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zev handel

@ZevHandel

24 Mar

I’ve worked up a minute-long video recitation of a brief passage from the 3rd-century BCE Shāng Jūn Shū 商君書 (Book of Lord Shang) to try to give a feel for what the language might have sounded like around the time these words were first written. 1/

@stateswarring

For the content, I chose the first few sentences from Chapter 2, Kěn Lìng 墾令 (Order to Cultivate Waste Lands), in response to this video and request from @stateswarring . For Old Chinese, I used Axel Schuessler (2009). 2/

https://twitter.com/StatesWarring/status/1373190197903462412

https://twitter.com/StatesWarring/status/1373192994099130369

I often recommend Schuessler’s “Minimal Old Chinese” reconstruction system to students of ancient China who aren’t specialists in historical phonology. It’s based on the framework of William Baxter’s influential 1992 Old Chinese, but strives to be less speculative. 3/

Read 14 tweets

zev handel

@ZevHandel

19 Mar

Let’s talk about radicals in Chinese characters, like 虫 in 蚊, and why they don’t work the way that you think they work.

This discussion will take us outside of China and into parts of the historical “sinographosphere”: 🇰🇷🇰🇵🇯🇵, and especially 🇻🇳.

🧵

We'll start with a little quiz. Here are five characters. Which one doesn’t fit the category that the others are in?

a 𠃣
b 𠀧
c 𡈺
d 𠳒
e 夠

Before you answer, let me warn you that it’s a trick question.

You said (e) 夠, didn’t you?

Even though I warned you it was a trick question?

Read 58 tweets

zev handel

@ZevHandel

18 Mar

@Tao_Collective

@Tao_Collective @KIRINPUTRA @viroraptor @homosappiest @xiao_collective @catielila @BadLingTakes Sure. Let's just suppose for the sake of argument that we have a core set of Sinitic languages descended from a common ancestor spoken in what is now northern China, under historical circumstances that can be reasonably approximated by the tree model of divergence.

@Tao_Collective

@Tao_Collective @KIRINPUTRA @viroraptor @homosappiest @xiao_collective @catielila @BadLingTakes We can call that language Old Chinese and we'd like to reconstruct its vocabulary and phonology. We have two windows into that language's vocabulary and pronunciation. One is primarily text-based or, if you will, philological.

The other is cognate vocabulary in modern lgs.

@Tao_Collective

@Tao_Collective @KIRINPUTRA @viroraptor @homosappiest @xiao_collective @catielila @BadLingTakes They aren't commensurate, for several reasons: (1) The textual record is incomplete, much is lost to us. So there might be words attested only in texts that haven't survived. (2) Because writing is employed only in certain socio-cultural contexts and is not a precise

Read 12 tweets

zev handel

@ZevHandel

18 Mar

@Tao_Collective

@Tao_Collective @KIRINPUTRA @viroraptor @homosappiest @xiao_collective @catielila @BadLingTakes They might claim they have but I wouldn’t characterize it that way. Both reconstructions are fundamentally based on projecting MC backwards into phonological categories induced from analysis of poetic rhyming and xiesheng series.

@Tao_Collective

@Tao_Collective @KIRINPUTRA @viroraptor @homosappiest @xiao_collective @catielila @BadLingTakes B & S use Norman’s Proto-Min and extra-Sinitic borrowings as supplement to that method. Zhengzhang’s comparative supplements are highly unsystematic.

@Tao_Collective

@Tao_Collective @KIRINPUTRA @viroraptor @homosappiest @xiao_collective @catielila @BadLingTakes Based only on a more or less strict application of the comparative method, I doubt you could reconstruct to earlier than Han. Much of the clustering and morphology they reconstruct is gone by then.

Read 4 tweets

zev handel

@ZevHandel

17 Mar

@KIRINPUTRA

@KIRINPUTRA @Tao_Collective @viroraptor @homosappiest @xiao_collective @catielila @BadLingTakes Thank you for taking the time to write this all out. I'll keep my responses brief.

1) I don't disagree with anything substantive you have said here.

@KIRINPUTRA

@KIRINPUTRA @Tao_Collective @viroraptor @homosappiest @xiao_collective @catielila @BadLingTakes 2) I think your view of the field is somewhat outdated. It is not nearly as rigid as you describe. There are many young scholars, often native speakers, doing top-notch work describing the lexicon, morphology, and syntax of Chinese language varieties.

@KIRINPUTRA

@KIRINPUTRA @Tao_Collective @viroraptor @homosappiest @xiao_collective @catielila @BadLingTakes They are not wedded to the old methods and they bring valuable perspectives, including knowledge of language use in socio-cultural context. This is not to say there isn't still an old guard, just that there are generational shifts happening.

Read 9 tweets