Old Mandarin - Sources

Sources

China had a strong and conservative tradition of phonological description in the rime dictionaries and their elaboration in rime tables. Thus for example the phonological system of the 11th century Guangyun was almost identical to that of the Qieyun of more than 4 centuries earlier, disguising changes in speech over the period. A side-effect of foreign rule of north China between the 10th and 14th centuries was a weakening of many of the old traditions. New genres of vernacular literature such as the qu and sanqu appeared, as well as descriptions of contemporary language that revealed how much the language had changed.

The first alphabetic writing system for Chinese was created by the Tibetan monk 'Phags-pa on the orders of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. The 'Phags-pa script, promulgated in 1269, was a vertical adaptation of the Tibetan alphabet, initially aimed at Mongolian, but later adapted to other languages of the empire, including Chinese. It saw limited use until the fall of the Yuan dynasty in 1271. The alphabet shows some influence of traditional phonology, in particular including voiced stops and fricatives that most scholars believe had disappeared from Mandarin dialects by that time. However, so-called entering tone syllables ending in the stops /p/, /t/ or /k/ in Middle Chinese were now all written with a glottal stop ending. The other tones are not marked by the script.

The Menggu Ziyun was a Chinese rhyme dictionary based on 'Phags-pa. The prefaces of the only extant manuscript are dated 1308, but the work is believed to be derived from earlier 'Phags-pa texts. The dictionary is believed to be based on Southern Song rime dictionaries, particularly the Lǐbù yùnlüè (礼部韵略) issued by the Ministry of Rites in 1037. The front matter includes a list of 'Phags-pa letters mapped to the 36 initials of the Song dynasty rhyme table tradition, with further letters for vowels. The entries are grouped into 15 rhyme classes, which correspond closely to the 16 broad rhyme classes of the rhyme tables. Within each rhyme class, entries are grouped by the 'Phags-pa spelling of the final, and then by the four tones of Middle Chinese (not indicated by the 'Phags-pa spelling).

A more radical departure from the rhyme table tradition was the Zhongyuan Yinyun, created by Zhōu Déqīng in 1324 as a guide to the rhyming conventions of qu, a new vernacular verse form. The entries are grouped into 19 rhyme classes each identified by a pair of exemplary characters. The rhyme classes are subdivided by tone and then into groups of homophones, with no other indication of pronunciation. The Middle Chinese even tone (平 píng) is divided in upper and lower tones, called 陰平 yīnpíng and 平陽 yángpíng respectively. Syllables in the Middle Chinese entering tone are distributed between the other tones, but placed after the other syllables with labels such as 入聲作去聲 (rùshēng zuò qùshēng "entering tone makes departing tone").