Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!hookup!uwm.edu!msunews!uchinews!ellis!deb5
From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: How did Korean lose the tones?
Message-ID: <1995Jan14.220118.13623@midway.uchicago.edu>
Sender: news@uchinews.uchicago.edu (News System)
Reply-To: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
References: <3f14rq$dqf@news.CCIT.Arizona.EDU> <1995Jan13.001414.27898@midway.uchicago.edu> <3f5itr$r2v@news.CCIT.Arizona.EDU>
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 22:01:18 GMT
Lines: 89

In article <3f5itr$r2v@news.CCIT.Arizona.EDU> hlu@GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU (Hung J Lu) writes:
>Daniel von Brighoff (deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu) wrote:
>: In article <3f14rq$dqf@news.CCIT.Arizona.EDU> hlu@GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU (Hung J Lu) writes:

>I am not sure whether I got it backwards or not. I just know that
>Pin, Shang, Qu, Ru were there, before Yin and Yang disctintion
>occured. Whether Pekingese simplied from the 8-tone system
>or mostly retained the older 4-tone system, I'll leave it to
>the linguistics pros (No time to check now...) 

Karlgren reconstructs an eight-tone system for Middle Chinese and
I don't recall its being refuted, but then again, I don't follow
Sino-Tibetan historical linguistics that closely.

>For the case of Early Mandarin, one has vernacular dictionaries as well.

Using phonetic (or phonemic) script?  The problem with using older
Chinese dictionaries is that they do not indicate pronunciation.
As I said before, we're reduced to using indirect evidence.  For 
early Qing Mandarin, we have materials in Manchu script that give
us some clues, but a lot of their interpretation depends on what 
kind of phonemic system one reconstructs for Manchu.  Same goes
for the Yuan dynasty, only the evidence from then is even more
paltry.

>OK, Ok, this is the situation with Mandarin: the rulers did not
>change the pronunciation, as you said, they were too few of them.
>Who changed the pronunciation were the people around the rulers.
>The rulers did change the capital to Beijing (I am referring to Mongols).

This is another case altogether.  It's one thing to argue that
Mandarin lost consonants finals because of foreign influence and
quite another to say that, because foreignors moved the capitol,
a different regional dialect became the prestige dialect of
Chinese.

In the first case, one is arguing that foreignors caused the
change.  In the second, one is leaving the cause open and only
saying that the conquerors influenced the choice of which changes
were accepted as standard.

A rough analogy:  the prestige pronunciation of English in the
world today is shifting from a primarily British standard to a
primarily American one.  The turning point is World War II.
Does this mean that the calamities of that war caused non-native
speakers of English worldwide to shift their vowels (e.g. bring
"cot" closer to "cut" than to "caught") and insert r's into their
words (e.g. "sport" no longer sounds like "spot").  Nope:  those 
changes go back to difference which arose before America was
even settled.  The war, or more accurately, the  altered 
geopolitical situation following the war in which the  USA emerged 
as the dominant English-speaking world power resulted in a leap
in prestige for American dialects.  

>Somehow, people stopped composing in Middle Chinese 
>(probably most Song intellectuals fled, were killed, or were affraid
>to write.)

Doubtless this did happen, but more likely, they just learned the
dialect of the capitol because it was made official.

>Pulleyblank also tried to associate the change of capital briefly
>to Nanjing (Nanking) in Ming dyansty with some of the linguistical
>changes of Mandarin.

This is plausible and not at all what you were saying earlier.

>Good points... my opinion is that major linguistic changes don't happen
>easily without significant political/historical events. 

They sometimes coincide and they sometimes don't.  Looking for an
external cause is interesting, but likely to be futile.  What more
often happens is that times of turmoil provide an opportunity for
changes which have already taken place to become enshrined in the
standard language.

>I assumed that the Early Mandarin (Yuan dyanasty) lacked stop endings.
>Correct me if I was wrong. The transition from Middle Chinese to
>Early Mandarin was not gradual: it was due to the Mongol invasion.

You're off base:  the transition from the Nanjing dialect of Song
Chinese to the Beijing dialect of Song Chinese was a result of the 
Yuan conquest.  The changes in Middle Chinese which gave rise to
the distinctness of these two dialects happened over a period of
time and are probably not closely tied to political events.
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
