Talk:Old Chinese

Untitled

It seemed odd to use such a particular form of the Tao Te Ching, but the latinized name for Kǒng Fūzǐ, so I changed it. -Acjelen 17:45, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Neither Tao Te Ching is "odd". In English, "Kǒng Fūzǐ" is. If it's confusing or offends sensibilities, see WP:USEENGLISH and WP:COMMON. Yes, certain projects like our Vietnam articles have completely ignored that. No, we shouldn't call him "Kǒng Fūzǐ" instead of Confucius or—maybe a century from now—Kongzi. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Old?

When did it stop being called Archaic Chinese and start being called Old Chinese? Was there a press release? Ashibaka tock 03:08, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

LOL, is such a thing worth a press release? I prefer Archaic Chinese nontheless. -- G.S.K.Lee 16:12, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Me too, but the article says: "Old Chinese (formerly called Archaic Chinese)" Ashibaka tock 16:20, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

The standard term in English today is indeed "Old Chinese." However, the article is weak and full of inaccuracies. I'll work on it when I can.Chris B 07:32, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Is Old Chinese also considered 雅言, yǎyán? --Jade P. 2008 (talk) 13:05, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Category:Extinct languages vs. Category:Extinct languages of Asia

Category:Extinct languages of Asia is itself a category within Category:Extinct languages (talk pages themselves are not normally categorized.) — Robert Greer (talk) 09:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice work!

Nice work. This article has improved a lot since the last time I checked. Thanks to everyone who edited, especially White whirlwind. Asoer (talk) 09:07, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

He Jiuying info seems wrong

Hello. I added a "factually disputed" tag because I believe the info from He Jiuying, added by White Whirlwind, does not belong here. In fact, it looks very much like typical reconstructions of Middle Chinese (MC) initials and finals, and not at all like any other reconstructions of Old Chinese (OC). Possibly White Whirlwind confused the terms used in Chinese to refer to what we in English call "Old" and "Middle" Chinese? This would be easy to understand if the terms are based on Karlgren's terms, where Karlgren's "Ancient" Chinese = current "Middle" Chinese (MC) and not "Old" Chinese (OC), but "Ancient" may well be rendered into Chinese as "Old".

The closest to any sort of consensus for OC is based on Baxter, who, like Karlgren, postulates

• initial clusters (involving cons + r, vs. Karlgren's cons + l)
• many fewer than the typical 32-36 initials of MC (in particular, MC retroflexes came from OC clusters with cons + r, and MC palatals came from OC clusters with cons + y, and MC y glides came from later diphthongization of OC vowels)
• many fewer vowels, perhaps 4-6
• at most two "register" distinctions (tones or, in recent Baxter work, some sort of distinctive quality of initial consonants or main vowels, e.g. pharyngealization or glottalization/"creaky voice")
• many more final distinctions (in Karlgren's initial reconstruction, separate voiced and voiceless finals; in Baxter's version, final clusters involving an extra /s/ or glottal stop, which eventually decay into separate tones, much like in Vietnamese, and originally were morphological affixes)

I don't have too much firsthand experience working with Old Chinese, so I hope that someone else with more knowledge fixes this page up. Benwing (talk) 07:38, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I, however, do have experience working with Old Chinese, so let me explain a few things for you.

"The closest thing to any sort of consensus for OC" is, in reality, only partially based on Baxter. There is a great difference in opinions on Old Chinese between Western and Chinese scholars: Chinese scholars are much more conservative in their reconstructions. This is why Prof. He's reconstructions seem to you to be more similar to Middle Chinese: I assure you, I am very clear on the difference between the two.

One problem in Chinese linguistics is that the vast majority of Western linguists lack the ability to fluently read the works of Chinese scholars: they just rely on Baxter, Schuessler, Boodberg, Norman, Pulleyblank, Karlgren, and whomever else. Of course, those scholars all did amazing work, but how can one hope to produce good scholarship without also fully grasping Wang Li's work, Zhengzhang Shangfang's, He Jiuying's, Pan Wuyun's, and the others? (It must be said that the same is equally true for Chinese linguists who don't/can't read Western works.)

Now that we've hopefully settled that, let me say that I would wholeheartedly welcome the addition of Baxter's reconstructions into the article. The only reason I haven't already added them myself is because I'm in China and don't have access to Baxter's books - I only have Chinese-language works.

It's nice to have someone else interested in the article. I am perhaps the most knowledgeable user for Chinese historical linguistics on the English Wikipedia (User:Tricia Takanawa is another), and I assure you that my earlier edits are on quite solid ground. Thanks.  White Whirlwind  咨  08:37, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

In a sense you're both right, because He Jiuying's reconstructions (especially of the initials) are so conservative that they do resemble Middle Chinese. But such similarity seems implausible given the span of time and the discrepancies noted by the Qing philologists. They also show little trace of the non-Chinese work you mentioned.

Regarding the initials, I think it would be more useful to begin by tabulating the initials of the Qieyun, which are broadly agreed and serve as a starting point for all the other work. Then He's reconstruction can be economically described as merging the two dental series (following Qian Daxin) and omitting the always marginal ʒ initial. There is much more to be added about other approaches, of course.

The finals listed are the traditional 31 Shijing rime groups, except that 祭 is merged with 月 (following Wang Li I presume). However, projecting the Song rime table analysis of the 4 divisions and the open/closed distinction back nearly two millenia onto the rime groups seems problematic. Kanguole 23:53, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Good points, Kanguole. Although your Qieyun suggestion is a good one, I think there are two problems we would run into. First, a tabulation of the Qieyun initials is probably more appropriate to the Qieyun page, not Old Chinese. Second, although you and I could probably hammer out a pretty decent list of initials and finals, we'd almost certainly be moving into the "original research" domain, and what we add would thus need to be immediately deleted.

I think that the best solution available under Wikipedia's guidelines is to choose a few reconstructions - perhaps one from He/Wang, another from Baxter, and maybe some of Pulleyblank's older stuff - then display in an easy-to-read fashion, with the intent of reinforcing our statement that Old Chinese's phonology is still unclear.  White Whirlwind  咨  10:48, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

We can avoid OR by basing the Qieyun initials on Baxter's account. There is broad agreement in that area; though any disagreement could be handled with footnotes. Although the table could also go on the Qieyun page, it is useful here, because it is the framework within which all the reconstructions are done. (And the conservative versions largely repeat it.) Some aspects of OC phonology remain unsettled, but on others there is substantial agreement (with notational variations), and some differences reflect different approaches to the same problems. I would like to explain some of this to the reader. I would like to avoid an arrangement like on the Middle Chinese page. Kanguole 03:33, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your recent work, Kanguole. I'm still pondering the merits of your arguments, but I like what you've done with the article so far. I would give an arm and a leg for a copy of Baxter's book to check, but it's not on Zhuoyue so I'm stuck.

Some advice: it's standard practice on Wikipedia to group one's edits into as few revisions as possible. Instead of constantly hitting "Save Page", just hit "Show Preview" and keep on trucking from there. It is a great deal easier for subsequent reviewers to look at one or two revisions rather than, say, the sixteen consecutive revisions you made on Feb. 1st and 2nd. You did describe your edits well, which is always helpful and appreciated. Thanks.  White Whirlwind  咨  19:45, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Some editors prefer more fine-grained edits, and to edit within sections, which also tends to make for more edits. One can always view multiple consecutive edits as a single diff using the radio buttons on the history page if desired. Kanguole 18:46, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I've had a go at revising this section. I removed the table of Karlgren initial clusters, because it's dated and I think the consensus has moved on from the detail of his version. I've included Li's reconstructions of the rime groups as a starting point, for the same reasons Baxter does: (1) it's widely quoted, even though many disagree with his voiced finals, and (2) he uses the rime groups unchanged, unlike Karlgren, Wang or Baxter. I think the He Jiuying tables are now unnecessary. The first is just the Qieyun initials minus one row, and the second projects the Song divisions and open/closed distinction back onto OC. Kanguole 01:12, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

It was probably time to remove the He tables: I've said numerous times I put them up because I actually am in China, unlike most of you poseurs ;), though that means I don't have access to Western sinological works and He was all I had on hand. I'll add He's reasoning for his reconstructions in a few days, as he dismisses a lot of Western reconstruction methods. The article is much improved but I can see us potentially incurring the wrath of Chinese readers for being too Baxter-heavy.  White Whirlwind  咨  04:59, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

It's true that Baxter's book is used heavily, because it's so convenient. But I've tried to properly credit the initials as mostly the work of Dong, Yakhontov, Pulleyblank and Li in the 60s, and the more recent 6-vowel system as not solely Baxter's, since Zhengzhang and Starostin independently came up with essentially the same system. Can you get more from people like Zhengzhang Shangfang and Pan Wuyun, who seem to be working with more radical systems than He? Has He discussed Zhengzhang's reconstruction? Kanguole 13:35, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I'll try to get the info up this weekend. In a few months I'll be personally with Profs. Boltz and Norman on an almost daily basis, so I'll see if I can get their input on our work, too.  White Whirlwind  咨  12:10, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Medials section

First of all, Kanguole, thanks very much for cleaning up what I added! The new table of medials, in particular, looks 10 times better than the nasty one I created.

One thing, though. You made an apparent mistake in the following:

Norman suggested that the more numerous type B syllables were unmarked, while type A was distinguished either by retroflexion (the -r- medial) or pharyngealization, either of which prevented palatalization in Middle Chinese.[41] Baxter has more recently accepted Norman's formulation.[42]

AFAI can tell, Norman proposes that type-A = pharyngealization, period; presence or absence of medial -r- has no bearing on this. I've corrected the text accordingly. Benwing (talk) 11:13, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that. My philosophy is to use the EMC distinctions (which are real data, whatever they mean) as the framework for the speculative OC reconstructions.

Regarding the syllable types, I was trying to use Pulleyblank's terminology of type A (no EMC -j-, i.e. divs I, II and IV) and type B (EMC -j-, i.e. div III) as a shorthand (which one occasionally sees), but it doesn't really work for Norman, who's using a different terminology (A = divs I and IV, B = div II, C = div III). Not to mention that Pulleyblank doesn't accept -j- for MC either. Maybe it would be better to avoid the shorthand. Kanguole 12:09, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, I did some more extensive rewriting. Hack at it if you wish. I think it's useful to keep type A vs. type B because it does get at something fundamental, and a number of researchers now use it. I included some more different suggestions, which help exemplify the point that these different suggestions may not all necessarily be mutually exclusive, but may just be illuminating different points in history of what is acknowledged to be quite a long period of time (c. 1800 years between the earliest Oracle Bone writing and the Qieyun). Benwing (talk) 12:42, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

A few points:

• I'm a bit uneasy about using Jacques' course notes as a source, useful though they are for background. For example his statement that Karlgren's yod is mostly rejected might not get past a referee, given the lack of agreement on the alternatives. No-one seems to have published a thorough treatment, though.
• For Baxter's vowel length version, all we have is a footnote of the Baxter-Sagart "Word Formation" paper referring to a version that never appeared.
• Pulleyblank's earlier length version was the other way round from Starostin and Zhengzhang. Certainly dwelling on all these variations makes this area of the reconstructions look a mess.
• Norman's type A is a subset of Pulleyblank's type A. Also, Norman's system wouldn't have -rj-, so the uses of that in the table would require a different explanation, which he doesn't seem to give. Nor has Baxter explained how his system should be revised.
• The linguistic parallels bit risks the wiki-sin of originality. Norman does draw parallels with Russian (and Uralic) hard consonants and Arabic faucal consonants, though. Kanguole 00:14, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

The paragraph of commentary is still difficult to obtain from the sources. Of course the general idea of rephonologization is well supported; the problem is applying it here to assert that these explanations may be compatible. In fact our sources stress the differences, and are keen to assert that competing explanations are implausible. Kanguole 11:17, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, and I've rewritten it to keep some of the points I was trying to make without the WP:SYNTH. Benwing (talk) 04:34, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Problematic text

This paragraph (regarding palatalization of velars) is problematic:

Recent reconstructions by Baxter, in conjunction with Laurent Sagart[1], suggest that palatalization was blocked by many factors. It occurred only with the specific phonemes /k/, /g/, /qʰ/, /ɢʷ/ and only when followed by medial -j- and then /e/ or /i/. The phonemes become EMC tsy-, dzy-, sy-, yw-, respectively when palatalized, but kj-, gj-, xj-, hjw- in identical circumstances except followed by a different main vowel. (Exception: /qʰ(r)jak-/ palatalizes, but /kjeŋ-/ and /gjeŋ-/ appear not to. /ɢ(r)j-/ palatalizes to y- regardless of the following vowel, becoming h- without medial -j-.) Palatalization is inhibited with all other vowels, with medial /r/, in type-A syllables (no medial -j-), and with other gutturals such as aspirated /kʰ/ and rounded /kʷ/.

It appears that you've extracted patterns from their database of reconstructions and converted them back from the pharyngealized version to the previous formulation with medial -j-. But we can't do that; there are too many complex interactions to account for. We have to wait for Baxter to publish a description of his revised system, which sadly it seems he hasn't done yet.

In general I'm concerned about the unreferenced material being added to the article. Some of these views seem not to be universally shared; it's not even clear whose views they are. Kanguole 13:38, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I have indeed converted the forms into -j- notation form in an attempt to be consistent with the notation elsewhere in this article. However, most of the statements in the paragraph are explicitly contained in Baxter's notes. The above URL is actually wrong; the correct one is [2], which describes version 1.00 of the system and includes a table of onsets [3] which explicitly indicates the expected outcomes of various initials. Either in this document or in the notes on the reconstructions, e.g. [4], are explicit statements of much of what I wrote, e.g. aspiration of /kʰ/ blocks palatalization, palatalization occurs only before front vowels; one note speculates that /-eŋ/ might block palatalization hence my "appear to". I do see that there is no explicit statement about /qʰ(r)jak-/ palatalizing; this is indeed extracted, which I agree is problematic. As for whether it's kosher to use these notes at all before they have been published in a journal, I don't know. Feel free to rewrite this paragraph as you see fit.

As for the unreferenced material, I'm assuming you're referring to the overview stuff I added. I think it's important to have overviews of this sort; the article as it previously stood was full of detail but lacking in the sort of high-level summary that will help make sense to a less expert reader. Inevitably material of this sort involves a certain amount of analysis, as it's necessary to try and determine what the consensus of a number of researchers is, and the researchers often tend to focus on minutiae; hence it may not be possible to reference every single statement. This is different (ideally) from the sin of WP:SYNTH in that it's an attempt to express the consensus that is actually held, rather than synthesize a viewpoint not generally held.

By all means, however, if you have issues with any particular statement, mention what the issue is and why, and what you think would be a better way to express it. Benwing (talk) 03:35, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I realize now you may have also been referring to stuff like what I added about pharyngeals. Looking over it, I agree that it's WP:SYNTH and doesn't really need to be there at all; I also took out some other questionable stuff. Let me know if you have any other concerns (and thanks for bringing up your concerns rather than just reaching for the "revert" button!). Benwing (talk) 09:33, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

The cut-down palatalization conditions are now essentially those of Baxter (1992), and indeed Pulleyblank (1962), so I think we'll be on safer ground citing those. Baxter and Sagart say themselves that their system is in a state of flux, and it hasn't had any external review.

Regarding referencing, I was hoping to submit this article for GA when it's finished, but that won't fly if any of the article is unreferenced except the lead, which needs to be a balanced summary of the body of the article. I also think that's a sensible guideline for any article in an anonymously edited encyclopedia, particularly for such contentious questions as the character of Old Chinese. It's not so much general principles or observations about other languages that need citations, but rather using them to draw conclusions about OC. Kanguole 14:54, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Language overview

One way to do an overview would be to add all the fully referenced detail, and then summarize it, e.g. in the lead. I don't think I've seen a "Language overview" section in any other language articles. Kanguole 22:52, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree I haven't usually seen a similar section for language articles, but many other sorts of articles do, especially articles that (like this one) are on technical subjects and are full of technical information, where a summary of a few paragraphs is very helpful in introducing the subject for lay readers. As an example, statistics has an "overview" section; Student's t-distribution has an "introduction" section (that needs some work); and normal distribution has the equivalent contained in a (long) lead section. Other language articles often have the equivalent information in the first paragraph(s) of the sections on phonology and morphology. In this case, however, the phonology and morphology of the language are intimately related and not easily separable, especially from a diachronic perspective -- something that typically isn't the case to such a degree.

Keep in mind that Old Chinese is a bit of an odd beast in that it's "documented" in some sense but is really closer to a reconstructed proto-language than a normal "Old" language. The equivalent "Old" language is Classical Chinese; the Old Chinese article plays more the role e.g. Proto-Celtic (as well as some of the role of Celtic languages, since Chinese language is heavily oriented towards the modern language). Many of these proto-language/language-family articles are (IMO) messy and disorganized and would seriously benefit from overview sections. IMO it's especially important in articles about reconstructed languages to have summary sections, since so much of the overall discussion concerns details of reconstruction issues and sound changes rather than simply describing the language itself.

Note also that some languages do have some sort of equivalent of "language overview". For example, Romance languages has a Romance languages#Linguistic features section, which examines the features of the Romance languages as a whole and from a comparative/diachronic perspective. Even better is the Greek language#Characteristics section, with short subsections on phonology, morphology, etc. that together present a good, not overly detailed, summary of the language. Benwing (talk) 07:57, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

This article doesn't have to do the same job as Celtic languages, Romance languages or Greek language – we have Chinese language#History or History of the Chinese language for that. Also, much more is agreed for the early forms of those languages. For Old Chinese there is rather less: that it had initial clusters (though their form is uncertain), simple final clusters instead of tones, and some simple derivational morphology. That much is supported by fully referenced article text, and would fit within the lead. The rest is more contentious, and therefore not suited to a summary.

It is still widely held that most OC words were monomorphemic and most morphemes monosyllabic. Ferlus and Sagart's proposals of minor syllables have limited acceptance, and they're different from each other. Comparing Old Chinese with Khmer is bound to be challenged, especially if you can't demonstrate broad support for it. Suggestions of inflectional morphology are much too tentative to rate a mention in an overview. OC and MC seem to have broadly similar balances on initial and final consonants; I don't recall anyone remarking on a difference. The statement that modern Chinese words are largely monosyllabic is odd, given the consensus that the use of compounding has been steadily increasing since the OC period. Kanguole 15:04, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree with deleting that info entirely. I can see you not wanting it as a summary of the language if it isn't completely agreed, but as it is the article is rather problematic in its structure, as it basically has no summary at all. Remember the pyramidal structure of a newspaper article; this article is like a pyramid where the middle layers are missing. I'm planning on putting back an intro section (near, but not necessarily at the beginning) summarizing Baxter's reconstruction, including many of the points that you deleted. This will cite Baxter's 1992 book and give updates from more recent material, indicating them as such. I also suggest adding other reconstructions, but (a) only either current reconstructions, or parts of older reconstructions that are still considered viable; and (b) since Baxter's is the closest we've got to a consensus, put these reconstructions after Baxter's, and only describe the differences between them and Baxter, to avoid information overload. This way we (1) present an overview of what the language actually looks like according to currently accepted theories; (2) highlight the areas in which the theories differ from each other; (3) don't obscure the main thrust either by confounding older, no longer accepted views (e.g. much of Karlgren) with modern views, or overburdening the casual reader with the specifics of stuff like "X said bloo, while Y proposed blarg, which was later accepted by Z with the addition of blump", which is mostly useful for experts and can be found farther down. Benwing (talk) 12:25, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think any of the material I removed could be cited to Baxter's book, and the argument that Baxter is the nearest thing to consensus does not apply to the unpublished materials on his website. Those are unsuitable for an overview, and problematic even for use in the detailed sections. Baxter and Sagart have said themselves that those reconstructions are in a constant state of evolution. For example, he's been through 4 descriptions of the type A/B distinction: -j- (1992), vowel length (1998), gemination (2007) and now pharyngealization.

But I agree the Phonology section does dive straight into a lot of detail. (Though it's also important to avoid giving the impression that Baxter invented everything.) How about starting that section with a sketch of the consensus sound system, based on the table of Li-Baxter initials, plus inventories of medials, vowels and codas per Baxter (1992)?

I would really like to avoid a comparative table of notations like those at Middle Chinese: that would serve only to obscure the large measure of agreement between the underlying systems, and thus also where they differ. Most of these reconstructions focus on part of the sound system (e.g. Baxter's re-working of the finals), carrying over the rest of previous systems with minor tweaks or changes in notation. Kanguole 15:50, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Some concerns and maybe a to-do list

I've deliberately avoided looking at this article for the few months I've been back from China to try and un-familiarize myself with it. Having come back to it, and being perfectly frank, I'm not happy with the article in its current form. The problem, though, is I'm not entirely sure what I don't like about it. Something(s) just doesn't/don't feel quite right. Not helpful, I know.

The only concern I can concretely identify at this point is this: I feel like this article is a research paper - albeit a good one - masquerading as an encyclopedia entry; it's certainly got fairly flagrant WP:JARGON issues that need addressing, and maybe a few WP:SYNTH ones, too. There are a few cosmetic problems: for example, the formatting on the initial timeline and the vowels sub-chart are skewed and unsightly in my 1366x768 Chrome window.

Perhaps we could get a "to-do list" here of things that need to be done to get this page ready for GA/FA nomination. I'd ask users to bring up any concerns they have with the article, then add their ideas to the to-do list, making the text strikethrough when each item is completed. If this sounds reasonable, we could start immediately. If not, we can discuss it more.  White Whirlwind  咨  11:46, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Sure, specifics would be welcome. In particular I'm sure you're right about the jargon issues: more eyes would help there. Kanguole 13:25, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the article can be characterized as research. It covers a range of views, attempting to explain what is agreed and how they differ, but any novelty is merely at the level of presentation. The evidence shown, the way it's interpreted and the positions presented are all from the sources. Kanguole 00:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Good point. I should have said "academic" paper.  White Whirlwind  咨  02:39, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Well that doesn't sound quite as bad. But identifying particular issues would be very helpful. As you say above there's not much to work with so far. Kanguole 08:17, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I've been busy with "real-life" activities and haven't done any work on this article lately, but I have a suggestion. I think the Phonology section is one of the more jargon filled, but perhaps that could be turned to its advantage. Suppose we split it off into a new "Old Chinese Phonology" article, then simplified down the current section to something a little more manageable to the casual reader, i.e. omit (or clean up) the vowel chart, the list of EMC initials, the deng 等 chart in Medials, etc. Would that be useful?  White Whirlwind  咨  03:12, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Splitting out the Phonology section sounds reasonable: the article is fairly long and that section accounts for about half of it. It used to be that most of what was written about OC was about phonology, but now there are books and papers about vocabulary and morphology too. An argument against splitting might be that the main article would need to take some version of the phonology without explaining where it's disputed, but I think most of the details are fairly widely accepted now.

The usual summary style would be to just have the introductory part of the current Phonology section here, maybe expanded a little. What problem with the vowel chart were you referring to? Kanguole 23:18, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the long delay. The vowel chart has no inaccuracy, it's just poorly formatted. Currently, the vowels are arranged more or less as they would be in a standard trapezoidal vowel diagram, except that it's been done without any cell borders or concrete spacing. This produces two problems: 1) Casual readers are wondering why in the world there are six vowels arranged in such a seemingly random format so far from their "heading" (large screen sizes exacerbate this, because the listing is left-justified while the chart is center-justified), and 2) Readers on mobile devices will see the chart in a cluttered form (for example, viewing the page using Wikipanion on an iPhone or iPod Touch renders the chart all squished together – it looks like three vertical columns of vowels, which is phonologically inaccurate if we're getting technical with this). Perhaps an adapted wikitable could improve this? The initials chart, which is a wikitable class, renders very nicely on all devices I've checked. I hardly ever use tables and thus have little experience with them.  White Whirlwind  咨  22:17, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Indeed the columns make sense for the initials table, but are less appropriate for the vowels. I'm not sure why the mobile browsers show the columns, but switching to wikitable would show them to everyone:

i	ə	u
e		o
	a

An alternative would be a more schematic presentation as used by Bodman and Zhengzhang:

i	ə	u
e	a	o

Or we could just list the six vowels inline. Kanguole 00:55, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Up to you. The first wikitable looks just fine, I'd say.  White Whirlwind  咨  20:11, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Origin of tones

While the issue is minor, and I've been hesitant to tinker with y'all's hard work, the introductory statement that "Old Chinese allowed consonant clusters at the beginning and end of the syllable, the latter developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese" is unfortunate as it is not OC final "clusters" per se that are supposed to have led to MC tones: the syllable-final segments proposed for OC to account for later tonal categories follow vowels just as frequently as they do consonants; only in the latter case would they participate in "clusters." Zhaonach (talk) 22:27, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Good point. Want to fix it? Kanguole 22:57, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Close enough for jazz as you have done it. I was thinking it would be nice to distinguish the particular segments at issue from other "final consonants" by reference to the effects of the former on voice quality -- that is, to the fact that, as Graham Thurgood has put it ("Tonogenesis Revisited: Revising the Model and the Analysis," Studies in Tai and Southeast Asian Linguistics, 269), "only... consonants that involve a distinctive laryngeal adjustment contribute to pitch generation, specifically, glottal stops and -h." But as the term "laryngeal" may not adequately describe the proposed OC phonemes as such (as *-s), perhaps this can't be straightforwardly done... Zhaonach (talk) 03:20, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that is getting a bit complicated for the lead. The Tones section of the phonology article ought to mention the postulated intermediate *-h, though. Thurgood probably isn't the ideal reference, as he's not addressing OC directly, but several authors discuss a proposed development *-s > *-h > qusheng for Chinese, e.g. Baxter (1992) p. 313. I think Pulleyblank even put forward transcriptional evidence for both the earlier forms. Kanguole 09:40, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, the simplest statement I can imagine ("syllable-final consonants associated with a laryngeal adjustment/coarticulation"?) is neither very simple nor clearly represents consensus. Looking at the phonology article, this sort of discussion would I suppose belong within the bulleted point about tones under "From Old Chinese to Middle Chinese" -- where is now found a problematic statement about tones from "suffixes," incorrect as *-(glottal stop) at least could certainly belong to root material (in addition to the fact that other PCH/OC suffixes have no role to play in tonogenesis.) But I digress... Zhaonach (talk) 03:56, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, the phonology article I meant was Old Chinese phonology, which was recently split off from this one. It's not clear where the statements in the Historical Chinese phonology article come from. Kanguole 08:21, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, thanks--the presentation in Old Chinese phonology is a bit more agreeable... Zhaonach (talk) 15:09, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The reconstructions I've seen for Later Han Chinese, basically equivalent to Proto-Chinese (including the oldest layers of Min, Yue and Hakka), do not indicate any tonal distinctions. Does that mean that tones only developed (or were phonologised) in the course of the early first millennium AD? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:16, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Probably, yes, though there is much uncertainty on the specifics.  White Whirlwind  咨  10:59, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Everyone seems to agree that the distinctions corresponding to Middle Chinese tones existed in Old Chinese. They tend to be respected in Shijing rhyming, with almost all the exceptions concerning the departing tone. But how they were realized is another matter. If a consonantal origin is accepted (as is becoming increasingly common), there may still have been a long period of overlap between the appearance of pitch contours and the loss of the consonants.

The earliest explicit description of the four tones is by Shen Yue (c. 500). The lost Shenglei (c. 230) is said to have classified words according to the Chinese pentatonic scale, but it's unclear what that means.

On the other hand, Eastern Han Buddhist transcriptions provide support for -s, and Pulleyblank says some Tang-period ones do too. Mei Tsu-lin points to Tang-period guidance for transcribing Sanskrit short vowels using the rising tone, taking it as evidence of a surviving final glottal stop. Martha Ratliffe says that the tonal correlation of Tai–Kadai, Hmong–Mien and Vietnamese loans from Chinese indicates that the consonants were still present at the time of borrowing. Kanguole 14:36, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it's extremely likely that tones were already present phonetically long before they were phonologised. However, if Old Chinese tones were predictable from the segmental structure of a syllable, word or phrase, Old Chinese was nontonal. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:10, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

I have to correct myself in an important point: Schuessler's reconstructions of Later Han Chinese words, for example those quoted here, do indicate tonal distinctions, but only some of them do; most do not. For example, "five" is reconstructed as *ŋɑ^B, but "six" as *liuk. In fact, only the tones designated as B and C are indicated, which implies that the others can still be predicted from the segmental structure of the syllable/word. This implies, in turn, that tones arose sometime in the second half of the first millennium BC, during that unnamed period between the Classical Old Chinese and Later Han Chinese stages, when according to Pittayaporn the mentioned two numerals where borrowed into Proto-Tai. (I believe this period – which corresponds to the late Eastern Zhou period, the Warring States period – is sometimes known as Middle Old Chinese, but I do not know how Starostin calls it.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:59, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

The stop-final syllables were always a separate category. Scheussler names the Middle Chinese tones on the other syllables A, B and C, but usually omits A, which is as common as the other two combined. I don't think that implies anything about segments; it's similar to the unmarked ngang tone in Vietnamese. For the earlier stage, he says (p. 121): "LHan seems to have preserved, at least in open syllables, OC segmental features which later resulted in MC tones, thus LHan kaa, kaʔ, kah; however, for the sake of consistency we will use the tone letters instead , hence LHan ka, ka^B, ka^C." Kanguole 22:29, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I see, thank you! So, according to Schuessler, Later Han Chinese (which appears to be part of the Late Old Chinese period of others) really did not have phonological tonal distinctions yet, and they did arise in the early first millennium AD. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:09, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

We have an upper bound for the introduction of tones (500 AD, when Shen Yue described them), but no lower bound. Scheussler thinks the consonants were still present in at least some syllables in the 2nd century, but they could have overlapped for a long time. Kanguole 17:12, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Two sets of nasals

What's the difference between the two sets of nasals?Cromulant (talk) 18:28, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

The ones on the left (with diacritics) are voiceless.  White Whirlwind  咨  20:09, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Old Chinese reconstructions superceded

Baxter's 1992 system of Old Chinese reconstructions has been superceded by the Baxter-Sagart system of 2011. Shouldn't we update the article to use those instead? - Gilgamesh (talk) 12:55, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

We should mention Baxter-Sagart, but it hasn't supplanted Baxter (1992) as a widely accepted standard. The new system hasn't even been published yet. Kanguole 14:44, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand. It's already available on that website. Various PDF formats, and even a UTF-8 tab-delimited table format. It's all there. So what do you mean by not published yet, then? - Gilgamesh (talk) 18:14, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

User:Kanguole and I have already had this discussion on my talk page – he doesn't seem to have been aware that Profs. Baxter and Sagart have indicated that BS 1.00 is fully developed and ready for academic citation. However, he is correct in pointing out that because it won't be formally published until later this year the academic community hasn't had time to review and appraise it. I personally would support updating to BS 1.00 or Prof. Zhengzhang's reconstructions, but I understand Kanguole's hesitation to do so as also wise.  White Whirlwind  咨  18:32, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Alright. Might we do dual transcriptions until then? 1992 and B-S side by side? Notice I already edited the article to mention the changes in B-S, and some sample words already. - Gilgamesh (talk) 19:44, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Dual transcriptions are confusing and distracting, with little benefit. In this overview article, we should present the widely accepted consensus view, and Baxter (1992) is the best available approximation of that.

The Phonology section is supposed to summarize the Old Chinese phonology sub-article and describe what is widely accepted about OC phonology. Putting Baxter-Sagart in there gives undue weight to one particular cutting-edge proposal, and an unpublished one at that. (in the usual sense in academic fields, i.e. not yet in the peer-reviewed literature)

Nor would it be useful to tabulate lots of reconstructions in the OC Phonology sub-article (as is done in Middle Chinese). The various systems have a great deal in common, though obscured by variations in notation. For example the differences between the initials of Baxter (1992) and Baxter-Sagart are mostly superficial. Better to say what is common and explain the differences. Kanguole 01:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps a suitable place for such material would be a Comparison of Old Chinese reconstructions article. Kanguole 11:19, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, I can understand if something hasn't yet been adequately peer-reviewed. But it's not accurate to say it has not been published -- it has been published online, and is already ready for academic citation. And both reconstructions involve the same William Baxter, which immediately casts doubt on his obsoleted 1992 reconstruction proposal that he no longer endorses as his primary proposal. This would seem to imply that if Baxter-Sagart is on shaky ground, then Baxter (1992) is on no firmer ground today. So, instead of granting Baxter-Sagart immediate veracity on par with the widely accepted Baxter (1992), shouldn't it be more accurate to say that Baxter (1992) has lost relative veracity down to the level that Baxter-Sagart has now (pending peer review)? - Gilgamesh (talk) 16:38, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Hardly. More that Baxter and Sagart are proposing some minor revisions (in the initials) and major additions (minor syllables and prefixes) to Baxter's widely accepted earlier system while leaving it mostly intact, but these proposals have not yet received anything like the same level of scrutiny or acceptance. Kanguole 18:39, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

So we can't even mention and describe Baxter-Sagart? - Gilgamesh (talk) 14:47, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

It would be undue weight to single out Baxter-Sagart in this overview article. It is mentioned in Old Chinese phonology, but that article focusses on features rather than systems. An article comparing systems seems the appropriate place for detail on the Baxter-Sagart system, and those of Starostin, Zhengzhang, Pan, etc. Kanguole 16:56, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Of course we can and should. [Kang would've just presumably reverted things he didn't like until there was a strong enough consensus that he stopped.] That seems to have happened, since the systems are appropriately discussed through most of the current article. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Possible IE loanword?

• kʷʰenʔ seems quite similar to PIE *kwo- from which derived, among others, Tocharian B ku (oblique kwen) that may have contributed as a loanword. 95.14.155.213 (talk) 19:08, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

In "Tocharian Loan Words in Old Chinese", Lobotsky says there's a "pretty good phonetic resemblance", but rejects a connection because of the ST etymology of the word. Kanguole 20:16, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

"C-"?

What sound is denoted by the romanization "C-" that appears in some words in this article? Please describe. -- 92.224.246.50 (talk) 18:41, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Good point. I've added a note to the first occurrence. Kanguole 19:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Kanguole, maybe add a similar one for any "N-"'s while you're at it?  White Whirlwind  咨  03:50, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there are any instances in the article. There's a discussion of explanations of the voiced/voiceless alternation in the Word formation section, but it doesn't go into the proposals in detail. Kanguole 20:09, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Words from other Chinese dialects and mutation rates

Does anyone have the necessary knowledge of adding the pronunciation of the quoted words from other Chinese dialects? Are there any studies on the mutation rate of words in these languages? Could be someone's PhD work. Sorry I am no expert, but it may help the article. 81.157.75.228 (talk) 02:30, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Old Chinese dialects

Baxter & Sagart (2014:114) describe an East/West isogloss.

• *l̥ˁ- > *xˁ-: western dialect (Ji, Yan, Shi, Yu kingdoms). This is attested in Bai as well (Lee & Sagart 2008)
• *l̥ˁ- > *tʰˁ-: eastern dialect (Qing, Xu kingdoms; present-day Shandong and Jiangsu)

On p.264:

• *-r > *-j in Shandong (compare *-r > -n in Middle Chinese). Occurs in Chu-Qu and Min, where [i] corresponds to MC -n (p.319).

— Stevey7788 (talk) 22:27, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Typology

@Kanguole: Would this be fair to add to this article? "Studies done on the Late Zhou period concluded that from a typological point of view, Old Chinese was more similar to modern East Asian languages like Gyarong, Khmer or Atayal than to it’s daughter language Middle Chinese"? I see a mention of the Middle Chinese similarities to Austro-Asiatic but not Old Chinese. How would you word this according to Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Easy772 (talk • contribs) 22:11, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

This quote, from Sagart (1999) p13, refers to his proposed root structure with minor syllables, which is still controversial – see for example Ting Pang-Hsin's review of the book. In this article there's a brief mention of initial clusters being controversial, and there's some discussion of Sagart's proposal in Reconstructions of Old Chinese. Kanguole 00:25, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

@Kanguole: I don't mind labeling as controversial if we can cite the material claiming this. It is definitely worth noting in layman's terms what Sagart concludes though. The material on Sagarts 2014 work is very technical for an Encyclopedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Easy772 (talk • contribs) 14:21, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Austro-Asiatic and Old Chinese shared root

@Kanguole: "When pursuing OC and TB/ST etyma down to their roots, one often seems to hit AA bedrock, that is, a root shared with AA"

Axel Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (University of Hawai’i Press, 2007) page 4

Would also like to mention this along with the Sagart quote. Can you link me the review of Sagart's work?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Easy772 (talk • contribs) 22:47, 13 June 2015‎ (UTC)

I have reverted the quotes added to the lead. Both are unclear without considerable explanation. Both reflect personal positions, and singling them out gives them undue weight. In any case, the lead is supposed to be a summary of the body of the article; it is not the place to add additional material.

Although both authors mention Austroasiatic languages, their points are otherwise unrelated. Sagart compares his proposed OC root structure to modern Khmer, Atayal and rGyalrong, a comparison that is less useful to most readers than the outline that follows it. The jury is still out on his proposal. For this overview article, only a brief mention is warranted. By the way, have you read Ting's note? If not, you should not be citing it.

Schuessler is talking about an AA substrate yielding a layer of loanwords in OC. The article already discusses loanwords from AA and other groups. Schuessler assigns a greater weight to the AA component than other authors; there is no reason to single him out here. Kanguole 01:48, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

So because Schuessler has a different view we shouldn't "Single him out"? I think all views should be heard. There are similarities/affinities/commonalities between OC and AA, this is what the authors are saying as they would explain in an abstract or results section of a research paper. Many linguists have noted similarities between AA and OC extensively and it deserves to be noted in layman's terms suited for an Encyclopedia. I am beginning to think I am going to need formal mediation in order to get these facts onto Wikipedia. --Easy772 (talk) 06:27, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Note: This formal mediation occurred. See Talk:Shang_dynasty#Language. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Reconstruction system

I have reverted changes of some of the OC forms from Baxter (1992) to Baxter & Sagart (2014). In this overview article, while mentioning the diversity of opinions, we should use a system that is close to the broad consensus in the field, and at present that would be Baxter (1992). The system of Baxter & Sagart (2014) advances a number of bold ideas that are controversial and yet to be fully evaluated by other scholars, and certainly do not yet have the acceptance of the the ideas underlying Baxter (1992). Kanguole 00:05, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

If the guy himself disagrees with his previous work, that's noteworthy even if avoiding WP:UNDUE focus shunts the revision into a footnote instead of the running text. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Baxter System

Is it me or does Baxter need to restudy Min Chinese and Chinese dialects in general. I propose that Wikipedia should replace Baxter's transliterations of Old Chinese sample texts with Zheng-Zhang-Shang-Fang's own system. My reasons are- 1: Baxter is American whilst Zheng-Zhang is Chinese. 2: When I see three words in a row that each have consonant clusters containing j ( *ɡjə *tjits *njəjʔ ), I know for a fact that Baxter is nuts. 3: The above consonant clusters have no foundation/basis for their occurrence in this particular system. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Idielive (talk • contribs) 18:42, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

The j is used here in the IPA sense, representing a palatal approximant (like English "y"). It is fairly common to reconstruct this as the source of Middle Chinese division III. Though several authors have challenged it, they all have different representations of the distinction, e.g. Zhengzhang posits long vowels in the OC sources of non-division III syllables. Kanguole 22:54, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

In particular, compare the overwhelming amount of -i- in modern Chinese words. That's what's being represented, not the sound of English J. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth, it's Zhangzheng Shangfang... or Chang-cheng Shang-fang if you're from Taiwan and over 60 or a time traveler from Eisenhower's State Department. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Periodization

Where does this periodization (claimed to be generally used) come from? It is odd that it mixes "Old Chinese" with its obsolete counterpart "Archaic Chinese", and that it takes the start of the Annals (722 BC) as a watershed point. Kanguole 17:05, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

I had a similar thought, it seemed like Ymwang42 (talk · contribs) was mixing Karlgren and post-Karlgren.  White Whirlwind  咨  23:42, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

The recently added citation (Pulleyblank Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar pp. 3–4) does not contain this periodization of Old Chinese, let alone assert that it is in general use. Pullyblank's subject is the language of the classic texts (c. 551–221 BC), and he speaks of periods before and after that. When he mentions Old Chinese (on page 5), it is in connection with Shijing rhyming (up to 600 BC). Kanguole 20:28, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

My $0.02 on this subject: It is very challenging to obtain a periodization that is consistent with respect to (a) the grammar, (b) the textual sources, (c) the vocabulary, and (d) historical phonology. I don't base these dates on Karlgren. Karlgren, whose work on Old Chinese phonology is useless or worse, is not the only person to use the term Archaic Chinese. For example, Brittanica uses the terms Early, Middle and Late Archaic Chinese, where early refers to 800 BC and earlier. My classification is based on this usage; the 722 BC date represents a significant event in Chinese Literature that is consistent with these dates. [I don't think anyone would argue that that the S&A Annals are closer to the language of Confucius than the three early classics or oracle bones. Of course, one might argue that the S&A Annals should be dated to the ending date of 481 BC.]

The Pulleybank reference is in agreement with which texts are classified as preclassical, classical proper, and postclassical, although he begins the classical period with Confucius (however, the dating of the Analects is itself a contentious issue (e.g. Chapter 20, verse 1 is obviously based on early Shujing-like material)).

Anyway, there is no scholarly consensus on periodization. My edits are mostly in line with the timeline of milestone events in the previous version of this page, which I made only minor changes to (1027 BC to 1046 BC, according to PRC dates (dubious, but also probably more correct than 1027), 770 BC to 722 BC (770 is a political date, while 722 is the start of the S&A period proper). I argue that the periodization scheme, as shown, is a reasonable compromise, and that to follow one particular scholar's scheme is necessarily problematic.Ymwang42 (talk) 21:50, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

I also stand by the claim that the preclassical, classical, and postclassical scheme is commonly used (although dates may vary). I do concede that Early Archaic Chinese may not be standard, or in common usage. I would be happy to debate what the post-oracular, early Zhou period should be called. Ymwang42 (talk) 21:58, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

The preclassical/classical/postclassical scheme is a periodization of written Chinese (with postclassical extending to the early 20th century), not of Old Chinese. As you say, there is no scholarly consensus on periodization of Old Chinese. That being the case, we should not create and promote one. Nor do we need to – if we want to talk about times we can use centuries or the widely-used political period names. Kanguole 22:50, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

I can't see how we could possibly come up with a sub-periodization for Old Chinese that wouldn't violate WP:Original Research, given the aforementioned state of the field.  White Whirlwind  咨  23:53, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Alas, the terminology has become quite confused. That is certainly not the only usage of the word Postclassical (although some works do define it that way - a highly misleading classification, akin to classifying all Latin after the fall of the Roman empire to the 20th century as one written language). However, see: SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE PERIODIZATION OF THE CHINESE, by James H-Y. Tai and Marjorie K.M. Chan (available online) for a discussion of classification schemes. What is clear is that the language of classical works from the Spring and Autumn period till the unification of the empire is accorded a privileged position of being the "Classical Chinese". What you are talking about should properly be called Literary Chinese, also known as wenyan, in order to describe the written/spoken diglossia after the Han dynasty. My preference is to keep the pre- and post-classical classification scheme, but if we insist on using scholarly consensus as a standard, I'm afraid there is precious little we can say about the periodization of Old Chinese. Ymwang42 (talk) 03:10, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

"I'm afraid there is precious little we can say about the periodization of Old Chinese"

This is precisely why there wasn't any periodization described prior to your edits.  White Whirlwind  咨  00:16, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

I was just wondering about this very issue. So all we can really say is that the language of the oracle bones (from c. 1200 BC) and the Zhōu dynasty (especially the Shījīng, i. e., basically the early first millennium BC) is defined as Old Chinese, and the language of the Qièyùn (601 AD) and somewhat later literature (the Táng dynasty, especially, i. e., basically the later first millennium AD) is defined as Middle Chinese, but the intervening time isn't really defined as either, as there is no conventional delimitation between the two periods, and nothing even close to a consensus. So any sources that would provide evidence for the pronunciation of Chinese in the early first millennium AD, or loanwords in either direction, cannot be clearly labelled as either Old or Middle. Am I getting that right? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:14, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Would such a labelling be particularly useful? There's much less evidence between the Shijing/phonetic series combination and the Qieyun, and it's often labelled by dynasty. There's a bit for Eastern Han Chinese, but it's still meagre. Kanguole 22:41, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

But what if new evidence turned up? I just find it awkward that the language of the 2nd century AD, for example, cannot be labelled in the Old/Middle scheme. --Florian Blaschke (talk)

A lot of the Chinese historical continuum isn't well defined due to lack of clear evidence to go on. For the 2nd century AD, in your example, you'd be looking at what Schuessler (2009) calls "Later Han Chinese". The nature of the Chinese script makes it much more difficult to pin down fine, precise language changes than in other languages, such as for us Indo-Europeans.  White Whirlwind  咨  19:00, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, Chinese Wikipedia periodises (in the navbox) the Hàn as Old Chinese, but the Wèi, Jìn, and Northern and Southern Dynasties as Middle Chinese (makes sense, as the Qieyun probably reflects pronunciations from late in that period). Double sharp (talk) 14:36, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Deleted references

@Kanguole: I have no intention of starting an edit war, but is it absolutely necessary to remove all references I added? For instance this publication which specifically discusses in section 4.2 the interpretation of Old Chinese voicing alternation, published in a respectable journal in the field; I have no objection against Sun (2014) being cited here, but this article does not discuss Old Chinese per se. Rgyalrongskad (talk) 08:49, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

For the statement that those suffixes prefixes are still productive in Rgyalrong, Sun's survey of Rgyalrong derivational morphology is an ideal reference. A broad article like this one should prefer such secondary sources to primary research articles like yours. Your articles are contributions to the debate about these prefixes. The article should note the dispute, but should not host the debate.

Regarding the reconstructions from your article on the zhi and wei rhymes, there are many proposed reconstructions in the literature, and if the article were to start including them it would end up swamped with multiple forms. Kanguole 00:18, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

The section is about prefixes, not suffixes. One crucial issue is the causative prenasalization, which is indeed mentioned by Sun (2014), but the productivity and directionality of this morphological process is not explicitely discussed in his article. Jacques (2015a and b) explicitely shows that the direction is from transitive to intransitive (as it applies to a Tibetan loanword, among other arguments), and addresses the consequences of this observation for OC reconstruction. This is directly relevant to readers of this entry; Rgyalrong data clearly demonstrate that Mei (2012), among other authors, is plain wrong. Rgyalrongskad (talk) 09:56, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

(Sorry, I should of course have said "prefixes".)

It's not appropriate to use this article to put your position in a current debate. We should await the judgement of secondary sources. Kanguole 10:48, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough, I understand now why Handel's article is cited rather than those of Mei vs Baxter and Sagart. However, this debate is important enough that it might deserve a more detailed discussion in Wikipedia, with full references, maybe as a new entry. Rgyalrongskad (talk) 13:55, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

"*N-" meaning

What is sound or meaning of "N"? For example, /*N-qʷʰˤra/--Propatriamori (talk) 13:08, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

It represents prenasalization or else an otherwise unknown nasal consonant.  White Whirlwind  咨  16:11, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Etymology of 河 "river"

Scheussler (ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese) lists three proposed etymologies of this word. Zhang ("Chinese Etyma for River", JCL 1998) analyses them in depth, and makes a strong case against the Mongolian etymology. Therefore it would be better to use less contentious etymologies as examples. Kanguole 11:00, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Mainland China views and early Chinese inscriptions

While it is well-known that some Chinese linguists, accepted as authorities, have defended their reconstructions (such as Wang 1957 & 1985, Suen, Guo, all without compound consonant initials) by rejecting well-accepted forms of evidence such as shared phono-radicals (諧聲), would it not be more comprehensive to conver their views in more detail in this article? Their approach, much more orthodox in terms of Chinese philology, are still being refined by a considerable number of scholars.Y11971alex (talk) 10:13, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

This article is an overview. That level of detail might be better suited to the Reconstructions of Old Chinese article, or perhaps Old Chinese phonology. Kanguole 10:44, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

More recent scholarship has endorsed the presence of Chinese inscriptions up to the mid-Shang period (c. 13-14th c. BCE?) on bronzes (see 中國史新論：古代文明的形成分冊 p. 219, Hwang 2016; "漢字起源與先秦漢字文化圈形成的初步探索", Chen 2016). Though highly symbolic/decorative in fashion, at least one example seems to represent language and can be compared with later inscriptions and interpreted as denoting the owner/maker. An oracle bone discovered in Zhengzhou in the 50s (subsequently lost) has been photographed and dated to the early Shang period, capitaled at Bo (亳). This position is endorsed by Hwang 2016 but challenged by Takashima in his article in Writing and Literacy in Early China, edited (?) by Feng and Branner 2011.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Y11971alex (talk • contribs) 10:33, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Maker marks have a long history, but there is no generally-accepted example of language before Anyang. Kanguole 10:44, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

The article by Chen (2016) has made a case for some bronzes bearing language before Anyang. I would urge you to take a look at it, if you have not already. Y11971alex (talk) 15:14, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

In highly speculative topics like OC reconstructions, Wikipedia articles will naturally never be current, as it takes time for views to become mainstream. Cool your jets a bit.  White Whirlwind  咨  16:55, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

The pre-Anyang examples seem to be mostly isolated symbols that may or may not be related to later characters, apart from the Wucheng inscriptions (language unknown) and the Zhengzhou fragment you mentioned above. Kanguole 17:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

It is not my intention to disrupt the qualities of an encyclopaedic article. But these examples have been known for years now (the 80s at the latest), and at least one or two seem fairly secure as pre-Anyang examples of Chinese inscriptions. In the Digital Archives of Bronze Images and Inscriptions (http://bronze.asdc.sinica.edu.tw/) maintained by the Academia Sinica (of Taiwan), under the heading of NB0255 one can see for oneself such an example. Queries in said source returns 21 entries that bear inscriptions identified to be Chinese, and two bear two characters or more that, apart from structural similarity, are combined in exactly the same way as typifies later wares. From what I've seen, there has been little literature that challenges the validity of either the linguistic affinity or dating of these inscriptions. I will gladly be corrected if this is not the case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Y11971alex (talk • contribs) 12:35, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

With a claim as significant as Erligang-era literacy, the burden of proof is surely the other way round, but I see Qiu Xigui saying that the pre-Anyang material is too limited, disputed and fragmentary to say much about the development of the script. Presumably that would be even more true for attestation of the language. Kanguole 17:42, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

The claim is significant insofar as it appears to be evidence, or at least is thusly presented, of an earlier stage of the language recorded. It is not significant over the language Old Chinese per se, because it (or a form leading to it) must have existed by this point. It is difficult to accept that these markings, which share what appear to be lexical similarities with later inscriptions, found on the same kind of vessels and using the same glyphs in similar or identical combinations, should be regarded in complete isolation from later inscriptions. One can perhaps understand if this finding is more relevant the development of the Chinese script, but in the present article where the existence of the script defines the upper bound of an "Old" language I still feel that, even if these inscriptions were not intended to record language, they still contain meaning that later would be expressed by language with the same characters, unless one were to posit that a two-glyph inscription only acquired a reading after it became common to notate vessels with such a combination. My pet theory is that such characters almost aways appear in a certain order—XY—and never in the reverse—YX—, which suggests that something similar to syntax is present. Qiu Xigui himself published an article in 1990 (裘錫圭，〈釋“無終”〉1990 年太倉第八屆古文字學會議論文，收入《裘錫圭學術文化隨筆》（北京：中國青年出版社，1999），頁64-73。) arguing that such an inscription dating to around a century before the first Anyang-type should be read as language. In any event, I have been mistaken it it came across that I wanted to add writing evidence to this page all the way up to the putative oracles from the Erligang Period. I am suggesting only to add the mid-Shang period bronze inscriptions that are superficially similar or identical to later ones.Y11971alex (talk) 13:38, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

But this article is about the language, not the development of the script – there are other articles for that. All languages existed before they were reduced to writing, but linguistic descriptions can only be based on some record of them. In this context, the significance of the oracle bone inscriptions is not the script in itself, but that they attest the language: they contain whole sentences of readable text, enabling scholars to study the syntax, vocabulary and even phonology of the language. That is just not possible with the earlier symbols. Kanguole 22:52, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Update the reconstruction IPA

Baxter-Sagart have released their newer reconstruction based on the "pharyngeal theory", which is overall a better reconstruction IMO. And please take a look at this sentence: 其*ɡjə 至*tjits 爾*njəjʔ 力*C-rjək 也*ljajʔ 其*ɡjə 中*k-ljuŋ 非*pjəj 爾*njəjʔ 力*C-rjək 也*ljajʔ. Do you really think it's normal for a language to have 11 consecutive syllables all having a "j glide"? At least I don't. And in the newer reconstruction, the sentence goes something like this: 其*ɡə 至*tits 爾*nərʔ 力*k.rək 也*lajʔ 其*ɡə 中*truŋ 非*pəj 爾*nərʔ 力*k.rək 也*lajʔ, which is way more natural. Mteechan (talk) 16:10, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

This article is an overview of Old Chinese, so it should identify where there is disagreement, but also use a transcription that is close to the broad consensus in the field. At present, Baxter (1992) is closest to that consensus. The proposals of Baxter & Sagart (2014) are still too controversial to be presented as consensus. In the case of pharyngealized initials, they acknowledge this themselves (pp. 73–74), conceding the oddness of a system in which every non-pharyngealized consonant has a pharyngealized counterpart, and suggesting that it may have been an unstable system that lasted only for a short period. Kanguole 18:04, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Going to have to agree with Mteechan. Wiktionary has already accepted Baxter-Sagart 2014 as one of its standard Old Chinese transcription systems. It is much more complete than Baxter 1992 and, if we want WP to avoid taking a position on pharyngealization, we can always mark A and B syllables with superscripts instead. Otherwise, the much improved interpretations of clusters and presyllables, which put OC in closer concord with the rest of Sino-Tibetan, are essential for an accurate depiction of Old Chinese at any stage before tones kick in and ruin all the fun.TheLateDentarthurdent (talk) 17:20, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

What Wiktionary does isn't particularly relevant. The initial clusters and presyllables are another innovation (indeed the main one) of the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction that is being considered by other scholars, but does not represent consensus at this time, and their choices and rationale have been disputed in reviews of the book. The later tones are a different issue, being broadly accepted as reflexes of *-ʔ and *-s, which are included in the Baxter (1992) reconstruction. Kanguole 18:29, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

What you feel isn't particularly relevant, except insofar as you revert edits quite a bit. If you're correct that Baxter's own revisions of his own system are problematic and people prefer his old system, actually mention that in the article and actually provide WP:RS for your supposed academic consensus instead of simply claiming that you're correct in place of (now at least three) other editors who disagree with your personal opinion about the state of the field. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

History section

Much of the recently added material is about the history of Chinese in general, rather than specifically about the history of Old Chinese. There is also undue emphasis on trying to divide that overall history into contiguous slices with identified transition points. But the actual research has focussed on the isolated periods for which there is data, e.g. for phonology the phono-semantic compound characters and the Shijing (Old Chinese), the Qieyun (Middle Chinese) or the Zhongyuan Yinyun (Old Mandarin). Also, all of the statements in this article were supported by references, and this should be preserved. Kanguole 08:46, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. Unfortunately, the "line-and-a-cite" level of thoroughness isn't technically required, it's merely "encouraged" (WP:WHYCITE). If I had my way that policy would be worded more strongly.  White Whirlwind  咨  16:59, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

There is, however, no need for citations in the lead, if it is a summary of the article (as it should be) and all the detail in the body of the article is supported by references. Kanguole 21:16, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Disagreed. An encyclopedia article on the language and not its historiography should precisely contextualize the current research into a thematic overview of the topic, without undue emphasis on only the best attested surviving works or the minutiae of academic arguments. Future editors, presumably there was such helpful context in the article prior to these comments by Kang. They could very likely be consulted to help improve the current article. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

binomes discussion

The paragraph discussing lianmian ci is completely unreferenced, and there is no indication that the content is specifically related to Old Chinese, or even that the examples date from that period. It might be more suited to an article on Chinese vocabulary. Kanguole 17:23, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

The discussion is mostly based on the preface of Paul Kroll's A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese (the term binome and the variance in graphic forms) and the PhD thesis "The Rise of Disyllables in Old Chinese: The Role of Lianmian Words Words" by Jian Li (City University of New York, mono-morphemicity). As for the specific example 徘徊, it is found in the Chuci, and its graphic form 裴回 is found in the Shiji, while 聯緜 is found in the Han dynasty work 洞簫賦, so these are certainly examples from OC. The OC readings given are Zhengzhang's (Wiktionary).

The discussion is relevant as these predominate in terms of bisyllabic vocabulary in OC. The fact that they cannot be analyzed as discrete morphemes contrasts them with words formed by compounding discussed below.

I will source the statements ASAP. Alsosaid1987 (talk) 14:27, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

If these are Han-period words, it might be more appropriate to discuss then in the Eastern Han Chinese article, rather than here. Kanguole 14:44, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

I couldn't find any pre-Han examples of 聯緜，so that can be excluded as post-Classical (though still arguably Old Chinese), but 徘徊 is found in the Jiu Zhang section of the Chuci, attributed to Qu Yuan, while Xunzi also uses it, placing it firmly in the pre-Qin.Alsosaid1987 (talk) 15:26, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

We really need examples that someone has discussed in the OC context, rather than mining texts ourselves. Kanguole 15:35, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

If you can find one, please include it! Otherwise, I think this example suffices. Looking things up in dictionaries hardly counts as hunting. Kroll's dictionary lists 徘徊/俳佪 as two graphic variants of a binome, while 裴回 is given in the Kangxi dictionary as well as commentaries to the Shiji. These are all well established facts, and as mentioned, the word, if not every possible graphic form dates to the Old Chinese period, with Zhengzhang giving an OC reconstruction as a rhyming binome.

I am merely giving a concrete example to help establish the general behavior of these words described earlier in the paragraph. I could've easily chosen any other example, like 彷徨, for example, which also has at least five graphic variants. Alsosaid1987 (talk) 15:57, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

I was a bit careless with the example of 聯緜, so thanks for bringing up that fact that this may not actually be from the Classical period. (There are, indeed, plenty of modern lianmian ci as well, like 垃圾!) Alsosaid1987 (talk) 16:07, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

There are already examples (cited to Baxter and Sagart) in the text above that paragraph. There are a lot more in appendices 1–3 of Li's thesis (though the Li and Baxter columns are switched in appendices 2 and 3), but we only need a few here. Kanguole 17:36, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

You might be missing my point. The fact that there are graphic variants and that characters are used only for their sound is important. It makes them very different from compounds. 150.212.127.34 (talk) 18:51, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that is the point. The vocabulary section is about words and how their phonological shape affects morphology. The characters are secondary, and graphical variants were common for all sort of words in the early period. Kanguole 19:19, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

True, but tongjia/jiajie characters are especially common for binomes. I guess my point is that they should be treated as a single morpheme, rather than analyzed character by character. If you don't like the example, then fine, I can remove it. Give me a chance to rewrite the paragraph first. Alsosaid1987 (talk) 19:37, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

The emphasis on characters is misplaced in a section about morphemes and syllables. Even Li, in a thesis devoted to these words, makes only a brief mention on this issue (on p35), in the context of 19th-century scholars identifying morphemes that were obscured by the characters. It is a natural concern in a dictionary like Kroll's, of course, but that is a different context. Kanguole 10:04, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Are you okay with the way it's written now? I think you are still misunderstanding my point -- I believe we are actually saying the same thing! The fact that the characters are so variable indicates that people thought of these words primarily in terms of their sound, while often ignoring the usual meanings associated with the graphs they used. Alsosaid1987 (talk) 11:53, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

No, I think the emphasis on characters is mistaken. People thought of all the words of the language in terms of their sound. The vast majority of monosyllabic words/morphemes were also written by borrowing or adapting characters used for words with a similar sound, and the choice of character often varied in the early period. The distinction you're focussing on is an artifact of later character-based standardization. The vocabulary section for OC should be about words and morphemes, and shouldn't be referring to characters, except as a cross-referencing shorthand for the words/morphemes discussed. Kanguole 12:59, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

You have stated a basic principle of linguistics, and I agree. However, Chinese writers always had a choice of which graphs to use. Characters have normal meanings assigned to them, even in the Old Chinese period. The written language never was a syllabary. Lianmian ci are particularly prone to graphic variants because each character had no real meaning, but I concede that same difficulty in standardization led to these variants remaining in the modern kaishu. Alsosaid1987 (talk) 15:13, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

I have left an unnuanced statement of the behavior of lianmian binomes that I think everyone can agree with. Alsosaid1987 (talk) 15:19, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Note additional conversation on this topic

at Talk:Shang dynasty#Language. It is extremely lengthy, involved arbitration, and notably includes Kanguole's claim that Shang and oracle bone Chinese is something entirely different and "Old Chinese means Zhou Chinese", which would naturally require a complete refocus/rebuild of this article. — LlywelynII 04:45, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

I think you've misread that discussion – understandable as it was long and meandering. I was arguing against the addition of a claim that the language of Shang was a creole of SE Asian languages while the language of Zhou was Sino-Tibetan.

The quoted remark was addressed to another editor going off on a tangent about the origin of Old Chinese. Certainly Old Chinese proper is the language of the Zhou dynasty or even just Western Zhou, but I was pointing out that the scholarly consensus is that the language of the late Shang oracle bones is much the same. Schuessler gives an elegant demonstration of the point in his chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Early Chinese History.

And it went to mediation, not arbitration (which is very different). Kanguole 08:57, 2 September 2023 (UTC)