Zheng-Zhang Shangfang 郑张尚芳 In Memoriam

Abstract

Zheng-Zhang Shangfang, a truly gifted and devoted scholar of Chinese historical linguistics, Chinese dialectology, and Sino-Tibetan linguistics, passed away in his hometown, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, on May 19, 2018, at the age of eighty-five. Zheng-Zhang Shangfang, Zheng-Zhang, or Zheng-Zhang Xiansheng, to his colleagues, friends, and students, was born on August 9, 1933 in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. He was a self-taught linguist. He did not attend university and did not receive any formal linguistics training. Living in China during the 1950s and 1960s, being without a university degree meant that he had to find all linguistics books and learn all his linguistic knowledge by himself. In order to have access to a collection of linguistics books, he worked in a local library for five years, starting as a volunteer. He would jokingly say that he graduated from “University of Wenzhou Library”. With the help of his friend Pan Wuyun and others he hand-copied many thick reference books, such as the Chinese translation of Karlgren’s Études sur la phonologie chinoise and Shen Jianshi’s Guangyun Shengxi, both which he borrowed from fellow scholars who supported him. Aided with his incredible knowledge of traditional documents and his unyielding passion for Chinese linguistics, he excelled in all the linguistic fields he studied. His knowledge, his academic curiosity, his passion, his devotion, and his creativity were all exceptional. The combination of these qualities made Zheng-Zhang a unique scholar. To many, he was a miracle and a genius in Chinese linguistics.