Han Phonology: When Chinese Became Chinese

汉语以短小简单的单词、声调和简单的语法而闻名，但在遥远的过去，汉语是一种非常不同的语言；古汉语(公元前1300-100年)没有声调，辅音串与德语或乔治亚语的辅音簇一样令人印象深刻，它使用前缀和后缀来构成新词。到公元602年，也就是最早的汉语发音词典的日期，中古汉语已经是我们今天所知的语言的一种形式。中国人怎么会有这么大的变化？汉朝(公元前206年-公元220年)掌握着关键；它是中国历史上第一个经久不衰的帝国，也是中国思想和文学最具形成性的时期之一。此时，伴随着古典学术的儒家文化环境蓬勃发展。儒家经典本身被编辑和(字面上)装订在石头上，而诗歌和文艺散文则蓬勃发展。汉人也看到了前所未有的外来文化的接触和影响，从葡萄到五子棋，佛教是这一时期最持久的外来影响。这个项目将出版一本《汉语拼音手册》，取代之前分别于1958年和1983年出版的两本长篇汉语拼音研究。通过收集现有的汉代音变知识，并以计算机可读的形式将其形式化，我们将能够严格检验相互竞争的想法，并为未来的发展奠定可靠的基础。我们还将对著名文本和新出土文本的语言数据进行最先进的网络分析，以确定已知变化的时间、地点和社会环境。使用这些新收集的证据和这些新方法，我们将在有争议的提案中做出决定，并做出新的发现。到目前为止，我们将对这段时间内言语的地区和社会差异进行最彻底和最实证的处理。特别是，通过比较儒家文人诗中押韵所隐含的发音和佛教文本中印度语术语转录所隐含的发音，我们将揭示这两个不同宗教群体的语言系统。

Chinese is famous for its short simple words, its tones, and its simple grammar, but in the distant past Chinese was a very different language; Old Chinese (1300-100 BCE) lacked tones, had consonant clusters as impressive as those of German or Georgian, and it used prefixes and suffixes to form new words. By 602 CE, the date of the earliest Chinese pronunciation dictionary, Middle Chinese was already recognizably a form of the language we known today. How did Chinese change so much? The Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) holds the key; it was the first enduring empire in Chinese history, and among the most formative periods for Chinese thought and literature. At this time, the Confucian cultural milieu accompanying classical scholarship thrived. The Confucian classics themselves were edited and (literally) set in stone, while poetry and belletristic prose flourished. The Han also saw unprecedented exposure to and influences from foreign cultures, from grapes to backgammon, with Buddhism standing out as the period's most abiding foreign influence.This project will produce a Handbook of Han Chinese Phonology that will supersede the previous two book length studies of Han phonology, published respectively in 1958 and 1983. By collecting and formalizing existing knowledge of sound change during the Han period in a computer readable format, we will be able to rigorously test competing ideas and produce a reliable foundation for future progress. We will also applying state-of-the-art network analysis to the linguistic data of both well known and newly unearthed texts to pinpoint the time, place, and social milieu of known changes. Using this fresh collection of evidence and these new methods, we will decide among controversial proposals and make new discoveries. We will give the most thorough and empirical treatment so far of regional and social variation in speech over the period. In particular, by comparing the pronunciations implied by the rhymes in poetry written by Confucian literati and the pronunciations implied by the transcription of Indic terms in Buddhist texts, we will reveal the language systems of these two distinct religious communities.