초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Reconstructing the Qieyun sounds has been subject to extensive research in the historical phonology of Chinese. Qieyun, a rhyme book compiled by Lu Fayan in AD 601, is arguably the most crucial source in tracing the sounds of Middle Chinese. However, the reconstructed sound systems differ to a large extent due to different linguistic sources as well as phonetic and phonemic analyses employed for the studies. The present study adopts phonological typology, which explains sound distributions across languages, as a methodological tool to compare the reconstructions of the Qieyun vowel system from Martin (1953), 周法高 (1954, 1968, 1984), 藤堂明保 (1954, 1957, 1980), Baxter (1992), 麥耘 (2009), and 潘悟雲 (2000, 2014, forthcoming). A close examination on the reconstructed vowel systems reveals that they differ in vowel inventory size, distribution of peripheral vowels and internal vowels, and distributional relations with such features as highness, frontness, and roundness. Taken together, Pan’s revised system (forthcoming) conforms with vowel universals and provides a natural vowel system from a typological perspective. This study further suggests that it is not in fact a six-vowel system as Pan claims but should be regarded as an eight-vowel system comprised of the phonemes /a, i, u, e, æ, o, ɤ, ə/.
