Response to Ho Dah-an

Abstract

Ho Dah-an’s 2016 review of our book Old Chinese: A New Reconstruction (2014) contains little discussion of the book’s main themes or proposals: he focuses instead on “errors” which, according to him, “reflect the outdated concepts of the authors and the insufficiency of their basic training.” In this response to Ho’s review, we consider his discussion of these “errors.” On two points (discussed below), he has actually found errors (a faulty interpretation of an entry in the Shuōwén jiězì and one incorrect citation), which we are glad to be able to correct. Neither materially affects our conclusions. The other “errors” that Ho mentions are not errors at all: in most cases they reflect basic misunderstandings on Ho’s part: of our book, of other sources, and of basic principles of historical linguistics. Since some of these misunderstandings relate to general issues in the reconstruction of Old Chinese, we attempt here to correct these misunderstandings in order to set the record straight.