A Phonological History of Chinese
汉语音韵史

Zhongwei Shen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
9781107135840| Hardback| USD 110
320pp 25 b/w illus.  420 tables 2020/4
图书简介：
从隋仁寿元年的《切韵》到元代周德清的《中原音韵》，沈钟伟教授编著这本书，为读者提供第一本用英语写的关于中国音韵历史的研究图书。利用一系列的历史素材、字典、押韵表以及是个，研究汉语语言的主要历史时期的标准音韵系统的信息，是了解中国语音系统的关键发展的参考书。
当代中国语言学的开拓者,享誉国际的语言学大师王士元先生对这本书评价极高：
'This volume presents a balanced account of what is currently known about the phonological history of Chinese and opens a window for future work in the area with an emphasis on language contact. Much fruitful fundamental research lies ahead! Very few languages in the world offer the kind of time depth and rich cultural history that is presented in this volume. It is a great pleasure for me to highly recommend the volume, not only to readers in linguistics, but to all readers who are interested in a fascinating chapter of human history.' William S-Y. Wang, Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
 
The phonological history of Chinese can be traced back to two main traditions: one starting with the Qieyun of 601, and the other starting with the Zhongyuan Yinyun of 1324. The former marks the beginning of Middle Chinese, and the latter marks the beginning of Old Mandarin. Both of these systems, as well as reconstructed Old Chinese, should be understood as ideal phonological standards and composite in nature. Until modern times, phonological standards were never based strictly on the phonology of a single dialect. This book provides the first study written in English, of the phonological history of Chinese. It provides information about the standard phonological systems for each of the language's major historical periods, drawing on a range of historical materials such as dictionaries, rhyming tables and poetry, and is the reference book for understanding the key developments in the Chinese sound system.
• Introduces new research originally written in Chinese, and makes it accessible to researchers whose dominant language is English
• Source materials are systematically introduced and explained to aid understanding of context
• Covers all major historical periods of the past 2500 years
章节内容：
Part I. The Keys to Traditional Phonology: 1. An introduction to Chinese historical phonology; Part II. Old Chinese: 2. Old Chinese; Part III. Middle Chinese: 3. Middle Chinese: the Tang and Song Dynasties; 4. Middle Chinese: the Tang and Song Dynasties; Part IV. The Beginnings of Mandarin: 5. Chinese of the Liao, Jun, and Xixia Dynasties; Part V. A New Standard: 6. Old Mandarin: the Ménggǔ Zìyùn 蒙古字韻; 7. Old Mandarin: the Zhōngyuán Yīnyùn 中原音韻; 8. Old Mandarin: the Persian transcriptions; Part VI. Towards Modern Mandarin: 9. The Mandarin of the Ming Dynasty; 10. The Mandarin of the Qing Dynasty and the modern era.
学术水平：academic researchers, graduate students
读者群：phonology, Chinese studies, Asian languages, historical linguistics