Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation: In Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin

Known for his work in Chinese historical phonetics, Edwin Pulleyblank has compiled this lexicon to present in the result of his researches on the phonology of Middle Chinese and its evolution to Mandarin. The lexicon complements Pulleyblank's earlier book, "Middle Chinese" by providing reconstructed pronunciation for approximately 8000 Chinese characters at three historical stages. Early Middle Chinese is the language of the "Qieyun" rhyme dictionary of AD 601, which codified the standard literary language of both North and South China. Pulleyblank's reconstruction is a thorough reworking of that of Bernhard Karlgren, completed in the twenties, and in some respects differs radically from it. Late Middle Chinese is the standard language of the High Tang Dynasty, based on the dialect of the capital, Chang'an. It has not been reconstructed previously as a separate stage but is of special importance, since it is the ancestor of most modern dialects. Early Mandarin represents the speech of the Yuan capital, Dadu (present Beijing), around the year 1300, for which Pulleyblank's reconstruction differs considerably from that of Hugh M. Stimson. The sources and methods used in these reconstruction were fully discussed in "Middle Chinese", but recent developments in phonological theory have led to some modifications in detail. The entries are arranged alphabetically according to the Pinyin system with an index by the traditional Kangzi radical and stroke numbers. The Morohashi number is also given for each character, facilitating easy reference to this important Chinese thesaurus. Another useful feature of the Lexicon is the inclusion of the numbers in Karlgren's "Grammata Serica" for characters that are included in that work. Concise English equivalents for the Chinese words are also provided. Reconstructed forms are given in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Though this requires a number of phonetic signs and diacritical marks, these are carefully explained in the introduction. Every effort has been made to provide a useful tool for students of Chinese literature and China's relations with foreign countries as well as for specialists in Chinese linguistics.