Chinese

Preface ix Major chronological divisions of Chinese history xi Introduction The varieties of Chinese 1(5) China's linguistic neighbors 6(2) Typological characteristics of Chinese 8(4) The genetic affiliation of Chinese 12(4) Chinese in contact with other languages 16(7) The historical phonology of Chinese Periodicization of Chinese 23(1) Sources of Middle Chinese: the Qieyun 24(4) The Song rhyme tables 28(6) The methodology of Middle Chinese reconstruction 34(8) The reconstruction of Old Chinese 42(6) Old Mandarin 48(4) Tonal development 52(6) The Chinese script The beginnings of Chinese writing 58(5) Codification of the script under the Qin dynasty 63(1) The varieties of ancient script and its nomenclature 64(1) Developments in the Han dynasty 65(4) Post-Han developments in the script 69(1) The number of Chinese characters 70(4) The adaptability of the Chinese script 74(5) Recent developments in the Chinese writing system 79(4) The classical and literary languages Classical and literary Chinese 83(1) Morphemes and words 84(3) Word classes 87(8) The Classical Chinese sentence 95(2) Some grammatical operations 97(6) Place and time adjuncts 103(1) Nominal and verbal modification 104(1) Nominalization 105(1) Conjoining constructions 106(2) The classical literary language in later ages 108(3) The rise and development of the written vernacular Sources for the study of the early vernacular 111(1) Nouns, measures and localizers 112(5) Pronominal forms 117(4) Predicatives 121(9) Changes in word order 130(3) The modern standard language I The formation of the modern standard language 133(2) The problem of nomenclature 135(3) Phonology of the standard language - preliminaries 138(1) The initials 139(2) The finals 141(4) Tones 145(3) Stress and intonation 148(1) Morphophonemics 149(3) The modern standard language II The study of grammar in China 152(2) The morpheme 154(1) The word 155(2) Word classes 157(2) Expression of grammatical categories 159(7) The Chinese sentence 166(4) Traditional Chinese lexicography 170(2) The rise of bilingual dictionaries 172(4) Modern lexicography in China 176(5) Dialectal variation in North and Central China Classification of Chinese dialects 181(2) Historical factors in dialect development 183(4) Degree of diversity among Chinese dialects 187(1) Dialect geography 188(1) Dialect boundaries 189(1) The Mandarin dialects 190(7) The Central dialects 197(2) The Wu dialects 199(5) The Gan dialects 204(3) The Xiang dialects 207(3) The dialects of the Southeast Common features found in the Southern dialects 210(4) The Yue dialects 214(7) The Kejia dialects 221(7) The Min dialects 228(11) Min and Kejia 239(2) Difficulties in classification 241(4) Language and society Prestige of the different forms of Chinese 245(4) Diglossia, bidialectalism, bilingualism 249(4) Government language policy 253(4) The fate of alphabetic writing in China 257(6) Present and future prospects 263(3) Notes 266(8) References 274(9) Index 283