Middle Chinese - Phonology - Initials

Initials

The preface of the Yunjing identifies a traditional set of 36 initials, each named with an exemplary character. An earlier version comprising 30 initials is known from fragments among the Dunhuang manuscripts. In contrast, identifying the initials of the Qieyun required a painstaking analysis of fanqie relationships across the whole dictionary, a task first undertaken by the Cantonese scholar Chen Li in 1842 and refined by others since. This analysis revealed a slightly different set of initials from the traditional set. Moreover, most scholars believe that some distinctions among the 36 initials were no longer current at the time of the rime tables, but were retained under the influence of the earlier dictionaries.

Early Middle Chinese (EMC) had three types of stops: voiced, voiceless, and voiceless aspirated. There were five series of coronal obstruents, with a three-way distinction between dental (or alveolar), retroflex and palatal among fricatives and affricates, and a two-way dental/retroflex distinction among stop consonants. The following table shows the initials of Early Middle Chinese, with their traditional names and approximate values:

Old Chinese had a simpler system with no palatal or retroflex consonants; the more complex system of EMC is thought to have arisen from a combination of Old Chinese obstruents with a following /r/ and/or /j/.

Bernhard Karlgren developed the first modern reconstruction of Middle Chinese. The main differences between Karlgren and recent reconstructions of the initials are:

• The reversal of /ʑ/ and /dʑ/. Karlgren based his reconstruction on the Song Dynasty rime tables. However, because of mergers between these two sounds between Early and Late Middle Chinese, the Chinese phonologists who created the rime tables could rely only on tradition to tell what the respective values of these two consonants were; evidently they were accidentally reversed at one stage.
• Karlgren also assumed that the EMC retroflex stops were actually palatal stops based on their tendency to co-occur with front vowels and /j/, but this view is no longer held.
• Karlgren assumed that voiced consonants were actually breathy voiced. This is now assumed only for LMC, not EMC.

Several changes occurred between the time of the Qieyun and the rime tables:

• Palatal sibilants merged with retroflex sibilants.
• /ʐ/ merged with /dʐ/ (hence reflecting four separate EMC phonemes).
• The palatal nasal /ɲ/ also became retroflex, but turned into a new phoneme /r/ rather than merging with any existing phoneme.
• The palatal allophone of /ɣ/ (云) merged with /j/ (以) as a single laryngeal initial /j/ (喻).
• A new series of labiodentals emerged from labials in certain environments, typically where both fronting and rounding occurred (e.g. /j/ plus a back vowel in William Baxter's reconstruction, or a front rounded vowel in Chan's reconstruction). However modern Min dialects retain bilabial initials in such words, while modern Hakka dialects preserve them in some common words.
• Voiced obstruents gained phonetic breathy voice (still reflected in the Wu Chinese varieties).

The following table shows a representative account of the initials of Late Middle Chinese.

The voicing distinction is retained in modern Wu dialects, but has disappeared from other varieties. In Min dialects the retroflex dentals have merged with the dentals, while elsewhere they have merged with the retroflex sibilants. In the south these have also merged with the dental sibilants, but the distinction is retained in most Mandarin dialects. The palatal series of modern Mandarin dialects, resulting from a merger of palatal allophones of dental sibilants and velars, is a much more recent development, unconnected with the earlier palatal consonants.