A Neutral Transcription System for Teaching Medieval Chinese

Abstract

Tang Studies 17 (1999) A Neutral Transcription System for Teaching Medieval Chinese D A V I D PRAGER BRANNER NEW YORK CITY AND TAIPEI && - ifrst* ^ 31 && After the Qi and Liang, the authentic sound [of literature] ebbed, and people no longer sought after ancient ways. But we who stir up those faltering waves may be wiser than the modernists. — Wenjing mifulun, "Nan juan, Lun wenyi", quoting Jiaoran's Shiyi 1. INTRODUCTION: ANTI-RECONSTRUCTION Chinese historical phonology is a notoriously obscure field to the non-specialist, in part because it uses arcane terminology, in part because of the abstract nature of its key concepts, and above all because of the intimidating appearance of reconstructions. The most influential reconstruction was the work of Bernhard Karlgren (1889-1978), who created a complicated-looking system with many fine phonetic distinctions, especially among the vowels. Karlgren conceived of his achievement as the reconstitution of an ancient language, from the evidence of its modern descendents (our "dialects") combined with phonological materials from the venerable Chinese philological tradition. Today, however, there is a growing sense that Karlgren's conI am grateful to Martin Kern, Mark Asselin, Marshall Unger, South Coblin, and Paul Kroll for comments on earlier versions of this paper. It was read on 2 May, 1999, as "A Pedagogical Anti-reconstruction for Medieval Chinese/' at the "Conference on the Past, Present, and Future of the Chinese Writing System," organized by Victor Mair at Philadelphia. A portion of the writing of this paper was done with support from Victor Mair and the University of Pennsylvania.© 1999 by David Prager Branner 1 Branner: Neutral Transcription for Medieval Chinese ception of reconstruction confused two very different things. On one hand, one can reconstruct the true ancestor of the spoken modern dialects, with some reference to philological evidence; on the other hand, one can study the philological sources as a rigid tradition that has sustained the educated readings of Chinese characters . Scholars such as Willem Grootaers, Jerry Norman, and South Coblin have argued for a firm division between these two conceptions (Grootaers 1946, Norman and Coblin 1995; see Branner 1999 for a fuller account of the historical context of these ideas). According to this philosophy, it is a mistake to think that all historical philological sources necessarily reflect real spoken language. Although Grootaers' division remains controversial in some circles, the present paper presupposes it as fact, and examines the ensuing pedagogical need for a purely philological transcription system that is not a reconstruction. Such a system of transcription does not pretend to represent the actual sound of any real language of an earlier time. Rather, it represents the received Chinese scheme of medieval phonology in the abstract. I have coined the name "anti-reconstruction" for this kind of transcription, by analogy with "anti-matter," to distinguish it from a true reconstruction that purports to recover actual sounds of earlier times. The antireconstruction is a tool for the study of Classical Chinese and an adjunct to the study of linguistic history. If it is sufficiently accessible and unthreatening, it can be introduced to students early in their sinological educations, and will serve as an aid to later study of historical linguistics, prosody, and philology. A number of the transcriptions reviewed here (those of Kennedy, Boodberg, and Stimson) were designed specifically for the purpose of teaching, and have already been implemented in the classroom, read aloud, and so forth. In the right hands, a Classical transcription can make ancient literature come alive, although there is a limit to how far one can go in reading such things aloud. The problem is that classical quotations can still only be brought into actual speech if they are pronounced using modern sounds. In this connection, one may 2 Tang Studies 17 (1999) recall the tremendous conflict in nineteenth-century American classrooms over the introduction of reconstructed "Roman" Latin; see Fisher 1879 for representative arguments. The present paper discusses medieval transcription systems that have previously been used, proposes a new system based on the practical needs of non-specialists, and provides enough information for anyone who has had reasonable training i n Chinese historical phonology to use the new system. Students and other beginners will...