of Duoxu and Proto-Lolo-Burmese, which show remarkably regular correspondences (as already suggested by Chirkova 2014b). Moreover, the historical development of the Duoxu tone system can be closely correlated with the conditioning factors for historical tone splits within Lolo-Burmese, such as *ʔ-, *s-, and *C- prefixation (Matisoff 1972; Bradley 1979). In short, it appears that the Duoxu tone system is derivable from the tone system of Proto-Lolo-Burmese. This implies an especially close historical connection between Duoxu and the Lolo-Burmese family.
The further implications of this close connection are discussed in the second part of the paper. The genetic position of the recognized Duoxu-Lizu-Ersu cluster within the TB language family has been disputed. For instance, Nishida (1973, 1976) sees a close link between Duoxu and Lolo-Burmese languages, whereas other scholars link these languages to Qiangic and Naish (e.g. Sūn 2001; Jacques & Michaud 2011; Yu 2012). Although it has been argued based on segmental correspondences that the Duoxu-Lizu-Ersu cluster is closest to Lolo-Burmese (Chirkova & Handel 2013), the tone systems of Lizu and Ersu have not been amenable to systematic comparison with other TB languages. This is likely the result of relatively late large-scale shifts from purely lexical tonal systems to polysyllabic prosodic-prominence systems in those two languages, shifts that have significantly distorted the historical tone systems (cf. Chirkova and Chen 2013; Chirkova et al. 2015).
Now that the close connection between Duoxu and Lolo-Burmese tone systems can be firmly established, the argument that the Duoxu-Lizu-Ersu cluster is genetically closest to Lolo-Burmese can be advanced in considerably strengthened form. Whether or not the cluster should be considered a branch of Lolo-Burmese proper, or a member of a larger “para-Lolo-Burmese” unit, is left as a matter for further investigation.
Until recently, reliable data on Duoxu, which is moribund, was not available, hampering the systematic comparison of Duoxu with the better-described and analyzed Lizu and Ersu languages. But in recent years, the ongoing collection, analysis, and publication of Duoxu data (e.g. Huang & Yin 2012; Chirkova 2014a; 2015; Chirkova & Han 2016) has opened up new avenues of historical-comparative analysis, which in turn provide an opportunity to re-evaluate the genetic position of the cluster within Tibeto-Burman.
The first part of this paper makes use of the most accurate and up-to-date data on Duoxu (including Chirkova 2015, a sketch of Duoxu accompanied by sound files) to provide a systematic comparison of the tone systems of Duoxu and Proto-Lolo-Burmese, which show remarkably regular correspondences (as already suggested by Chirkova 2014b). Moreover, the historical development of the Duoxu tone system can be closely correlated with the conditioning factors for historical tone splits within Lolo-Burmese, such as *ʔ-, *s-, and *C- prefixation (Matisoff 1972; Bradley 1979). In short, it appears that the Duoxu tone system is derivable from the tone system of Proto-Lolo-Burmese. This implies an especially close historical connection between Duoxu and the Lolo-Burmese family.
The further implications of this close connection are discussed in the second part of the paper. The genetic position of the recognized Duoxu-Lizu-Ersu cluster within the TB language family has been disputed. For instance, Nishida (1973, 1976) sees a close link between Duoxu and Lolo-Burmese languages, whereas other scholars link these languages to Qiangic and Naish (e.g. Sūn 2001; Jacques & Michaud 2011; Yu 2012). Although it has been argued based on segmental correspondences that the Duoxu-Lizu-Ersu cluster is closest to Lolo-Burmese (Chirkova & Handel 2013), the tone systems of Lizu and Ersu have not been amenable to systematic comparison with other TB languages. This is likely the result of relatively late large-scale shifts from purely lexical tonal systems to polysyllabic prosodic-prominence systems in those two languages, shifts that have significantly distorted the historical tone systems (cf. Chirkova and Chen 2013; Chirkova et al. 2015).
Now that the close connection between Duoxu and Lolo-Burmese tone systems can be firmly established, the argument that the Duoxu-Lizu-Ersu cluster is genetically closest to Lolo-Burmese can be advanced in considerably strengthened form. Whether or not the cluster should be considered a branch of Lolo-Burmese proper, or a member of a larger “para-Lolo-Burmese” unit, is left as a matter for further investigation.
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This presentation examines the current state of progress in the reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, with an emphasis on those aspects that remain the focus of controversy or uncertainty. Sino-Tibetan may be defined as the language... more
This presentation examines the current state of progress in the reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, with an emphasis on those aspects that remain the focus of controversy or uncertainty. Sino-Tibetan may be defined as the language family containing Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese and all the languages derived from their most recent common ancestor. The hypothetical ancestor language from which this family descends is termed Proto-Sino-Tibetan. Over the last half of the 20th century and proceeding into the 21st century, a number of scholars (including Paul K. Benedict, James A. Matisoff, and Gong Hwang-cherng) have attempted full or partial reconstructions of this language. Yet today, despite immense progress in fieldwork, data collection and consolidation, and comparative reconstruction, many basic questions remain. I will focus my discussion on the most salient of these questions, including:
• the membership of the family: which languages belong to Sino-Tibetan?
• the broader genetic affiliations of the family: can Sino-Tibetan be shown to be one branch of a larger language family?
• the proto-vowel system: did Proto-Sino-Tibetan have four, five, or six vowels?
• the proto-consonant system: did Proto-Sino-Tibetan have a two-way distinction (e.g. *p- vs. *b-) or a three-way distinction (e.g. *p- vs. *pʰ- vs. *b-)?
• the proto-word structure: were many basic words “sesquisyllabic”, made up of a reduced syllable and a full syllable? If so, were these sesquisyllabic words always morphologically complex?
• the proto-prosodic system: was Proto-Sino-Tibetan tonal? Did it have a syllabic distinction corresponding to the well-known “Type A/B” distinction of Old Chinese?
• the proto-derivational morphology: what derivational affixes existed in Proto-Sino-Tibetan, and to what degree of certainty can their functions be reconstructed?
• the proto-inflectional morphology: was Proto-Sino-Tibetan characterized by simple or complex verbal morphology?
Following discussion of these issues, the direction of future scholarship, and the prospects for future progress, will be examined.
• the membership of the family: which languages belong to Sino-Tibetan?
• the broader genetic affiliations of the family: can Sino-Tibetan be shown to be one branch of a larger language family?
• the proto-vowel system: did Proto-Sino-Tibetan have four, five, or six vowels?
• the proto-consonant system: did Proto-Sino-Tibetan have a two-way distinction (e.g. *p- vs. *b-) or a three-way distinction (e.g. *p- vs. *pʰ- vs. *b-)?
• the proto-word structure: were many basic words “sesquisyllabic”, made up of a reduced syllable and a full syllable? If so, were these sesquisyllabic words always morphologically complex?
• the proto-prosodic system: was Proto-Sino-Tibetan tonal? Did it have a syllabic distinction corresponding to the well-known “Type A/B” distinction of Old Chinese?
• the proto-derivational morphology: what derivational affixes existed in Proto-Sino-Tibetan, and to what degree of certainty can their functions be reconstructed?
• the proto-inflectional morphology: was Proto-Sino-Tibetan characterized by simple or complex verbal morphology?
Following discussion of these issues, the direction of future scholarship, and the prospects for future progress, will be examined.
Research Interests:
Proposals for higher-order genetic affiliations among the five recognized major language families of Southeast Asia (Sino-Tibetan aka Tibeto-Burman, Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai, Austronesian, Austroasiatic) remain highly contested. Because of... more
Proposals for higher-order genetic affiliations among the five recognized major language families of Southeast Asia (Sino-Tibetan aka Tibeto-Burman, Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai, Austronesian, Austroasiatic) remain highly contested. Because of the time depths and complex migration histories involved, proving higher-order affiliations based on traditional methods of linguistic comparison is methodologically fraught. Recent attempts to integrate genetic and archeological evidence have raised intriguing new hypotheses, but these must be viewed skeptically. Linguistic spread and divergence are not necessarily correlated with cultural and genetic dispersal patterns. While hypotheses about the historical relationship among languages must be rejected if they are incompatible with other historical evidence, it is conversely true that linguistic evidence must be primary in evaluating such hypotheses. Yet the existence of fundamental weaknesses in the accepted methodologies of historical linguistics (e.g. the difficulty of distinguishing early layers of borrowed vocabulary from commonly inherited cognates), combined with challenges inherent in the typologies of many of the languages involved (e.g. scarcity of inflectional paradigms), makes evaluation of the linguistic evidence inherently problematic. This paper evaluates the Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian [STAN] hypothesis of Laurent Sagart within this challenging methodological context.
Sagart’s STAN hypothesis makes the claims that (a) Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian are genetically related to as two major branches of a larger family; (b) Tai-Kadai is a branch within Austronesian. The hypothesis is accompanied by proposed associations between linguistic communities and major archeological sites in China.
The primary linguistic evidence adduced by Sagart is a set of proposed cognates, including basic vocabulary, argued to exhibit regular sound correspondences and to reflect some shared derivational morphology. This data is further buttressed by proposed cognates referring to the two major cereals that were cultivated by the Proto-STAN speakers. The strengths of Sagart’s hypothesis are balanced by a number of weaknesses: the absence of pronouns and numerals among proposed cognates and contested claims concerning morphological affixes and processes. Moreover, Sagart’s hypothesis fails to grapple with potentially crucial questions concerning the internal structure and homeland of Sino-Tibetan which have been raised by other scholars.
Sagart’s STAN hypothesis makes the claims that (a) Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian are genetically related to as two major branches of a larger family; (b) Tai-Kadai is a branch within Austronesian. The hypothesis is accompanied by proposed associations between linguistic communities and major archeological sites in China.
The primary linguistic evidence adduced by Sagart is a set of proposed cognates, including basic vocabulary, argued to exhibit regular sound correspondences and to reflect some shared derivational morphology. This data is further buttressed by proposed cognates referring to the two major cereals that were cultivated by the Proto-STAN speakers. The strengths of Sagart’s hypothesis are balanced by a number of weaknesses: the absence of pronouns and numerals among proposed cognates and contested claims concerning morphological affixes and processes. Moreover, Sagart’s hypothesis fails to grapple with potentially crucial questions concerning the internal structure and homeland of Sino-Tibetan which have been raised by other scholars.
Research Interests:
In the 1950s and 1960s, the government of the People’s Republic of China undertook, in two stages, a carefully planned “simplification” of the logographic Chinese script. Drawing on a variety of historical precedents, over 2,000... more
In the 1950s and 1960s, the government of the People’s Republic of China undertook, in two stages, a carefully planned “simplification” of the logographic Chinese script. Drawing on a variety of historical precedents, over 2,000 individual graphs were modified in an attempt to make the script easier to learn and use. This was the first significant change in the official form of the Chinese script in nearly two millennia, and resulted in the script variety that is widely used today in mainland China, commonly termed “simplified Chinese characters”. Because the traditional script has remained in use in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the reform offers an opportunity to compare the scripts and draw conclusions about the efficacy of logographic simplification. Such a comparison offers the possibility of broader theoretical insight into the nature of logographic writing.
This study has several goals: (1) To describe and analyze the script-internal results of the simplification; (2) to evaluate the practical effects of the simplification; (3) to explore the theoretical implications raised by the simplification. A central question is whether the available evidence—including recent studies on script learning and reading strategies of Chinese speakers—supports the idea that a logographic script structured like Chinese can be meaningfully simplified without being changed to a phonographic script. The conclusion is that a meaningful logographic simplification is possible, but that today’s simplified character script cannot be characterized as an effective reform by any reasonable metric—it is only “simpler” in the crudest of senses. Based on the results of recent studies on the cognitive processing of Chinese characters, I propose a scheme for genuine logographic reform of the Chinese script, and further suggest that there would be advantages to such a simplification in comparison not only to the two existing Chinese scripts, but even to replacement by a phonographic (alphabetic or syllabic) writing system.
This conclusion is intended to be of purely theoretical interest. For a number of practical reasons, further simplification of the script is almost certainly not advisable from a policy standpoint.
This study has several goals: (1) To describe and analyze the script-internal results of the simplification; (2) to evaluate the practical effects of the simplification; (3) to explore the theoretical implications raised by the simplification. A central question is whether the available evidence—including recent studies on script learning and reading strategies of Chinese speakers—supports the idea that a logographic script structured like Chinese can be meaningfully simplified without being changed to a phonographic script. The conclusion is that a meaningful logographic simplification is possible, but that today’s simplified character script cannot be characterized as an effective reform by any reasonable metric—it is only “simpler” in the crudest of senses. Based on the results of recent studies on the cognitive processing of Chinese characters, I propose a scheme for genuine logographic reform of the Chinese script, and further suggest that there would be advantages to such a simplification in comparison not only to the two existing Chinese scripts, but even to replacement by a phonographic (alphabetic or syllabic) writing system.
This conclusion is intended to be of purely theoretical interest. For a number of practical reasons, further simplification of the script is almost certainly not advisable from a policy standpoint.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In the modern Chinese writing system, the vast majority of Chinese characters are logograms with semantic-phonetic compound structure. These characters consist in origin of a semantic element and a phonetic element, each of which bears a... more
In the modern Chinese writing system, the vast majority of Chinese characters are logograms with semantic-phonetic compound structure. These characters consist in origin of a semantic element and a phonetic element, each of which bears a non-arbitrary relationship to the spoken morpheme that the character represents. These functional elements are closed sets of graphic elements and comprise meaningful structural subsystems within the writing system, with striking parallels to subsystems in other early logosyllabic writing systems, such as Egyptian and Sumerian.
In this paper I focus on an analysis of the closed set of elements which can fill the semantic slot in a semantic-phonetic compound. Even though many of these elements are formally identical to logograms that represent spoken morphemes, they play a functional role that is independent of speech units. They can therefore be considered a system of classificatory signs (“semantic classifiers”) that is embedded in and interfaces with the glottographic functions of the graphic units of which they form a part.
Because of the unbroken history of use of the Chinese script from its creation down to the present day, the cognitive and functional role of these elements can be investigated in ways that are not available to researchers interested in the similar systems that are embedded in ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, and Mayan writing. Recent psycholinguistic studies provide insights into the role that these classifiers play in learning, remembering, and recognizing graphs, as well as into how they interface with cognitive categories in the minds of script users. We can also examine the role that these classifiers play in the ongoing creation of new characters. By focusing on character creation in the last few centuries, we can ascertain with a reasonable degree of certainty which classifiers are cognitively “active” and how they relate to the mental categorization of modern words and morphemes.
In this paper I focus on an analysis of the closed set of elements which can fill the semantic slot in a semantic-phonetic compound. Even though many of these elements are formally identical to logograms that represent spoken morphemes, they play a functional role that is independent of speech units. They can therefore be considered a system of classificatory signs (“semantic classifiers”) that is embedded in and interfaces with the glottographic functions of the graphic units of which they form a part.
Because of the unbroken history of use of the Chinese script from its creation down to the present day, the cognitive and functional role of these elements can be investigated in ways that are not available to researchers interested in the similar systems that are embedded in ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, and Mayan writing. Recent psycholinguistic studies provide insights into the role that these classifiers play in learning, remembering, and recognizing graphs, as well as into how they interface with cognitive categories in the minds of script users. We can also examine the role that these classifiers play in the ongoing creation of new characters. By focusing on character creation in the last few centuries, we can ascertain with a reasonable degree of certainty which classifiers are cognitively “active” and how they relate to the mental categorization of modern words and morphemes.
Research Interests:
Review of: Peter F. Kornicki. Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 416 pp. $100.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-879782-1.
Research Interests:
Review of WRITING TECHNOLOGY IN MEIJI JAPAN: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture | By Seth Jacobowitz. Harvard East Asian Monographs, no. 387. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center; Harvard University... more
Review of WRITING TECHNOLOGY IN MEIJI JAPAN: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture | By Seth Jacobowitz.
Harvard East Asian Monographs, no. 387. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center; Harvard University Press [distributor], 2015. xii, 299 pp. (Illustrations.) US$39.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-674-08841-2.
Harvard East Asian Monographs, no. 387. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center; Harvard University Press [distributor], 2015. xii, 299 pp. (Illustrations.) US$39.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-674-08841-2.