Old Chinese language

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Old Chinese language
Period Zhou Dynasty

Formerly spoken in

China
Linguistic
classification
Language codes
ISO 639-3

oh

Old Chinese bronze inscription

The Chinese language of the Zhou dynasty in the period before 256 BC is generally used as Old Chinese (also archaic Chinese ) . Chr., The definition varies depending on the point of view.

In the historical phonology of Chinese, "Old Chinese" denotes the stage of development of the language whose phonology can be understood in the rhymes of Shi Jing and in the oldest characters of the Chinese script, while from a syntactic point of view the entire language up to the beginning of the Qin dynasty is summarized under this name. The oldest form of Chinese is found in the oracle bone inscriptions from the later Shang dynasty . From the early or western Zhou dynasty (11th century BC - 771 BC) and the period of the spring and autumn annals (until 481 BC) there are both inscriptions, especially on bronze vessels , as well as the first literary works such as the Shi Jing poetry collection and the older parts of Shujing . The last level of Old Chinese is Classical Chinese , the language of the Warring States Period (5th – 3rd centuries BC), which was used as a literary language until modern times.

Some syntactic properties differentiate Old Chinese from its successor, Middle Chinese. However, there are also differences within Old Chinese. It originally had a copula惟, 唯, 隹, 維wéi , which in Classical Chinese was reduced to the meaning of “only”. Conversely, the conjunction 而ér “then” represents an innovation in the younger Old Chinese.

Old Chinese was not a tonal language . The tones that are typical today only developed from Middle Chinese, as in other East and Southeast Asian languages ​​( Tai-Kadai or Vietnamese ).

literature

See also the bibliography of the article Classical Chinese .

  • William H. Baxter: A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and monographs No. 64 Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1992, ISBN 3-11-012324-X .
  • AWAKE Dobsonian: Early Archaic Chinese. A descriptive grammar. University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1962 (covers the language of the 11th and 10th centuries BC)
  • Zhou Fagao (周 法 高): 中國 古代 語法. ( Grammar of Old Chinese ) Taipei, 1959–62
  • Xiechu Guan (管 燮 初): 西 周金文 語法 研究. ( Studies on the grammar of the bronze inscriptions of the Western Zhou Dynasty ) Beijing, 1981
  • Edwin G. Pulleyblank : Outline of a Classical Chinese Grammar . University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver 1995, ISBN 0-7748-0505-6 / ISBN 0-7748-0541-2 .
  • Laurent Sagart: The roots of Old Chinese. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 184. Mouton de Gruyter, Amsterdam 1999. ISBN 90-272-3690-9 / 1-55619-961-9
  • Axel Schuessler: A dictionary of early Zhou Chinese . University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 1987, ISBN 0-8248-1111-9 . (covers the language of the Western Zhou Dynasty, Shi Jing and Shujing)
  • Axel Schuessler: ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (ABC Chinese Dictionary Series) . University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2006, ISBN 978-0-8248-2975-9 .
  • Sergej Starostin: Reconstructkcija drevnekitajskoj fonologicheskoj sistemy [= A reconstruction of the ancient Chinese phonological system]. Nauka, Moscow 1989.
  • Dan Xu: Typological change in Chinese syntax . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007, ISBN 0-19-929756-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William H. Baxter: A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and monographs No. 64 Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1992, ISBN 3-11-012324-X , pp. 181-183.
  2. ^ GB Downer: Chinese, Thai, and Miao-Yao . In HL Shorto: Linguistic Comparison in South East Asia and the Pacific . School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1963, pp. 133-139.
  3. ^ Yongxian Luo: Sino-Tai and Tai-Kadai: Another Look . In: Anthony Diller, Jerold A. Edmondson, Yongxian Luo: The Tai – Kadai Languages . Routledge, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7007-1457-5 , pp. 9-28.