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This book, the first in its field in a Western language, examines China’s native phonological tool with regard to reconstruction, theory, and linguistic philosophy. After an introductory essay on the nature of the tables and the history of their interpretation, the book concentrates on three areas: application of rime table theory to reconstruction, the history of rime table theory, and the application of the tables to descriptive linguistics. An appendix details a number of 20th century systems for transcribing their phonology into Roman letters. Major topics include Altaic contact-influence on Chinese, early native understanding of the tables’ meaning, the phonological work of Yuen Ren Chao, and Stammbaumtheorie/diasystemic thinking about Chinese. New reconstructions of Han and “Common Dialectal” phonology appear here, as do complete texts and translations of the Shouwen fragments and Yunjing preface.
This book is a much-needed scholarly intervention and postcolonial corrective that examines why and when and how misunderstandings of Chinese writing came about and showcases the long history of Chinese theories of language. 'Ideography' as such assumes extra-linguistic, trans-historical, universal 'ideas' which are an outgrowth of Platonism and thus unique to European history. Classical Chinese discourse assumes that language (and writing) is an arbitrary artifact invented by sages for specific reasons at specific times in history. Language by this definition is an ever-changing technology amenable to historical manipulation; language is not the House of Being, but rather a historically embedded social construct that encodes quotidian human intentions and nothing more. These are incommensurate epistemes, each with its own cultural milieu and historical context. By comparing these two traditions, this study historicizes and decolonializes popular notions about Chinese characters, exposing the Eurocentrism inherent in all theories of ideography. Ideography and Chinese Language Theory will be of significant interest to historians, sinologists, theorists, and scholars in other branches of the humanities.
This book deals with the life and career of Bernhard Karlgren (1889–1978), whose research in a great variety of fields, particularly the historical phonology of the Chinese language, laid the foundations for modern western sinology. The definition ofthe term "sinology" has undergone great changes since Bernhard Karlgren entered the stage a century ago. At that time the term covered research related to the language, literature, history, thought, and intellectual aspects of early China. Since the mid-twentieth century the definition has been considerably broadened to include more modern aspects, with special emphasis on sociopolitical and economic topics. In many Chinese language departments in both China and the West, studies of early China have beenput at a disadvantage. This book may serve as a reminder that the time may have come to redress the imbalance. The book begins by sketching the intellectual milieu that characterized Karlgren's school years and ends with a mention of his last publication, "Moot words in some Chuang Tse chapters," published in 1976. The intervening seventy years were filled with intense scholarly activities-including his disputatio for the PhD in Uppsala in 1915; his subsequent career as professor of East Asian languages at Gothenburg University, 1918-39; and his directorship of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm, 1939-59. For many years he served as vice-chancellor of Gothenburg University and as president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities. He also played a leading role in various endeavors to strengthen the standing of Swedish humanities.