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Rime / rhyme tables / charts

Language Log 2025-04-10

In Chinese they are called yùntú 韻圖 / 韵图.  These tools are vitally important in the development of Sinitic phonology, but barely known outside of sinological specialists, so — for the history of world phonology — it is worthwhile to introduce them to linguists in general.

A rime table or rhyme table (simplified Chinese: 韵图; traditional Chinese: 韻圖; pinyin: yùntú; Wade–Giles: yün-t'u) is a Chinese phonological model, tabulating the syllables of the series of rime dictionaries beginning with the Qieyun (601) by their onsets, rhyme groups, tones and other properties. The method gave a significantly more precise and systematic account of the sounds of those dictionaries than the previously used fǎnqiè analysis, but many of its details remain obscure. The phonological system that is implicit in the rime dictionaries and analysed in the rime tables is known as Middle Chinese, and is the traditional starting point for efforts to recover the sounds of early forms of Chinese. Some authors distinguish the two layers as Early and Late Middle Chinese respectively.

The earliest rime tables are associated with Chinese Buddhist monks, who are believed to have been inspired by the Sanskrit syllable charts in the Siddham script they used to study the language. The oldest extant rime tables are the 12th-century Yunjing ('mirror of rhymes') and Qiyin lüe ('summary of the seven sounds'), which are very similar, and believed to derive from a common prototype. Earlier fragmentary documents describing the analysis have been found at Dunhuang, suggesting that the tradition may date back to the late Tang dynasty.

Some scholars, such as the Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren, use the French spelling rime for the categories described in these works, to distinguish them from the concept of poetic rhyme.

(Wikipedia)

We are fortunate to have an expert treatment of the rime / rhyme tables in The Chinese Rime Tables:  Linguistic philosophy and historical-comparative phonology, edited by David Prager Branner (Amsterdam and Philadelphia:  John Benjamins, 2006), viii, 358 pp. [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 271]    https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.271

This book, the first in its field in a Western language, examines China’s native phonological tool with regard to reconstruction, theory, and linguistic philosophy.

After an introductory essay on the nature of the tables and the history of their interpretation, the book concentrates on three areas: application of rime table theory to reconstruction, the history of rime table theory, and the application of the tables to descriptive linguistics. An appendix details a number of 20th century systems for transcribing their phonology into Roman letters.

Major topics include Altaic contact-influence on Chinese, early native understanding of the tables’ meaning, the phonological work of Yuen Ren Chao, and Stammbaumtheorie/diasystemic thinking about Chinese. New reconstructions of Han and “Common Dialectal” phonology appear here, as do complete texts and translations of the Shouwen fragments and Yunjing preface.

Shouwen was a shadowy 9th-century Buddhist Chinese monk who has been credited with the invention of the analysis of Middle Sinitic as having 36 initials, later ubiquitously used by the rime tables.  One could say that he had created an abortive proto-alphabet for Sinitic, one that never bore fruit as an actual writing system.  I believe that was due to the strong path dependency of the deeply entrenched trimillennial sinographs.

    Introduction: What Are Rime Tables and What Do They Mean?     David Prager Branner | pp. 1–34

    Part I: Rime-Tables in Chinese Reconstruction

    On the Principle of the Four Grades     Abraham Chan | pp. 37–46

    The Four Grades: An Interpretation from the perspective of Sino-altaic language contact     Chris Wen-Chao Li | pp. 47–58

    On Old Turkic Consonanticism and Vocalic Divisions of Acute Consonants in Medieval Hàn Phonology     An-King Lim | pp. 59–82

    The Qièyùn System ‘Divisions’ as the Result of Vowel Warping     Axel Schuessler | pp. 83–96

    Part II: The History of Rime Table Texts and Reconstruction

    Reflections on the Shouwen Fragments     W. South Coblin | pp. 99–122

    Zhāng Línzhī on the Yùnjìng     W. South Coblin | pp. 123–150

    Simon Schaank and the Evolution of Western Beliefs About Traditional Chinese Phonology     David Prager Branner | pp. 151–167

    Part III: Rime Tables as Descriptive Tools

    How Rime-Book Based Analyses Can Lead Us Astray     Richard VanNess Simmons | pp. 171–182

    Modern Chinese and the Rime Tables     Jerry Norman | pp. 183–188

    Common Dialect Phonology in Practice.: Y.R. Chao’s Field Methodology     Richard VanNess Simmons | pp. 189–208

    Some Composite Phonological Systems in Chinese     David Prager Branner | pp. 209–232

    Common Dialectal Chinese     Jerry Norman | pp. 233–254

    Appendix I: Pronunciation Guide to Boodberg's Alternative Grammatonomic Notation     Gari K. Ledyard | pp. 255–264

    Appendix II: Comparative Transcriptions of Rime Table Phonology     David Prager Branner | pp. 265–302

    Index of Biographical Names | pp. 327–332

    General Index | pp. 333–358

More recently, the Chinese scholar, Pān Wénguó 潘文国, published a two volume work titled Yùn tú kǎo 韵图考.  It was translated into English by Lǐ Zhìqiáng 李志強 (Andy Li), who was a visiting scholar at Penn a decade ago.

The Chinese Rhyme Tables , vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 2023). 

Abstract

As the first volume of a two- volume set that studies Chinese rhyme tables, this book focuses on their emergence, development, structure, and patterns. Rhyme tables are a tabulated tool constituted by phonological properties, which help indicate the pronunciation of sinograms or Chinese characters, marking a precise and systematic account of the Chinese phonological system. This volume first discusses the emergence of the model and factors that determined its formation and evolution, including the Chinese tradition of the rhyme dictionary and the introduction of Buddhist scripts. The second part analyzes the structure and arrangement patterns of rhyme tables in detail, giving insights into the nature of “division” (deng): the classification and differentiation of speech sounds, of vital significance in the reconstruction of middle Chinese. The author argues that deng has nothing to do with vowel aperture or other phonetic features but is a natural result of rhyme table arrangement. He also reexamines the principles for irregular cases (menfa rules) and categorizes the 20 rules into three types.

The book will appeal to scholars and students who are studying linguistics, Chinese phonology, and Sinology.

Pan Wenguo, The Chinese Rhyme Tables, vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 2023).

Abstract

As the second volume of a two-volume set that studies the Chinese rhyme tables, this book seeks to reconstruct the ancient rhyme tables based on the extant materials and findings.

A rhyme table is a tabulated tool constituted by phonological properties, which helps indicate the pronunciation of sinograms or Chinese characters, marking an accurate and systematic account of the Chinese phonological system. The book first explores the relationship and identifies the prototype of the extant rhyme tables. Then the principles and methods for collating and rebuilding the ancient rhyme table are introduced. It then looks at the general layout, including tables, table order, shè, zhuǎn, rhyme heading, rhyme order, light and heavy articulations, rounded and unrounded articulations, and initials. The final chapter presents the reconstructed rhyme tables with detailed annotations and add-on indexes.

The book will appeal to scholars and students studying Sinology, Chinese linguistics, and especially Chinese

Because these two volumes are primarily descriptive and narrative, I do not list the contents of their chapters as I did for the Branner volume, which is geared more to the ideas behind the rime tables and their philosophical significance, plus an abundance of pathbreaking papers written by the leading historical linguists of the day that focus on common topolectal features, extra-Sinitic associations, and other previously undiscussed aspects of the rime tables.

I asked Chris Button whether he preferred one or the other, "rime" or "rhyme" for these charts / tables.  He replied sensibly:

I would use onset vs rime in a linguistic sense, but I would use rhyme when referring to poetry. So, I would probably go with "rime table" since it's not specifically for poetic use.

To give you an idea of what these "rime tables" looked like and how they were structured, here's the first chart (of 43) from the Yùnjìng 韻鏡 (Mirror of Rimes; 1161, 1203):

The five big characters on the right-hand side read Nèi zhuǎn dìyī kāi (內轉第一開). In the Yùnjìng, each chart is called a zhuǎn (lit. 'turn'). The characters indicate that the chart is the first (第一) one in the book, and that the syllables of this chart are "inner" (內) and "open" (開).

The columns of each table classify syllables according to their initial consonant (shēngmǔ 聲母 lit. 'sound mother'), with syllables beginning with a vowel considered to have a "zero initial". Initials are classified according to

The order of the places and manners roughly match that of Sanskrit, providing further evidence of inspiration from Indian phonology.

(Wikipedia)

There you have it, a capsule introduction to the Chinese rime tables, which were as important for premodern Sinitic phonology as slide rules were for mathematical operations before the invention of digital calculators and computers.  The parallels are not perfect, but the idea of having once been an essential tool in a technical field and later having become obsolete is common to both.

 

Selected readings

[Thanks to South Coblin and Axel Schuessler]