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A Study on Wang Li’s Archaic Chinese Phonology

  • The Journal of Study on Language and Culture of Korea and China
  • Abbr : JSLCKC
  • 2015, (38), pp.31-60
  • DOI : 10.16874/jslckc.2015..38.002
  • Publisher : Korean Society of Study on Chinese Languge and Culture
  • Research Area : Humanities > Chinese Language and Literature
  • Published : June 30, 2015

Liu Rui 1

1中国山东师范大学

Accredited

ABSTRACT

During Research on Ancient Chinese phonology is an important tool to help people accurately interpret ancient literature. At present, the greatest impact in the domestic linguistics and most widely used ancient voice system is the doctrine of Mr. Wang. Many scholars believe that it is an important theoretical basis for research of ancient Chinese phonology. At the same time, the academic discussion and debate about Mr. Wang phonology system has not stopped. We can see that most scholars put forward different views on this is to make the phonology system improving. The paper tries to undertake systematic analysis about Mr. Wang’s system by three aspects, including initials (声母), finals (韵母), and tones (声调). To show Mr. Wang’s academic characteristic and the road of studying archaic Chinese phonology, we reviewed the results of the Qing Dynasty and contemporary phonology studies. In the research section on initials, this paper reviews the history of Mr. Wang Li’s study and attempts to find the origin theory of Mr. Wang’s initials system. In the research section on finals, I try to compare the similarities and dissimilarities between Mr. Wang’s system and the other three present linguists’ doctrines. These linguists include Zhiwei Lu, Tonghe Dong and Fanggui Li. I’m also referring to Karlgren’s ancient sound structure system. All of them recognized that harmonic sound times was earlier than “The Book of Songs” times, but they had different opinions on whether “The Book of Songs” times had consonant clusters. Many details about the rebuilding of archaic Chinese phonology are not yet conclusive. They thought it would wait for Sino-Tibetan languages studying to complete the work. So Wang Li of ancient phonology study does not include the harmonic sound system, he only uses the word “Book of Songs” appeared. They disputed whether yin-rhyme (阴声韵) had tail plosives (塞尾). The paper wants to clarify its view that Mr. Wang’s opinion is a sensible suggestion. In the research section on tones, I will look back the traditional tones studying and cite other tones studying. When the paper discusses the problem on tones, it combines tones with yun-wei (韵尾) to support the idea of Mr. Wang. The controversial issue is how to explain unusual rhyme. To sum up, if we want to better understand Mr. Wang’s ancient phonology theory, we should find out all of concepts intension and extension in his doctrine. In other words,in order to get a correct understanding of the specific issues we have to go look on the whole. Therefore, any person who does not fully understand the Wang Li’s phonology system, the accusations against individual concepts and conclusions are not correct.

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