To support their challenge to the orthodox position on the classics, Old Text scholars produced many philological studies.

[9][10] The customary writing style of the period was strongly modelled on the classics, and thus provides only occasional glimpses of contemporary grammar.

[12][13] Similarly, Zhao Qi's commentary on Mencius includes paraphrases of the classic written for the benefit of novice students, and therefore in a more contemporary style.

[14] Similar passages are also found in the commentaries of Wang Yi, Zheng Xuan and Gao You.

[16][17][18] Distinct rhyme systems of the Han period poets identified by Luo and Zhou broadly correspond to these dialect areas.

They were known as Wu (吳) or Jiangdong (江東) dialects in the Western Jin period, when the writer Guo Pu described them as quite distinct from other varieties.

[23][24] Jerry Norman called these Han-era southeastern dialects Old Southern Chinese, and suggested that they were the source of common features found in the oldest layers of modern Yue, Hakka and Min varieties.

[38] Most modern reconstructions of Old Chinese distinguish labiovelar and labiolaryngeal initials from the velar and laryngeal series.

[42] Since the pioneering work of Bernhard Karlgren, it has been common to project the palatal medial of Middle Chinese division-III syllables back to an Old Chinese medial *-j-, but this has been challenged by several authors, partly because Eastern Han Buddhist transcriptions use such syllables for foreign words lacking any palatal element.

[44] Scholars agree that the difference reflects a real phonological distinction, but there have been a range of proposals for its realization in early periods.

[45] The distinction is variously described in Eastern Han commentaries:[46] Most recent reconstructions of Old Chinese identify six vowels, *i, *ə, *u, *e, *a and *o.

[56] Middle Chinese syllables with vocalic or nasal codas fell into three tonal categories, traditionally known as even, rising and departing tones, with syllables having stop codas assigned to a fourth "entering tone" category.

[59] Other departing tone syllables may have become *-h by the Eastern Han period, as suggested by a slight preference to use them to transcribe Indic long vowels.

[58] Syllables in this category were avoided when transcribing long vowels in the Eastern Han period, suggesting that they were shorter, possibly reflecting this final glottal stop.

[66][67] Similarly, the demonstratives were almost exclusively reduced to shì 是 'this', ěr 爾 'such' and bǐ 彼 'that'.