ABSTRACT

What is Old Chinese (OC) phonology? OC is reconstructed on the basis of the Middle Chinese Qieyun System, phonetic series, and early rhymes, plus pieces of other information that an investigator might deem relevant. Why are there so many different OC reconstructions? An illustration of reconstruction compares proposals by Karlgren, Wang Li, Li Fang-kuei, Baxter (1992), Baxter and Sagart (2014), and Pan Wuyun. Grammar: summary of basic syntactic principles and the role of particles. Morphology: word derivation by tone change (i.e. ‘tones’ from the Middle Chinese perspective), suffixes, and prefixes. Possible traces of OC dialects.