A History of the Chinese Language by Hongyuan Dong (review)

A History of the Chinese Language by Hongyuan Dong is a significant contribution to the field of Chinese linguistics in general and Chinese historical linguistics in particular. This book gives a comprehensive and insightful introduction to the historical development of the Chinese language, describing the features of the Chinese language at various stages and providing wonderful analysis of core linguistic aspects such as phonology, syntax, semantics, vocabulary, Chinese characters, and dialects through time. Written for a general readership, it is highly accessible and reader-friendly, which is, however, not at the cost of the breadth or depth of the topic. The author carefully weaves linguistic facts, research findings, in-depth analysis, and enjoyable stories together. Even advanced readers will find it a valuable and thought-provoking read. The book includes eleven chapters, which combine to present a fascinating picture of Chinese language development over thousands of years.

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1 gives a general introduction of the book, the Chinese language, and its history. In particular, the author argues for the significance of the study of linguistic history, clarifies terminology such as “language” and “dialect,” and outlines the key stages of the Chinese language. In this chapter, Chinese dialects are categorized into seven major groups. Chinese language development is divided into four major periods: Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, Early Modern Chinese, and Modern Chinese. In addition, the author points out that the study of Chinese language history is an interdisciplinary exploration, going beyond linguistics to cultural, historical, social, and political studies.

Chapter 2 explores the Chinese language back to prehistoric times and establishes the linguistic genetic relationship between Chinese and the Sino-Tibetan language family. The author starts this chapter with a discussion of how linguistic genetic relationships can be established through examples of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin within the Indo-European family. This method is then used to see what languages are genetically related to Chinese. Analyses show that geographic neighbors of the Chinese language (e.g., Japanese, Korean) do not share genetic relationships. Instead, Chinese in prehistoric times was more similar to the ancestral languages of Tibetan and Burmese, the so-called Sino-Tibetan language family. According to archaeological and linguistic evidence, the Sino-Tibetan language is about six thousand years old and the Sino-Tibetan people originally inhabited the Upper and Middle Yellow River region.

Chapters 3 to 5 focus on the phonology of the Chinese language. Sounds of a language can change. For example, a thousand years ago, the Chinese language had more than thirty consonants, but Modern Standard Chinese only has twenty-two. The fact that Shījīng does not seem to rhyme well based on Modern Standard Chinese pronunciation is also because of sound change. These three chapters analyze such changes and attempt to reconstruct the sound systems at different periods of time. They are dedicated to analyses of the sounds of Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, and Early Modern Chinese, respectively.

The most important evidence for reconstructing the sounds of Old Chinese comes from Shījīng and xiéshēngzì, the phonetic cues encoded in a type of Chinese character. In chapter 3, the author demonstrates how the two types of evidence can be used to find rhyme classes, initial classes, and possible consonant clusters of Old Chinese in order to reconstruct the sound system of Old Chinese.

Chapter 4 provides a detailed introduction of a few major written records of the sounds of Middle Chinese, including Qièyùn, Guǎngyùn, and rhyme tables. The author also explains the Fǎnqiè system used throughout the Guǎngyùn to indicate the pronunciation of characters. With a step-by-step illustration of the linking method and the comparative reconstruction method, the author presents the reader with a reconstructed system of Middle Chinese sounds.

The major written record of the sounds of the common spoken language of the Yuan dynasty is Zhōngyuán Yīnyùn, a rhyme...