Ancient Chinese, Classical Chinese and today Chinese

[Mig]

I was reading patiently A History of the Chinese Language Second Edition Hongyuan Dong and then I was wondering about the way

ancient Chinese language is taught reading the classics and how classical Chinese evolved to today Chinese. Right after I was watching

a video of how ancient Chinese sounded. Apparently, there is a theory that says tonal languages came from non tonal languages, so,

if the classics as lǎozǐ, zhuāngzǐ, sìshū, chūnqiū, lǐjì老子 ， 莊子 ， 四書 ， 春秋 ， 禮記 etc. were written during the time there was no tonal

language, assuming that was during that transition of non tonal to tonal language, if that happened, then that language was sounded

different especially if we don't have records from the common people language. Or is it that those classics texts were modified later to

become the classical Chinese that became popular after the táng唐 dynasty. Just wondering or if someone can have better explanation

of those changes or that language evolution.
Thanks

 

 

[Luxi]

On 3/31/2022 at 10:44 PM, Mig said:

A History of the Chinese Language Second Edition Hongyuan Dong

 

I was going to ask you for a reference but I 've just googled it and seen the price. Ouch! Still, interesting topic.

 

-----

PS Sorry! I was mistakenly looking at a collectors' hardback. Fortunately for lesser mortals, the 2nd edition paperback and the Kindle ebook although not cheap are much more reasonably priced. 

[Mig]

I think I found the book as a PDF, will check again and let you know. It is interesting to see how historical linguistics, typology and diachronic phonology helps to

understand today languages and it is an area of theories some more interesting than others. As I keep reading here is something to think about that Old Chinese very likely did not have tones either and that in general, tones can develop within a language that did not have tones. Thus, Amdo Tibetan may have been more representative of the Proto-Sino-Tibetan in not having tones. The second phonological feature is consonant clusters at the beginning of a syllable. For example, in Tibetan, we find words that begin with more than one consonant, such as in “zgo” (“door”) and “pki” (“carry”) from Daofu Tibetan (Hu 1980). However, consonant clusters of any type are not allowed in Modern
Standard Chinese. Only one consonant can occur at the beginning of a modern Chinese syllable. Given the diverse composition of consonant clusters in Tibetan and
in many other Sino-Tibetan languages, it is less likely for these consonant clusters to have developed later, because simplification of consonant clusters is universally
more common. ... there were consonant clusters in Old Chinese. Proto-Sino-Tibetan probably also had consonant clusters. A History of the Chinese Language Second Edition
Hongyuan Dong. pp 25