Karlgren-Li reconstruction of Central Chinese

The Karlgren-Li reconstruction of Middle Chinese is a representation of the sounds of Middle Chinese elaborated by Bernhard Karlgren and revised by Li Fang-Kuei in 1971, correcting a number of minor defects.

Sources for Central Chinese

The Qieyun - rhyming dictionary was 601 by Lu Fayan developed as a guide for correct pronunciation, especially for reading classical texts. The dictionary divided the characters according to the four tones , which are divided into 193 rhymes and then into homophonic groups. The pronunciation of each homophonic group is indicated by a Fanqie formula, a pair of common characters that indicate the beginning and end of the syllable, respectively. Lu Fayan's work was very influential and resulted in a series of expanded and corrected versions that followed the same structure, the most important of which is the Guangyun (1007-1008). The qieyun was believed to have been lost until the middle of the 20th century and scholars worked on the guangyun . Fortunately, it was later found that the Guangyun retained the Qieyun phonological system without significant changes. The Qing Dynasty scholar Chen Li analyzed the Fanqie spelling of the Guangyun and determined which initial and final characters represent the same sounds, thereby enumerating the initial and final sounds of the underlying system. However, this method gave no indication of the pronunciation of the same.

A series of tablets of rhyme from the Song Dynasty included a more sophisticated analysis, although the language had changed since the time of Qieyun . The initial sounds were identified and categorized according to the place and type of articulation. Finals were divided into 16 rhyme classes (攝shè ). Within each rhyme class, the syllables were classified as either "open" ( 開 , kāi ) or "closed" ( 合 , hé ), depending on which of the four tones and which of the four divisions ( 等 , děng ) they belong to, what is indicated by the lines of the board. The Qing philologists found that some of the endings of the rhyming dictionaries were always in the first row, some always in the second and some always in the fourth row, and that they were therefore called "ends of the respective 1st, 2nd and 4th division" were. The remaining finals were distributed over the second, third and fourth row and later became “finals of the III. Department "called.

Karlgren's reconstruction

Karlgren believed that the Qieyun system (represented by the Guangyun ) was the standard language of the capital Chang'an (now Xi'an ) of the Sui and Tang dynasties, which extended over the entire empire with the exception of Fujian. He sought to fathom the sounds of this "ancient Chinese" (now called Middle Chinese ) by applying the comparative method to data he had collected in modern dialects and pronunciations of Chinese loanwords in other languages. Since the discovery of an early copy of the Qieyun in 1947, most scholars believe that the dictionary was a combination of reading pronunciation standards of the capitals of the late southern and northern dynasty periods.

Karlgren's transcription comprised a large number of consonants and vowels, many of them extremely unevenly distributed; in such a way that he considered phonetic analysis to be a "delusional idea". In a few cases he was unable to distinguish the pronunciations of historical (Middle Chinese) endings and therefore gave them identical transcriptions. His notation based on Johan August Lundell's Swedish dialect alphabet was based on his book Études sur la phonologie chinoise (1915–1926; German: Studies on Chinese Phonology) up to his Compendium of Phonetics in Ancient and Archaic Chinese (1954; German: Compendium of Phonetics in Middle and Old Chinese) modified / revised several times. The same notation was used in his Grammata Serica Recensa (1957), a dictionary of Middle and Old Chinese that has remained the standard reference work, even though Karlgren's reconstruction of Old Chinese by those of u. a. Li Fang-Kuei and William Baxter is outdated.

In the early 1970s, Li Fang-Kuei used a modified version of Karlgren's transcription as a starting point for his own reconstruction of ancient Chinese phonology . Li addressed some of his criticisms of Karlgren's system, revised some initial sounds and differentiated end sounds that Karlgren had summarized. Although Karlgren's view of Middle Chinese as a singular spoken variety is no longer widely held, his revised transcription by Li is still widely used as a notation for the Qieyun categories.

Initial sounds

For the sake of simplicity, Li replaced Karlgren's inverted apostrophe as a symbol for aspiration with the letter h (see also: IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) from 2005 or list of former IPA symbols ). While Karlgren originally reconstructed the voiced plosive initials as aspirated, Li treated them as non-aspirated. Li also redesigned Karlgren's alveolar dentals into retroflex sounds, citing a similar distribution in the retroflex affricates.

Initials trad.						Remarks
幫 p-	滂 ph-	並 b-	明 m-
端 t-	透 th-	定 d-	泥 n-		來 l-	only Dept. I and IV
知 ṭ-	徹 ṭh-	澄 ḍ-	娘 ṇ-			Retroflexes , only Section II
精 ts-	清 tsh-	從 dz-		心 s-	邪 z-	Dept. I, III and IV
莊 tṣ-	初 tṣh-	崇 dẓ-		生 ṣ-		Retroflexes, only Section II
章 tś-	昌 tśh-	船 dź-	日 ńź-	書 ś-	禪 ź-	Alveolopalatal , only Section III
見 k-	溪 kh-	羣 g-	疑 ng-	曉 x-	匣 ɣ-
影 · -	云 j-	以 ji-				center point (·) = voiceless glottal plosive

Most scholars believe today (2013) that the initials dź and ź- were interchangeable in the rhyme tables at a point in time when they had already coincided.

Vowels

Karlgren used a selection of vowel symbols from the Swedish dialect alphabet , represented here by IPA equivalents, where they differ:

	unrounded			rounded
	front	central	rear	rear
open	i			u
top center	e			O
center		ə
bottom middle	ä (ɛ)			å (ɔ)
almost open	ɛ (æ)	ɐ
open	a		â (ɑ)

In addition, [ậ] denotes a shorter (or more central) variant of [â], while [ă, ĕ and ə̆] denote shorter variants of [a, e and ə].

Finals

Karlgren divided the Division III endings into two groups:

Auslaute type-α (mixed) can appear in rows 2, 3 and 4 of the rhyming tables with any initials.
Auslaute type β (pure) can only occur in row 3 of the rhyme tables and only with the initial labial, vellar or laryngeal. These endings also caused the labiodentalization in late Central Chinese.

Li made a few changes to address limitations in Karlgren's system:

He replaced Karlgren's -i̯- with the more appropriate and conventional -j- .

Where Karlgren had combined a pair of rhymes as -i , Li made a distinction between -i and -ï .

Similarly, rhyming pairs that were initially interpreted as -ai became -ai and -aï .

Karlgren was also unable to differentiate between the so-called chóngniǔ doublets of Division III finals , which he treated as type α finals in Section III. Li introduced the spelling -ji- for endings that appear in the fourth row of the rhyme tables and reserved -j- for those in the third row.

However, these are only to be seen as a notation instrument (placeholder) than as pronunciation suggestions.

Karlgren's notation for open endings, which could occur in the flat, rising and outgoing tone, are listed below with the names of their Guangyun rhymes and grouped by rhyme table class (攝shè ). Where unrounded ( kāi ) and rounded ( hé ) tails occur in the same Guangyun rhyme, Karlgren marked the latter with a -w- intro. Wherever they were split into two Guangyun rhymes, he marked the rounded endings with a -u- intro.

Vocal Codas
Rhyme great	Department
Rhyme great	I.	II	IIIα	IIIβ	IV
果	歌戈 - (u) â		歌戈 -j (u) â
假		麻 - (w) a	麻-yes
遇	模 -uo		魚 -jwo
遇			虞 -ju
蟹	咍灰 - (u) ậi	皆 - (w) ăi	祭 -j (w) (i) äi		齊 -i (w) ei
	泰 - (w) âi	夬 - (w) ai		廢 -j (w) ɐi
		佳 - (w) aï
止			支 -j (w) (i) ĕ
			脂 - (j) (w) i
			之 -ï	微 -j (w) ĕi
效	豪 -âu	肴 -au	宵 -j (i) äu		蕭 -ieu
流	侯 -ə̆u		尤 -jə̆u
流			幽 -jiə̆u

Finals on the nasals -m , -n and -ng could occur in the flat, rising and outgoing tone with parallel finals on -p , -t and -k in the incoming tone.

Nasal codas
Rhyme great	Department
Rhyme great	I.	II	IIIα	IIIβ	IV
咸	談 -âm	銜 -am	鹽 -j (i) äm		添 -iem
咸	覃 -ậm	咸 -ăm		嚴凡 -j (w) ɐm
深			侵 -j (i) əm
山	寒桓 - (u) ân	刪 - (w) on	仙 -j (w) (i) än		先 -i (w) en
山		山 - (w) ăn		元 -j (w) ɐn
瑧	痕魂 - (u) ən		臻 -jɛn	欣文 -j (u) ən
瑧			真諄 -j (u) (i) ĕn
宕	唐 - (w) âng		陽 -j (w) ang
梗		庚 - (w) ɐng		庚 -j (w) ɐng	青 -i (w) eng
梗		耕 - (w) ɛng	清 -j (w) äng
曾	登 - (w) əng		蒸 -jəng
通	東 -ung		東 -young
通	冬 -uong		鍾 -jwong
江		江 -ång

Annotation:

There is hardly any difference between 嚴 and 凡.

Sounds

The rising tone was marked by a leading colon, the outgoing tone by a leading hyphen / divis / division line. The flat and incoming tones were not marked.

Coblin's revision

Weldon South Coblin made further simplifications without making any comparisons:

the initial · - is written as ʔ-
the vowels ậ and ə̆ are written as ə
the vowel ĕ is written as e
the initial -u- is written as -w-

Individual evidence

Footnotes

↑ Norman (1988), pp. 24-28.
↑ Baxter (1992), pp. 33-40.
↑ Norman (1988), pp. 28-34.
↑ ^a ^b Baxter (1992), pp. 41-43.
↑ Baxter (1992), p. 28.
^ Karlgren (1922).
^ Karlgren (1923).
↑ Branner (2006), pp. 266-267.
^ Karlgren (1957).
↑ Schuessler (2009), p. Ix.
↑ Li (1974-75), pp. 224-225.
↑ Schuessler (2009), p. 6.
↑ Li (1974-75), p. 225.
↑ Baxter (1992), pp. 52-54.
↑ Norman (1988), pp. 38-39.
↑ Karlgren (1915-1926), pp. 140-202, 625-626.
↑ Li (1974-75), p. 224.
↑ Coblin (1986), p. 9.

Works cited

David Prager Branner (Ed.): The Chinese Rime Tables. Linguistic Philosophy and Historical-Comparative Phonology. [German: The Chinese rhyme tables. Linguistic philosophy and historical-comparative phonology] (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory . Volume 271 ). John Benjamin, Amsterdam 2006, ISBN 90-272-4785-4 , Appendix II: Comparative transcriptions of rime table phonology [German: Appendix II: Comparative transcriptions of rime table phonology], pp. 265-302 .
William H. Baxter: A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology [German: Handbuch der Altchinesischen Phonologie] . Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-11-012324-X .
Weldon South Coblin: A Sinologist's Handlist of Sino-Tibetan Lexical Comparisons [Handlist of the Sinologist of Sino-Tibetan Lexical Comparisons] (= Monumenta Serica monograph series . Volume 18 ). Steyler Verlag, 1986, ISBN 3-87787-208-5 .
Bernhard Karlgren: The reconstruction of Ancient Chinese [German: The reconstruction of the ancient Chinese] . In: T'oung Pao . tape 21 , 1922, pp. 1–42 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
Bernhard Karlgren: Analytic dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese [German: Analytical dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese] . Paul Geuthner, Paris 1974, ISBN 0-486-21887-2 (first edition: 1923).
Bernhard Karlgren: Études sur la phonologie chinoise [German: Studies on Chinese Phonology] (= Archives d'études orientales . Volume 15 ). E.-J. Brill, Leyden 1926, OCLC 420037798 (first edition: 1915).
Bernhard Karlgren: Grammata Serica Recensa . Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm 1957, OCLC 1999753 .
Li Fang-Kuei: Studies on Archaic Chinese [German: Altchinesisch-Studien] . In: Monumenta Serica . tape 31 . Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1974, pp. 219-287 , JSTOR : 40726172 (English, translated by Gilbert L. Mattos).
Jerry Norman: Chinese . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988, ISBN 0-521-22809-3 .
Axel Schuessler: Minimal Old Chinese and Later Han Chinese: A Companion to Grammata Serica Recensa [German: Minimum Old and Late Han Chinese] . University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2009, ISBN 978-0-8248-3264-3 .