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Chinese scholars, especially those in the Qing Dynasty including Duan Yucai , studied the sound system ( Phonology ) and sounds ( Phonetics ) of Middle and Old Chinese for years. Based on their results, and armed with his knowledge of Western Historical Linguistics , the Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren reconstructed the sounds of ancient Chinese with Latin alphabet (not IPA ) for the first time during the early 20th century. Walter Simon and Henri Maspero also made great contributions in the field during the early days of its development. The reconstruction of Middle Chinese draws its data from:
Insight to the phonology of this era was further gained with the discovery of the fragmentary '' Qieyun '' in the Dunhuang Caves in the 1930s. The work had earlier been considered lost. Karlgren, who based his work on much later rime dictionaries, suggested that Middle Chinese was a live language of the Sui - Tang period. Today, this view has been replaced by that the sound system in ''Qieyun'' represents the literate reading adopted by the literate class of the period throughout the country, not any live language that once existed. The reconstruction of Old Chinese is more controversial than that of Middle Chinese since it has to extrapolate from the Middle Chinese data. Phonological information concerning Old Chinese are chiefly gained from:
Today the reconstruction of Old Chinese is carried out in the light of Sino-Tibetan linguistics. EXTERNAL LINKS
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