The Chinese Rime Tables

Linguistic philosophy and historical-comparative phonology

Editor

David Prager Branner

| University of Maryland

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027247858 | EUR 120.00 | USD 180.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027288479 | EUR 120.00 | USD 180.00

This book, the first in its field in a Western language, examines China’s native phonological tool with regard to reconstruction, theory, and linguistic philosophy.

After an introductory essay on the nature of the tables and the history of their interpretation, the book concentrates on three areas: application of rime table theory to reconstruction, the history of rime table theory, and the application of the tables to descriptive linguistics. An appendix details a number of 20th century systems for transcribing their phonology into Roman letters.

Major topics include Altaic contact-influence on Chinese, early native understanding of the tables’ meaning, the phonological work of Yuen Ren Chao, and Stammbaumtheorie/diasystemic thinking about Chinese. New reconstructions of Han and “Common Dialectal” phonology appear here, as do complete texts and translations of the Shouwen fragments and Yunjing preface.

[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 271] 2006. viii, 358 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.271

Table of Contents

Introduction: What Are Rime Tables and What Do They Mean? David Prager Branner	1–34
Part I: Rime-Tables in Chinese Reconstruction
On the Principle of the Four Grades Abraham Chan	37–46
The Four Grades: An Interpretation from the perspective of Sino-altaic language contact Chris Wen-Chao Li	47–58
On Old Turkic Consonanticism and Vocalic Divisions of Acute Consonants in Medieval Hàn Phonology An-King Lim	59–82
The Qièyùn System ‘Divisions’ as the Result of Vowel Warping Axel Schuessler	83–96
Part II: The History of Rime Table Texts and Reconstruction
Reflections on the Shouwen Fragments W. South Coblin	99–122
Zhāng Línzhī on the Yùnjìng W. South Coblin	123–150
Simon Schaank and the Evolution of Western Beliefs About Traditional Chinese Phonology David Prager Branner	151–167
Part III: Rime Tables as Descriptive Tools
How Rime-Book Based Analyses Can Lead Us Astray Richard VanNess Simmons	171–182
Modern Chinese and the Rime Tables Jerry Norman	183–188
Common Dialect Phonology in Practice.: Y.R. Chao’s Field Methodology Richard VanNess Simmons	189–208
Some Composite Phonological Systems in Chinese David Prager Branner	209–232
Common Dialectal Chinese Jerry Norman	233–254
Appendix I: Pronunciation Guide to Boodberg's Alternative Grammatonomic Notation Gari K. Ledyard	255–264
Appendix II: Comparative Transcriptions of Rime Table Phonology David Prager Branner	265–302
Bibliography	303–326
Index of Biographical Names	327–332
General Index	333–358

Cited by

Cited by other publications

Harbsmeier, Christoph

2016. Irrefutable Conjectures. A Review of William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart, Old Chinese. A New Reconstruction. Monumenta Serica 64:2 ► pp. 445 ff.

ORLANDI, GIORGIO

2019. Joseph Edkins and the “Discovery” of Early Chinese: the linguistic ideas behind the first (partial) reconstruction of the sound system of Early Chinese. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 29:3 ► pp. 519 ff.

Shen, Zhongwei

2020. In A Phonological History of Chinese,

Tam, Gina Anne

2020. In Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860–1960,

Zhu, Qingzhi & Bohan Li

2018. The language of Chinese Buddhism. International Journal of Chinese Linguistics 5:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 08 january 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Erratum

ERRATA

A list of corrigenda for this volume can be found on the editor's website:
www.languages.umd.edu/branner/Branner_Corrigenda_Rime_Tables.pdf

Subjects

Linguistics

Phonology

Historical linguistics

Sino-Tibetan languages

Theoretical linguistics

BIC Subject: CF – Linguistics

BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General

U.S. Library of Congress Control Number: 2005057242 | Marc record