Sinitic historical phonology

[Or, as David Prager Branner, who wrote the guest post below, jokingly calls it, "hysterical phrenology".  Note that Branner uses Gwoyeu Romatzyh ( "National Language Romanization"), a type of tonal spelling, for the transcription of Mandarin.]

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This is on the subject of Carbo Kuo's 郭家寶 performance of Shyjing "Shyi yeou charngchuu 隰有萇楚" ("In the low wet grounds is the carambola tree") in Jenqjang Shanqfang's 鄭張尚芳 various antique reconstructions, sent to me by Victor Mair. It pleased me a lot. The issue is one of art, not scholarship, and it should be judged as art.

[VHM:  must hear]

Native Chinese written representations of sound are fundamentally abstract, befitting a linguistic environment with much variation. That may even be the result of multilingualism in the society that developed and spread the script — who knows?

But recitation and cantillation of texts in the past century, which we can observe today in real life and through recordings, make good use of that abstractness, as license for creative expression. These practices run on much the same principles as Chinese calligraphy.

I see no reason why reconstructions shouldn't be part of the cheese on which the blue mold of artistic performance grows. The only irritation — the cheese-maggot, if you will — is the conceit that a reconstruction is "authentic." But that bug is an exotic colonist, not native to poetic circles; its autochthonous home is in the world of historical linguistics.

For my part, I'd like to see more of this rather than less. Take a look at the rich range of reconstructions we have to pick from! They are far more diverse than the modern Chinese dialects. I listed at few in a review of Schuessler's splendid 2009 reconstruction in Minimal Old Chinese and Later Han Chinese: A Companion to Grammata Serica Recensa.