102
JOHN MCCOY
analysis of older texts on one hand and the development of a hypothetical proto-form on the other. Both approaches rely on modern spoken dialect data but they use these data in significantly different ways. In deriving Ancient Chinese Karlgren first worked out the structured format of the older rhyme books then manipulated modern dialect evidence in order to derive phonetic units to fit each slot of the patterns established in these dictionaries. This is a perfectly valid and useful approach but it sometimes becomes arbitrary; for example, at those points where modern dialects show no contrasts to give us clues to contrasts indicated in the rhyming dictionaries.
In a linguistic reconstruction a proto-form is derived in such a way that it can logically stand as progenitor of all the modern spoken forms. This approaches a one-to-one relationship in that regular features of present-day dialects should then be reconstructed as features in the proto-form.
Since textual reconstructions are based on pre-linguistic materials, they can seldom be expected to give us results which meet the demands of a modern phonemic analysis. Usually this sort of problem can be at least partially solved by reworking the textual data with newer techniques; this was essentially the contribution of Samuel Martin in his phonemicization of Ancient Chinese. A well-done linguistic reconstruction should produce phonemically accurate data, and thus avoid one of the preliminary problems of the textual reconstruction. Although an abstraction in the sense that it is a projection from rather than a record of real data, the linguistic reconstruction establishes a system which can in turn be valuable in rationalizing textual materials.
There is a second reason for seeking supplementary data with which to refine our picture of the older forms of Chinese. This derives from the fact that the rhyming dictionaries were essentially proscriptive rather than descriptive; that is, they tended to record how a character ought to be pronounced rather than how it actually was pronounced by a given dialect group. Fairly early the style and rhyme patterns of Chinese poetry became formalized and to a large degree classical and learned forms began to predominate. With the high value put on formal education and with the development of a fairly narrow range of classical models within which a man could deem himself well educated, the poetry
102
JOHN MCCOY
analysis of older texts on one hand and the development of a hypothetical proto-form on the other. Both approaches rely on modern spoken dialect data but they use these data in signi- ficantly different ways. In deriving Ancient Chinese Karlgren first worked out the structured format of the older rhyme books then manipulated modern dialect evidence in order to derive phonetic units to fit each slot of the patterns established in these dictionaries. This is a perfectly valid and useful approach but it sometimes becomes arbitrary; for example, at those points. where modern dialects show no contrasts to give us clues to contrasts indicated in the rhyming dictionaries.
In a linguistic reconstruction a proto-form is derived in such a way that it can logically stand as progenitor of all the modern spoken forms. This approaches a one-to-one relationship in that regular features of present-day dialects should then be recon- structed as features in the proto-form.
Since textual reconstructions are based on pre-linguistic materials, they can seldom be expected to give us results which meet the demands of a modern phonemic analysis. Usually this sort of problem can be at least partially solved by reworking the textual data with newer techniques; this was essentially the con- tribution of Samuel Martin in his phonemicization of Ancient Chinese. A well-done linguistic reconstruction should produce phonemically accurate data, and thus avoid one of the preliminary problems of the textual reconstruction. Although an abstraction in the sense that it is a projection from rather than a record of real data, the linguistic reconstruction establishes a system which can in turn be valuable in rationalizing textual materials.
There is a second reason for seeking supplementary data with which to refine our picture of the older forms of Chinese. This derives from the fact that the rhyming dictionaries were essentially proscriptive rather than descriptive; that is, they tended to record how a character ought to be pronounced rather than how it actually was pronounced by a given dialect group. Fairly early the style and rhyme patterns of Chinese poetry became formalized and to a large degree classical and learned forms began to pre- dominate. With the high value put on formal education and with the development of a fairly narrow range of classical models within which a man could deem himself well educated, the poetry
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