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Middle Chinese can be divided into an early period, generally called Early Middle Chinese, and a later period, Late Middle Chinese. The transition point between Early and Later Middle Chinese is thought to be during the Mid- Tang Dynasty and is indicated by the phonological developments. For example, in the Rime Book Qieyun , Bilabial Initial s pʰ b m characters are shown, but there were no Labiodental initials like f and v, but which could be found in Jiyun . This indicates that a Sound Change in the pronunciation of Chinese had occurred. RECONSTRUCTION Chinese is not written using an Alphabet ic script, therefore, sounds cannot be derived directly from writing. The sounds of Middle Chinese must therefore be inferred from a number of sources:
The reconstruction between modern linguists may vary slightly, but they are minor differences, and fairly uncontroversial, so we could say the Middle Chinese phonology is fairly well understood and accepted. Phonetic translations Chinese phonetic translations of foreign words often provide clues. For example, "Dravida" was translated by religious scribes into a series of characters 達羅毗荼 that are now read in /35/ is a reflex of ancient voiced consonants. Both of these can in fact be confirmed through comparison among modern Chinese dialects. Rhyme dictionaries The profuse output of Chinese Poetry during the Tang era with its rigid verse structures relies on the rhyming and tone of the end characters of a line of poetry. Middle Chinese as embodied in rhyme dictionaries (or Rhyme Book s) were a primary aid to authors in composing rhyming poetry. The 切韻 ' Qieyun ' rhyme dictionary (A.D. 601) (by Lu Fayan et al.) is our earliest fixed record of the phonology of Chinese pronunciation, albeit without the aid of phonetic letters, but entries that are indexed under a rigorous hierarchy of tone, rhyme, and onset. Only fragments or incomplete copies have survived until a chance discovery of a version of it from the Tang Dynasty in the caves of Dunhuang . Later expanded rhyme dictionaries such as the eleventh-century Song Dynasty 廣韻 ' Guangyun ' and 'Jiyun' rhyme dictionaries survive to the present day. The latter being essentially extended versions of Qieyun, and until the Dunhuang discovery, Guangyun was the base from which Middle Chinese was reconstructed. |
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