Home Gudgeon and gist Language Log "Clear" and "turbid" in Chinese phonology, part 3

"Clear" and "turbid" in Chinese phonology, part 3

Language Log 2020-12-05

[Guest post by San Duanmu.  Please note that San's remarks were written before Sara de Rose's post ("part 2") on the same subject earlier this evening.]

In response to Victor’s request, I am offering some comments on qing 清 (clear) and zhuo 濁 (muddy), two commonly used terms in traditional Chinese phonology. I shall follow the outlines suggested by Victor as well.

  1. When and how did the terms arise?

According to Tang (2016: 32), the terms were used linguistically in a ten-volume book 《聲類》 (Sound Categories) by 李登 (LI Deng) during 三國時期 (Three Kingdoms period, 220-280). The book was later lost, but references to it can be found in other books that survived.

According to YU Min 俞敏, in Li Ji《禮記》 (the Book of Rites), compiled by followers of Confucius (孔子 551-479 BC), the terms were also used to discuss music, as in “长者浊也……短者清也” (long ones give a muddy sound… short ones give a clear sound). If long and short refer to the shape of an instrument, then ‘muddy’ ought to mean a lower tone and ‘clear’ a higher tone. The exact relation between the terms used in music and those in sound classification is open to interpretation.

  1. How do the terms function within traditional Chinese phonology?

In traditional Chinese phonology, qing 清 (clear) and zhuo 濁 (muddy) are used to classify consonants. In addition, each is further divided into two sub-categories. Therefore, there are four categories of consonants, shown in the table below, with samples in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).

Category

Sounds

Samples in IPA

qing 清 (clear)

Voiceless unaspirated stop/affricate

[p]/[ts]

ci-qing 次清 (less-clear)

Voiceless aspirated stop/affricate

[pʰ]/[tsʰ]

zhuo 濁 (muddy)

Voiced stop/affricate

[b]/[dz]

ci-zhuo 次濁 (less-muddy)

Nasal and approximants

[m l r w j]

Fricatives do not contrast in aspiration, so there are only two categories of them. It is not clear which one they ought to be grouped with. Tang (2016) groups voiceless fricatives with qing 清 (clear) and voiced fricatives with zhuo 濁 (muddy). However, [s] is clearly closer to the fricative in [tsʰ] than that in [ts].

  1. How do the terms correlate with concepts in modern linguistics?

There is a common view that, in modern terms, qing means ‘voiceless’ and zhuo means ‘voiced'. It is true that the consonants in the qing and ci-qing categories are all voiceless, and those in the zhuo and ci-zhuo categories are all voiced. However, it is hard to understand why [pʰ] is ‘less voiceless’ than [p], or why [m] is ‘less voiced’ than [b]. If qing means ‘less sound’, then we can explain why [p] has more qing that [pʰ] (because [pʰ] has more noise from the aspiration). However, if we interpret zhuo as having more sound, then there is a problem: cannot explain why nasals and approximants have ‘less sound’ than stops, because clearly, nasals and approximants are much louder that stops.

The conclusion, then, seems to be that classic Chinese linguists did not have a clear notion of voicing, and that even though qing 清 (clear) and zhuo 濁 (muddy) have something to do with some properties of the target sounds, they are mainly categorical labels, rather than precise phonetic descriptions.

Reference:

唐作藩 (TANG, Zuofan). 2016. 《音韻學教程》(第五版). 北京: 北京大學出版社.

 

Selected readings