Old Chinese phonology
Although the writing system does not describe sounds directly, shared phonetic components of the most ancient Chinese characters are believed to link words that were pronounced similarly at that time.
Scholars have compared these bodies of contemporary evidence with the much later Middle Chinese reading pronunciations listed in the Qieyun rhyme dictionary published in 601 AD, though this falls short of a phonemic analysis.
Most recent reconstructions also posit consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese.
According to its preface, the Qieyun did not record a single contemporary dialect, but set out to codify the pronunciations of characters to be used when reading the classics, incorporating distinctions made in different parts of China at the time (a diasystem).
The pronunciation of each group of homophonous characters was indicated using the fanqie method, using a pair of other words with the same initial consonant and final (the rest of the syllable) respectively.
[3] The rhyme tables from the Song dynasty contain a sophisticated feature analysis of the Qieyun initials and finals, though they were influenced by the different pronunciations of that later period.
To save space, the designers of the rhyme tables separated finals with different patterns of co-occurrence, effectively identifying cases of complementary distribution.
[19] Thus finals are split between divisions (等 děng) I, II, III and IV based on the rows of the rhyme tables in which they were placed.
[34] Since the late 20th century, several caches of Bamboo and wooden slips from the Warring States period have been recovered, featuring a wider variety of pre-Qin characters than the formulaic bone and bronze inscriptions.
This was attributed to lax rhyming practice until the late-Ming dynasty scholar Chen Di argued that a former consistency had been obscured by sound change.
For example, the following dental initials have been identified in reconstructed proto-Min:[42][43] Other points of articulation show similar distinctions within stops and nasals.
[45] The Waxiang dialects of western Hunan differ strongly from other Chinese varieties, preserving several distinctions and features not found in the Qieyun.
The Qing philologist Qian Daxin had already discovered, by studying sound glosses given by Eastern Han authors, that the Middle Chinese dental and retroflex stop series were not distinguished at that time.
[64][65] A key principle, first proposed by the Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren, holds that the initials of words written with the same phonetic component had a common point of articulation in Old Chinese.
[74] Li proposed *Krj- as the source of palatal initials occurring in phonetic series with velars or laryngeals, found no evidence for *Prj-, and attributed the chóngniǔ distinction to the vowel.
[88] Voiceless nasal initials *m̥-, *n̥- and *ŋ̊- are proposed (following Dong Tonghe and Edwin Pulleyblank) in series such as:[89] Clusters *sn- and so on are proposed (following Karlgren) for alternations of Middle Chinese nasals and s- such as Other cluster initials, including *s with stops or stops with *l, have been suggested but their existence and nature remains an open question.
Li Rong showed that several words with Middle Chinese initial h- were distinguished in modern Min dialects.
He also included three diphthongs *iə, *ia and *ua to account for syllables that were placed in rhyme groups reconstructed with *ə or *a but were distinguished in Middle Chinese.
Following the traditional analysis, the rhyme groups are organized into three parallel sets, depending on the corresponding type of coda in Middle Chinese.
They were the 'level' (平 píng), 'rising' (上 shǎng), 'departing' (去 qù), and 'entering' (入 rù) tones, with the last category consisting of the syllables ending in stops (-p, -t or -k).
[140] Another perspective is provided by Haudricourt's demonstration that the tones of Vietnamese, which have a very similar structure to those of Middle Chinese, were derived from earlier final consonants.
Pulleyblank supported the theory with several examples of syllables in the departing tone being used to transcribe foreign words ending in -s into Chinese.
[143][144][145] Pulleyblank took Haudricourt's suggestion to its logical conclusion, proposing that the Chinese rising tone had also arisen from a final glottal stop.
The evidence is limited, and consists mainly of contacts between rising tone syllables and -k finals, which could alternatively be explained as phonetic similarity.
