This book discusses the methodology of systematic Chinese Dialect classification, with particular attention to the conservative Miin and Hakka groups spoken in southern China. The primary linguistic methodology employed is the historical-comparative method, and the dialects chosen as examples of classification are those spoken in and around the township of Wann'an in western Fukien's Longyan country. The book features extensive comparative tables of dialect forms, and a two-hundred page appendix outlining the diasystem of the four principal Wann'an dialects.

This volume is an investigation and classification of dialects along the Wu and Jiang-Hwai Mandarin border in China's eastern Yangtze Valley. It is the first monograph-length study to critically question the traditional single criterion of initial voicing for the classification of Wu dialects and propose a comprehensive comparative framework as a more successful alternative. Arguing that dialect affiliation is best determined through analysis of dialect correspondence to common phonological systems, the author develops a taxonomic analysis that definitively distinguishes Common Northern Wu and Mandarin dialects. By clarifying dialect affiliation in the Wu and Mandarin border region, this volume makes significant contributions to our understanding of the true nature of the region's dialects and their history. Using primarily data drawn from the author's own fieldwork, the volume contains copious comparative examples and an extensive lexicon of the Old Jintarn dialect.

Analyzes how fangyan (local Chinese languages or dialects) were central to the creation of modern Chinese nationalism.

Presents a directory of WWW resources on Chinese linguistics, compiled by the East Asian Libraries Cooperative. Links to resources on phonetics, grammar, and dialects. Provides access to online courses, journals, and academic organizations.

Southern Mǐn refers to a group of Chinese dialects spoken mainly in Southeast China and Taiwan. This group occupies a special position in the study of Chinese dialects, not only because of its large population of speakers (around 48 million) but also because of its preservation of various archaic linguistic features long lost in other dialects. In this book, B.C. Kwok applies the comparative method on new fieldwork data to reconstruct the common sound system of ‘Proto-Southern Mǐn’, from which all modern Southern Mǐn varieties emerged. The syllable initials, finals and tonal categories of Proto-Southern Mǐn are illustrated by more than 500 examples. In addition, this book offers an alternative view on the subgrouping of 12 Southern Mǐn varieties. It proposes that the Quánzhōu dialect and the Zhāngzhōu dialect form the two main branches of the dialect group. This book should be of great interest to advanced students and scholars in the fields of historical linguistics and Chinese dialectology.

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.

The emergence and spread of literacy in ancient human society an important topic for all who study the ancient world, and the development of written Chinese is of particular interest, as modern Chinese orthography preserves logographic principles shared by its most ancient forms, making it unique among all present-day writing systems. In the past three decades, the discovery of previously unknown texts dating to the third century BCE and earlier, as well as older versions of known texts, has revolutionized the study of early Chinese writing. The long-term continuity and stability of the Chinese written language allow for this detailed study of the role literacy played in early civilization. The contributors to Writing and Literacy in Early China inquire into modes of manuscript production, the purposes for which texts were produced, and the ways in which they were actually used. By carefully evaluating current evidence and offering groundbreaking new interpretations, the book illuminates the nature of literacy for scribes and readers.

Chinese, one of the oldest active languages, evolved over 5,000 years. As such, it makes for a fascinating case study in the development of language. This cultural history of Chinese demonstrates that the language grew and responded to its music and visual expression in a manner very similar to contemporary English and other Western languages. Within Chinese cultural history lie the answers to numerous questions that have haunted scholars for decades: How does language relate to worldview? What would happen to law after its language loses absolute binding power? How do music, visual, and theatrical images influence literature? By presenting Chinese not as a system of signs but as the history of a community, this study shows how language has expanded the scope of Chinese imagination and offers a glimpse into the future of younger languages throughout the world.

Although long out of date, Bernard Karlgren’s (1957) remains the most convenient work for looking up Middle Chinese (ca. A.D. 600) and Old Chinese (before 200 B.C.) reconstructions of all graphs that occur in literature from the beginning of writing (ca. 1250 B.C.) down to the third century B.C. In the present volume, Axel Schuessler provides a more current reconstruction of Old Chinese, limiting it, as far as possible, to those post-Karlgrenian phonological features of Old Chinese that enjoy some consensus among today’s investigators. At the same time, the updating of the material disregards more speculative theories and proposals. Schuessler refers to these minimal forms as "Minimal Old Chinese" (OCM). He bases OCM on Baxter’s 1992 reconstructions but with some changes, mostly notational. In keeping with its minimal aspect, the OCM forms are kept as simple as possible and transcribed in an equally simple notation. Some issues in Old Chinese phonology still await clarification; hence interpolations and proposals of limited currency appear in this update. Karlgren’s Middle Chinese reconstructions, as emended by Li Fang-kuei, are widely cited as points of reference for historical forms of Chinese as well as dialects. This emended Middle Chinese is also supplied by Schuessler. Another important addition to Karlgren’s work is an intermediate layer midway between the Old and Middle Chinese periods known as "Later Han Chinese" (ca. second century A.D.) The additional layer makes this volume a useful resource for those working on Han sources, especially poetry. This book is intended as a "companion" to the original Grammata Serica Recensa and therefore does not repeat other information provided there. Matters such as English glosses and references to the earliest occurrence of a graph can be looked up in Grammata Serica Recensa itself or in other relevant dictionaries. The great accomplishment of this companion volume is to update an essential reference and thereby fulfill the need for an accessible and user-friendly source for citing the various historically reconstructed stages of Chinese.

This is the first genuine etymological dictionary of Old Chinese written in any language. As such, it constitutes a milestone in research on the evolution of the Sinitic language group. Whereas previous studies have emphasized the structure of the Chinese characters, this pathbreaking dictionary places primary emphasis on the sounds and meanings of Sinitic roots. Based on more than three decades of intensive investigation in primary and secondary sources, this completely new dictionary places Old Chinese squarely within the Sino-Tibetan language family (including close consideration of numerous Tiberto-Burman languages), while paying due regard to other language families such as Austroasiatic, Miao-Yao (Hmong-Mien), and Kam-Tai. Designed for use by nonspecialists and specialists alike, the dictionary is highly accessible, being arranged in alphabetical order and possessed of numerous innovative lexicographical features. Each entry offers one or more possible etymologies as well as reconstructed pronunciations and other relevant data. Words that are morphologically related are grouped together into "word families" that attempt to make explicit the derivational or other etymological processes that relate them. The dictionary is preceded by a substantive and significant introduction that outlines the author’s views on the linguistic position of Chinese within Asia and details the phonological and morphological properties, to the degree they are known, of the earliest stages of the Chinese language and its ancestor. This introduction, because it both summarizes and synthesizes earlier work and makes several original contributions, functions as a useful reference work all on its own.