Reconstruction of Middle Sinitic

"What 'Ancient' Chinese Sounded Like – and how we know" (YouTube 7:56)

Source

Based on the best modern scholarship and the most vital premodern primary materials, this short presentation is really quite impressive and has some cute touches, as when Bernhard Karlgren (1889-1978), the founder of Western studies on the scientific reconstruction of Middle Sinitic and Old Sinitic, blinks at us (5:45).

There is a general consensus on the sounds of "Middle Sinitic", which dates to roughly circa 600 AD, although we don't know for sure on which topolect it is based or whether it is a homogenized abstraction of a congeries of topolects.  "Old Sinitic", which supposedly dates to around 600 BC, is more chimerical still, with the most critical researchers having abandoned the quest to recover it.

On solider ground is Eastern / Later Han (25 AD-220 AD) Sinitic, since the leading scholar on the historical phonology of this period, W. South Coblin, has extensively utilized contemporary glosses, topolectal data, and Sanskrit and Prakrit transcriptions.

My own approach to the reconstruction of Old Sinitic is to emphasize words from other languages for which the pronunciation is better known that have been borrowed into Sinitic.  I have published many of these terms in Language Log posts (see the list of "Selected readings" below) and elsewhere.

Axel Schuessler's pathbreaking dictionary of Old Sinitic etymology is promising, especially since it systematically employs evidence from cognates in non-Sinitic languages of East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, and occasionally from elsewhere.  Such sources have enabled Schuessler to provide what he calls Minimal Old Chinese reconstructions.  Studies of the rhymes in the Poetry Classic (Shījīng 詩經) and other types of verse will continue to offer valuable evidence for the reconstruction of Old Sinitic.

So much for phonological reconstructions.  Another major endeavor is to distinguish between classical / literary Sinitic and vernacular Sinitic.  The largest project in this regard is the massive dictionary of Middle Vernacular Sinitic (MVS) which Zhu Qingzhi and I have been compiling for the last two decades and more.  Concentrating on the lexicon, morphology, and grammar of the middle period, our corpus is based on tens of thousands of quotations from texts that may be located precisely in time and space.  These data are potentially of tremendous value when used in conjunction with historical reconstructions arrived at by means of the methods described above.

 

Selected readings

• "Chinese transcriptions of Indic terms in Buddhist translations of the 2nd c. AD" (4/20/20)
• "Archeological and linguistic evidence for the wheel in East Asia" (3/11/20)
• "Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19)
• "Of horse riding and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (4/21/19)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (3/8/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 2" (3/12/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 3" (3/16/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 4" (3/24/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 5" (3/28/16)
• "Of armaments and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 6" (12/23/17)
• "Of shumai and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (7/19/16)
• "Of felt hats, feathers, macaroni, and weasels" (3/13/16)
• "GA" (8/6/17)
• "Of dogs and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (3/17/18)
• "Of ganders, geese, and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (10/29/18)
• "Eurasian eureka" (9/12/16)
• "Of knots, pimples, and Sinitic reconstructions" (11/12/18)
• "Of jackal and hide and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/16/18)
• "Of reindeer and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/23/18)
• "Galactic glimmers: of milk and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/18/19)
• "An early fourth century AD historical puzzle involving a Caucasian people in North China" (1/25/18)
• "Thai 'khwan' ('soul') and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/28/19)
• "Sinitic for "iron" in Balto-Slavic" (2/15/19)
• "Language vs. script" (11/21/16)

[h.t. John Rohsenow]