Tonal Patterns in the 15th Century: A Corpus-Based Approach

Tonal Patterns in the 15th Century: a Corpus-based Approach Chihkai Lin East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Moore Hall 382, 1890 East-West Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA linchihkai@gmail.com Abstract This paper investigates the tonal patterns in the 15th century from a corpus-based approach, focusing on two historical sources, 日 本 館 譯 語 Rìbĕn kuăn yìyŭ ‘A Wordlist of Chinese-Japanese Phrases’ and 朝 鮮 館 譯 語 Cháoxiān kuăn yìyŭ ‘A Wordlist of Chinese- Korean Phrases’. The results suggest that Japanese and Korean are signiifcantly different in the phonetic transcription of low tone in monosyllabic words and in the first syllable of a disyllabic word. The results also suggest that Mandarin Chinese in the 15th century tends to be a falling tone in the second syllable of a disyllablic word. 1 Introduction The issue concerned with the phonetic value of Early Ming Phonology in the 15th century can be investigated from two sources: a) traditional Chinese rhyme books and b) wordlists for foreign languages transcribed logographically by using Chinese characters. The traditional Chinese rhyme books include 洪 武 正 韻 Hóngwŭ zhèngyùn (1375) ‘The Standard Rhyme of Hóngwŭ’ and 韻略易通 Yùnluè yìtōng (1445) ‘The Easy Access to Rhymes’; the wordlists for foreign languages include 日本館譯語 Rìbĕn kuăn yìyŭ ‘A Wordlist of Chinese-Japanese Phrases’ and 朝鮮館譯語 Cháoxiān kuăn yìyŭ ‘A Wordlist of Chinese-Korean Phrases’, 1 for example. When it comes to the two types of sources, the main concern has been segments rather than prosody, given that in traditional Chinese phonology, it is difficult to present prosody by using Chinese characters. Besides, Chinese rhyme books are often compiled in such a way that presents initials, rhymes and tones separately. Such presentation is significantly 1 The real publication data is not clear for the two wordlists, but it is certain that they are published in early years of Ming dynasty. different from the wordlists for foreign languages, which show no distinction of initials, rhymes and tones, and are transcribed by using Chinese characters for the foreign phrases. The wordlists for foreign languages could preserve different information from the traditional rhyme books not only in the reconstruction of segments, but also in the correspondence of prosody, since prosodic similarity should also be taken into consideration when the compliers were transcribing foreign languages by Chinese characters. Speaking of the prosodic system, it is certain that Early Mandarin Chinese in the 14th - 15th century2 has at least five tones, as suggested by the rhyme books, 洪武正韻 Hóngwŭ zhèngyùn (1375) ‘The Standard Rhyme of Hóngwŭ’ and 韻 略易通 Yùnluè yìtōng (1445) ‘The Easy Access to Rhymes’. On the other hand, Japanese and Korean also have their own prosodic systems. Japanese is a language with pitch-accent, marked by high pitch-accent and low pitch-accent. The prosodic system of Korean, however, has dramatically changed from Middle Korean to Modern Korean. Middle Korean is a language with three tones: level tone, falling tone and rising tone (Lee and Ramsay, 2011: 123).3 Nevertheless, previous studies based …

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