The writing system of scribe Zhou : evidence from late pre-imperial Chinese manuscripts and inscriptions (5th-3rd Centuries BCE) / Haeree Park.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Park, Haeree, 1976- author.

Series:

Studies in manuscript cultures ; v. 4.

Studies in manuscript cultures ; volume 4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chinese language--Writing--History--To 221 B.C.

Chinese language.

Chinese language--To 600--Phonology.

Chinese characters--History.

Chinese characters.

Manuscripts--China.

Manuscripts.

China--History--Warring States, 403-221 B.C.

China.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (342 pages) : illustrations.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin : De Gruyter, [2016]

Language Note:

English

Biography/History:

Haeree Park, University of Hamburg.

Summary:

This book investigates the nature of regional variation in the early Chinese writing system through bamboo manuscripts and inscriptions dating from the late pre-imperial China (5th-3rd centuries BCE). Diachronic and synchronic comparisons of graphic details show that none of the well-recognized regional varieties developed independently from one another. Furthermore, differences in graphic components can be accounted for as alternations of graphs that are compatible in their semantic or phonetic values. The phonological systems underlying various regional orthographies unanimously point to a single coherent sound system with some mixture of dialect pronunciations. This strongly suggests that all the late pre-imperial regional scripts derived from a kind of orthographic meta-system based on one spoken standard language. This orthography and its phonological systems should reasonably be dated to ca. 9th century BCE, just about the time when the earliest known Chinese lexicography "Book of Scribe Zhou" (ca. 830 BCE) was written. The conclusions of this book have further implications on reading and understanding manuscript texts in general as well as on using them as data for linguistic studies.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgements

Contents

Symbols and Abbreviations

1. Introduction

2. The Old Chinese phonology

3. The Shanghai "Zhouyi" and the Warring States script

4. The Chu Script

5. The Shanghai "Zhouyi" and the Early Chinese Orthography

6. Conclusions

Appendix I: A Lexicon of the Shanghai "Zhouyi"

Appendix II: Index of Synonymous Significs and Equivalent Phonophorics

Index of Equivalent Phonophorics

References

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This eBook is made available Open Access. Unless otherwise specified individually in the content, the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed March 19, 2016).

ISBN:

3-11-045930-2

3-11-045931-0

OCLC:

944081832

Access Restriction:

Unrestricted online access