Abstract
This paper is concerned with the reconstruction of Archaic Chinese phonology, mainly with that proposed by late professor Fang-kuei Li in the 1970s. Part one discusses initials and medials, and suggests that: (1) there is no need for labial-velars, instead the kai-he dichotomy should be maintained as a part of rime; (2) there are four classes of rimes: A, B, C, and D; while A rimes lack any medial, B, C, D ones get -*r-, -*j-, -*i- as their medial element respectively; and it turns out that the combination of -*rj- could be removed; (3) there are 21 simple initials, namely: *p-, *ph-, *bh-, *m-, *t-, *th-, *dh-, *n-, *l-, *k-, *kh-, *gh-, *-, *ts-, *tsh-, *dzh-, *s-, *z-, *-, *h-, *-, and they can appear with all classes of rimes. The alveolo-palatal affricates (Zhao, Chuan, Chuang) with II-grade in Ancient Chinese came from *ts-, *tsh-, *s-; while the same ones with III-grade derived from *t-, *th-, *dh- with prefixes *s- or *z- for the most part and from simple *ts-, *tsh-, *dzh- also in a few cases. The alveolo-palatal fricatives (Shen, Chan) came from *s-, *z- respectively; and the corresponding nasal (Zhi) derived again from prefix *s- plus dental nasal *n. The zero initial (Yu-si) of Ancient Chinese originated from consonant cluster *z-.
Part two deals with the rime categories and concludes that: (1) the 22-category system is preferable; (2) by considering dialect interference, the requirement that each single word should be classified into only one rime-category is abandoned; (3) words belonging to Yin-sheng rime-categories bear no consonant endings with exceptions of those from Ge category, which has -*r as its ending, a case quite similar to the -r suffixation of Mandarin Chinese; (4) during the pre-Archaic period, words of Xiao category, both Yin-sheng and Ru-sheng, are parts of Tan category; similarly, the original corresponding Yin-sheng words of Qin and Qi categories also merged with You category in Archaic Chinese; (5) the claim that endings -*g or -*d do not exist in any Yin-sheng rimes can be justified again by more than forty pieces of evidence exemplified in this paper.
Keywords
Archaic Chinese, Ancient Chinese
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