上古汉语 - Archaic Chinese

[Quest]

朝鲜、日本古代自称为中国圣王之后，今天反而不被承认了，是他们的古人仰慕中国才那么说，还是今天的人们出于自尊而疏远了真正的始祖？以日本例，古书上讲自称是吴太伯之后，考古发现日本公元前几个世纪有与江苏相似的文化，弥生人来自中国有充足的证据。至于更早的伏羲文化保存在日本皇室建筑当中，是远古时代中日交流的见证。日本人说与中国“同文同种”，近年又有人否定此说。必须明确，中国的语言不止一种，汉语不是一成不变的。易洛魁莫哈克语(Mohawk)、羌语、玛雅语、藏语可以帮助我们想像汉语史前时代的情形。前两种语言是黄帝、炎帝的直系后裔的语言，语法与现代汉语差别悬殊。玛雅语与汉语同源词的存在，证实玛雅人来自中国，同时使我们坚信汉语基本词汇在五千年来有一定的稳定性。藏语与汉语同源词更多，证实汉藏民族同根生，同时使我们坚信汉语语法五千年来发生了一定变化。SOV结构的日语不能与现代汉语比较，而应借助前边说的四种语言与史前时代的中国语言相比较。民族方面同理，汉族是多民族融合的共同体，拿今天的汉族当五千的前的中国人，用现代汉族人的基因与日、韩相比，当然不同，因此就推翻他们祖先的说法，与“刻舟求剑”无异。

http://www.culstudies.com/rendanews/displaynews.asp?id=2835

上古汉语 (archaic chinese 1100BC - 2AD)

It is believed that archaic chinese had inflections, rich consonants, and was toneless and in SOV order.

Do old Chinese SOV constructions such as: "(subj) 乃 / 既 (obj) 是也" bear resemblence to the "(subj) wa (obj) desu" in Japanese?

You may add anything you know about archaic Chinese, and its differences vs modern Chinese.

[ala]

Archaic Chinese (around time of early Rome) is believed to have noun cases (declensions), verb conjugations including tense; morphologically rather similar to Indo-European languages today. And was possibly SOV dominant. After Qin Dynasty and the subsequent long-lived Han Dynasty, most of that was lost and you got Middle Chinese (which probably had less inflection than Mandarin today). Middle Chinese probably peaked around Tang Dynasty, and Cantonese is arguably its best preserved modern form. There is gradual trend to increase inflection in the recent 200 hundred years. Shanghainese, for example, has more agglutination and inflection than Mandarin. English is becoming more and more isolating (more like Mandarin and Thai).

Languages cycle through the different types (isolating versus agglunative) over time. Good reference: Hodge, "The Linguistic Cycle," Language Sciences. One also has to realize that during the days of Archaic Chinese, Chinese characters were a lot less phonetic than they are today (they were mostly ideographic), so it's very hard to be certain of their pronunciation and rhyme.

Thus Japanese being somewhat similar to Korean today grammatically does not mean Japanese is necessarily also Altaic. Until more solid proof comes about, Japanese will remain classified as a language isolate (in other words, uncertain).

[Altair]

I still find reading Chinese somewhat difficult, even with the help of Wenlin and so do not have a complete grasp of what was quoted above. Nevertheless, it seems to take an approach that is not accepted by most serious linguists.

Basically, I agree with most of Ala's posting, but want to add a little more.

I have never read a serious argument that claims a link between Mayan, Mohawk, and Sino-Tibetan. Amerindian languages probably separated from other languages on the order of 20 to 50 thousand years ago. Such a distant separation probably precludes the possibility of establishing language relationships with any other languages.

With the exception of, Inuit and Aleut, comparative linguists can make some guesses about grouping the other languages into 2-4 super-families, but I do not think these groupings have been clearly demonstrated. From what I recall, Mayan and Mohawk would fall within these groupings and are not language isolates.

I have also not read a well-reasoned theory that relates Japanese or Korean to Sino-Tibetan. Features such as SOV word order and random cognates can often show apparent genetic relationships where deeper analysis would show nothing beyond randomness.

Both SOV and SVO languages are quite common. They often exist even within the same language families. Also, as useful as these designations are, I believe it is still unclear if the theories they represent are actually sound. For instance, Mandarin has many features of both SVO and SOV languages.

I have read a well-reasoned theory that purports to relate Japanese and Korean to Indoeuropean languages, but the theory covers a very wide range of grammatical features and deals with Japanese and Korean only peripherally. The heart of the theory basically cites evidence for a super-super-language family that includes practically all the languages of Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, Northern Asia, Korean, Japanese, Aleut, and Inuit, except for Sino-Tibetan, Mon-Khmer, Dravidian, Thai, etc.

0ne of the deceptive aspects of Ancient Chinese is that writers apparently commonly used the same characters for unrelated words or different characters for the same word. Here are some examples taken from Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar by Edwin G. Pulleybank. 女 was originally used for the word "woman" (modern nv3). It was then borrowed to express a word that meant "you" (modern ru3). Later on, the character for the Ru3 River (汝) was borrowed for the meaning "you" and 女 was reserved for the meaning "woman." In Pre-Han texts, 説 could be pronounced with the equivalent of shuo1 to mean "speak" or shui4 to mean "persuade" or even yue4 to mean "joy." Eventually, "yue" became written only with the character 悦, which changes only the radical. This kind of thing accounts for some of the oddities in the phonetic portions of characters.

Some phonetic variation in Modern Mandarin can be traced to certain affixes that probably existed in Ancient Chinese. For instance, in certain cases a word in the departing tone shows a relationship with a similar word in another tone. This may have been due to an "s" suffix that has a cognate in Tibetan. (I think I recall reading somewhere a theory that this suffix sometimes had a causative meaning.) Examples of this are the following:

王 (the equivalent of wang4 meant "to be king," while the equivalent of wang2 meant "king."

好 pronounced as "hao4" means to like, whereas "hao3" means "to be good."

恶 pronounced as "wu4" means to hate, whereas "e2" means "to be bad."

乘 pronounced as "sheng4" means vehicle, whereas "cheng2" means "to ride."

座 (zuo4) means seat, but 坐, which had a rising tone in Early Middle Chinese means "to sit."

度 pronounced as du4 means "a measure," whereas it means to measure when pronounced as duo2.

The pairs 見 and 現, the two pronunciations of 屬/囑, and the pairs 譚 and 談 also suggest the effects of affixes in Ancient Chinese that have cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages.

The possibility that ancient Chinese had declensions and conjugation becomes less shocking if we consider the fact that many ancient scripts gave only limited information about such things and instead required the reader to supply them. This is still the case with modern written Arabic, which has extensive grammatical patterns, including declensions, that are often wholly unrepresented by the script. If you looked only at the regular script or heard only the average news interview, one would incorrectly conclude that Arabic has no noun declensions. The truth is that practically all nouns can be audibly declined in hyperformal speech, even though such declensions are rarely indicated in normal writing and are omitted except in reading poetry, news broadcasts, religious texts, etc.

Ancient Chinese might have included similar writing conventions that would only leave indirect evidence of endings, such as in the profusion of personal pronouns and negative particles.

[Ding Wen]

I don't want to make a dumb post. But I have to say, archaic chinese sucks ass! We have to learn it at school, and I suck at it

[shibo77]

Sorry, I can't type anything but Latin lettres now. I am back at the university with a stupid computer and this new Linux system is strange. I am trying to understand how to type in other languages.

You really love your "desu" theory...

But I don't know about Japanese linguistics, sorry.

The English name, "Archaic Chinese" is confusing. The Chinese name "Shang4 Gu3 Han4 Yu3", refers to "Old Chinese". Old Chinese changed enough to be called Middle Chinese by the end of the 4th century, and standardised around the Sui dynasty and Tang dynasty, which was the first time that the centre of China proper had to move southward (this was the Qin empire defeating the Jin empire). Tens thousands fleed south, and the capital was moved to Nanjing. After the collapse of the Jin empire successive states Song, Qi, Liang, Chen, even Sui that reunited China originated from the south. In these 2 centuries, however conservative the scholars were at keeping proper pronunciations, there were too much influence from Wu. Then many dictionaries were made to try to correct the pronunciation to as close as that was spoken by Yan di, and Huang di, basically the original pronunciation of the Hua-Xia tribes. But all that was left were the Northern dialect and the Southern dialect. The Northern dialect were influenced from the Tungunsic branch of the "Altaic" family. The Southern dialect were more proper/civilised, but received heavy influences from Wu. The scholars of Sui and Tang branched into two different sectors. One that followed the "Ying Yun"(based on the people that fleed south into the Huainan regions), another that followed the "Qie Yun" (based on the Sui court and southeastern dialects). In this way the original pronunciations, "Zhongyuan" of the central plains were lost, and linguists divides it into the era of Middle Chinese. It stayed for about 700 years or more and the defeat of the Song empire by the Jin, forced another flee to the south. When China was reunited again during the Yuan, the proper Middle Chinese were lost again, while pronunciations shifted to the Altaic influenced "Han er" dialect of the Northern dialects. That's Modern Chinese or "Mandarin".

But Old Chinese is the closest to the proper pronunciations of the Hua-Xia tribes. The scholars started paying attention to pronunciations and they wanted a proper pronunciation that was the same as Yan di and Huang di. This was because the court of Shang ruled with an iron fist, and institute many cultural aspects from the "Southern tribes", the tribes of Chi you.

(the Southern tribes is the branch of homo sapiens that migrated south from the Pamir mountains, basically originated from the south of China and moved northwards. They lived as far north as Liaoning, Hebei, northern Korea, northern Honshu...) They spoke a language of the Austronesian family. Of the modern dialectal groups in China today, the "Southern dialects" were Chinese(Hua-Xia) influenced Austornesian languages. Gan and Xiang were Chinese(Hua-Xia) influenced Austroasiatic languages. They change themselves and doesn't preserve. It's because of the early contact, Yue dialectal groups' isolation and it's early contacts with late Old Chinese and late Middle Chinese that made it preserve these influences. The Chinese, cultural and languages, is a "mix", not a "tree". It is many different cultures and peoples and languages mixing together, converge. Not one language branching into all different dialectal groups, diverge.

After the Shang were defeated by the Zhou, a groups of Shang people escaped north to "Chao Xian", the "Chao Xian" here is the "Shi3 ji" definition of "Chao Xian", and it refers not to Korea, but to Liaoning and south Jilin, and maybe a tiny portion across the Yalu river into Korea.

The Zhou court reinstituted many "Hua-Xia" cultural aspects and waned to bring back the original pronunciations of the "Hua-Xia" tribes. The pronunciations of Yan di and Huang di. The scholars called it "Ya hua" (refining). The speech, they named "Ya yan" (refined speech)

The practise to keep this pronunciation standard was continued until the Jin dynasty, when they were defeated by the northern Qin empire. ("Ya yan"(refined speech) was modified during the Han dynasty and named "Tong yan"(Common speech) to bring in more influences from the western and southern regions) The pronunciation of this time period is called Old Chinese. The representative standards are Zhou Xian-Luoyang "Ya yan"(the Zhou court brought Xian Ya yan directly to Luoyang, stayed the same) and Han Luoyang "Tong yan" (different from Xian Tong yan of the western Han dynasty).

Old Chinese does not have any tones. It has much more particles to indicate politeness, social standing, tense("conjugation"), focus("declension"), and aspect. They are much different than how Indo-European languages' conjugations and declensions. They were simply particles added on. There is an Old Chinese dictionary/grammar to pronounce/understand the literature of the Zhou dynasty(Kong zi's works). Although people use it for "Shi1 jing" also... If you are learning Chinese linguistics, they start teaching pronunciation from the 3rd year.

I learnt it for one year, and now it is my second year. I don't know much yet, it is not easy, there are 5 tiers of social level, and add 3 for royalty which is little used in the literature that survived up to today.

But if there are specific questions, maybe look for the pronunciations for a poem, I can do that.

S -subject

O -object

V -verb

A -adjective

N -noun

SOV I eat apple.

AN green grass

NA grass green

Old Chinese is SVO AN like Modern Chinese but can be SOV if needed, ancient languages are very flexible, and you can switch VOS, OVS ... if it is your speech/writing style.

But it can never be NA. If it is NA or NA/AN then it is an Austronesian or Austroasiatic language.

"Shi4 ye3" isn't really Old Chinese, it's a popularised way to try to sound archaic and intelligent...

-Shibo

[Altair]

Shibo,

Are you saying that Old Chinese was not a Sino-Tibetan language or that Chinese somehow has less of a relationship to this language family than Tibetan or Burmese?

Also, does your explanation account for all the apparent dialect differences in Old Chinese?

[Quest]

shibo, altair, and ala -- our top 3 linguists.

[qrasy]

S -subject

O -object

V -verb

A -adjective

N -noun

SOV I eat apple.

AN green grass

NA grass green

Old Chinese is SVO AN like Modern Chinese but can be SOV if needed' date=' ancient languages are very flexible, and you can switch VOS, OVS ... if it is your speech/writing style.

But it can never be NA. If it is NA or NA/AN then it is an Austronesian or Austroasiatic language.

[/quote']

NA seems more like Tibetan.

Very variable Subject Verb Object order reminds me about Austronesian.

Archaic Chinese (around time of early Rome) is believed to have noun cases (declensions)' date=' verb conjugations including tense; morphologically rather similar to Indo-European languages today. And was possibly SOV dominant. After Qin Dynasty and the subsequent long-lived Han Dynasty, most of that was lost and you got Middle Chinese (which probably had less inflection than Mandarin today). Middle Chinese probably peaked around Tang Dynasty, and Cantonese is arguably its best preserved modern form. There is gradual trend to increase inflection in the recent 200 hundred years. Shanghainese, for example, has more agglutination and inflection than Mandarin. English is becoming more and more isolating (more like Mandarin and Thai).

Languages cycle through the different types (isolating versus agglunative) over time. Good reference: Hodge, "The Linguistic Cycle," [u']Language Sciences[/u]. One also has to realize that during the days of Archaic Chinese, Chinese characters were a lot less phonetic than they are today (they were mostly ideographic), so it's very hard to be certain of their pronunciation and rhyme.

Thus Japanese being somewhat similar to Korean today grammatically does not mean Japanese is necessarily also Altaic. Until more solid proof comes about, Japanese will remain classified as a language isolate (in other words, uncertain).

Please show me Old Chinese noun class, verb conjugation, and SOV forms

[Long Zhiren]

Any thoughts on these books?

"The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy", by John DeFrancis

"Sources of Shang History" (pretty expensive), by David N. Keightley

"The Composition of Common Chinese Characters: An Illustrated Account" from Peking University Press.

"Chinese Characters: Their origin, etymology, history, classification, and signification" by Wieger.