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77-422: In ancient Chinese, 霸 ( Old Chinese : * pˤrak-s ; Pinyin : bà ) ' hegemon ' has a similar meaning and pronunciation to 伯 (Old Chinese: * pˤrak ; Pinyin: bó ), which means 'the eldest son born to the principal wife in a family', or 'senator'. Both 五霸 and 五伯 can be translated as the 'Five Hegemons'. 五 ( wu ) literally means 'five', but in the context of ancient Chinese also has

154-672: A minor syllable followed by a full syllable, as in modern Khmer , but still written with a single character. The development of characters to signify the words of the language follows the same three stages that characterized Egyptian hieroglyphs , Mesopotamian cuneiform script and the Maya script . Some words could be represented by pictures (later stylized) such as 日 rì 'sun', 人 rén 'person' and 木 mù 'tree, wood', by abstract symbols such as 三 sān 'three' and 上 shàng 'up', or by composite symbols such as 林 lín 'forest' (two trees). About 1,000 of

231-504: A pro-drop language : its syntax often allows either subjects or objects to be dropped when their reference is understood. Additionally, words are generally not restricted to use as certain parts of speech : many characters may function as either a noun, verb, or adjective. There is no general copula in Classical Chinese akin to how 是 ( shì ) is used in modern Standard Chinese. Characters that can sometimes function as

308-414: A radical that conveys a broad semantic category, resulting in compound xingsheng ( phono-semantic ) characters ( 形聲字 ). For the earliest attested stage of Old Chinese of the late Shang dynasty, the phonetic information implicit in these xingsheng characters which are grouped into phonetic series, known as the xiesheng series , represents the only direct source of phonological data for reconstructing

385-463: A subject (a noun phrase, sometimes understood) followed by a predicate , which could be of either nominal or verbal type. Before the Classical period, nominal predicates consisted of a copular particle *wjij 惟 followed by a noun phrase: 予 *ljaʔ I 惟 *wjij BE 小 *sjewʔ small 子 *tsjəʔ child 予 惟 小 子 Classical Chinese Classical Chinese

462-418: A system of honorifics . Many final and interrogative particles are found in Classical Chinese. Beyond differences in grammar and vocabulary, Classical Chinese can be distinguished by its literary qualities: an effort to maintain parallelism and rhythm is typical, even in prose works. Works also make extensive use of literary techniques such as allusion, which contributes to the language's brevity. Prior to

539-586: A central army. The death of King You of Zhou and the sack of the Zhou capital in 771 BC rendered the position of the central court untenable and eventually dependent on the protection of neighbouring states. The concept of the Hegemon was important to the interstate relations during the Spring and Autumn period , since the Hegemon was nominally charged with underwriting the stability of the whole system, often heading

616-429: A copula in specific circumstances include 為 ( wéi ; 'make', 'do') when indicating temporary circumstances, and 曰 ( yuē ; 'say') when used in the sense of 'to be called'. Classical Chinese has more pronouns compared to the modern vernacular. In particular, whereas modern Standard Chinese has one character generally used as a first-person pronoun, Classical Chinese has several—many of which are used as part of

693-529: A dominant position. During the Spring and Autumn period the reigns of each hegemon tended to correspond with the zenith of their state's power. The concept of hegemony arose out of the weakness of the Eastern Zhou dynasty . Whilst its predecessor, the Western Zhou dynasty , was also feudal in nature, the centre was strong enough to command the obedience of most of its vassals, as well as to maintain

770-566: A league of smaller states whose security was to some extent guaranteed by the state, in exchange for tribute. These are the two most commonly used lists of hegemons. The Records of the Grand Historian lists: Alternatively, the Xunzi lists: The first two hegemons are widely referred to in primary sources (e.g. Zuo Zhuan ) and therefore rarely disputed because Duke Huan of Qi and Duke Wen of Jin themselves were officially rewarded

847-485: A more generally qualitative and less precisely quantitative use, implying completeness. During the Spring and Autumn era itself, the hegemony tended to apply to states; it was therefore possible to speak of the State of Jin and the State of Chu struggling for hegemony over the Zhou states. In historical accounts it instead became associated with individual rulers, namely the ones who first brought their respective states to

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924-571: A range of purposes. As in the modern language, there were sentence-final particles marking imperatives and yes/no questions . Other sentence-final particles expressed a range of connotations, the most important being *ljaj 也 , expressing static factuality, and *ɦjəʔ 矣 , implying a change. Other particles included the subordination marker *tjə 之 and the nominalizing particles *tjaʔ 者 (agent) and *srjaʔ 所 (object). Conjunctions could join nouns or clauses. As with English and modern Chinese, Old Chinese sentences can be analysed as

1001-570: A result, the syntax and vocabulary of Old Chinese was preserved in Literary Chinese ( wenyan ), the standard for formal writing in China and neighboring Sinosphere countries until the early 20th century. Each character of the script represented a single Old Chinese morpheme , originally identical to a word. Most scholars believe that these words were monosyllabic. William Baxter and Laurent Sagart propose that some words consisted of

1078-606: A rich literature written in ink on bamboo and wooden slips and (toward the end of the period) silk. Although these are perishable materials, a significant number of texts were transmitted as copies, and a few of these survived to the present day as the received classics. Works from this period, including the Analects , the Mencius and the Commentary of Zuo , have been admired as models of prose style by later generations. As

1155-404: A significant period of development prior to the extant inscriptions. This may have involved writing on perishable materials, as suggested by the appearance on oracle bones of the character 冊 cè 'records'. The character is thought to depict bamboo or wooden strips tied together with leather thongs, a writing material known from later archaeological finds. Development and simplification of

1232-494: A single independent word. As a result, the characteristic style of the language is comparatively terse. Starting in the 2nd century CE, use of Literary Chinese spread to the countries surrounding China, including Vietnam , Korea , Japan , and the Ryukyu Islands , where it represented the only known form of writing. Literary Chinese was adopted as the language of civil administration in these countries, creating what

1309-510: Is believed to be a Chinese innovation arising from earlier prefixes. Proto-Sino-Tibetan is reconstructed with a six-vowel system as in recent reconstructions of Old Chinese, with the Tibeto-Burman languages distinguished by the merger of the mid-central vowel *-ə- with *-a- . The other vowels are preserved by both, with some alternation between *-e- and *-i- , and between *-o- and *-u- . The earliest known written records of

1386-1096: Is by far the earliest attested member of the family, its logographic script does not clearly indicate the pronunciation of words. Other difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are poorly described because they are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, including several sensitive border zones. Initial consonants generally correspond regarding place and manner of articulation , but voicing and aspiration are much less regular, and prefixal elements vary widely between languages. Some researchers believe that both these phenomena reflect lost minor syllables . Proto-Tibeto-Burman as reconstructed by Benedict and Matisoff lacks an aspiration distinction on initial stops and affricates. Aspiration in Old Chinese often corresponds to pre-initial consonants in Tibetan and Lolo-Burmese , and

1463-838: Is far more common in Chinese languages than in English: for example, each of the following words had a distinct Old Chinese pronunciation, but are now perfectly homophones with a pronunciation of yì [î] in Standard Chinese: The poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den was composed during the 1930s by the linguist Yuen Ren Chao to demonstrate this: it contains only words pronounced shi [ʂɻ̩] with various tones in modern Standard Chinese. The poem underlines how language had become impractical for modern speakers: when spoken aloud, Literary Chinese

1540-511: Is known as the Sinosphere . Each additionally developed systems of readings and annotations that enabled non-Chinese speakers to interpret Literary Chinese texts in terms of the local vernacular. While not static throughout its history, its evolution has traditionally been guided by a conservative impulse: many later changes in the varieties of Chinese are not reflected in the literary form. Due to millennia of this evolution, Literary Chinese

1617-450: Is largely absent in later texts, and the *l- forms disappeared during the classical period. In the post-Han period, 我 (modern Mandarin wǒ ) came to be used as the general first-person pronoun. Second-person pronouns included *njaʔ 汝 , *njəjʔ 爾 , *njə 而 and *njak 若 . The forms 汝 and 爾 continued to be used interchangeably until their replacement by the northwestern variant 你 (modern Mandarin nǐ ) in

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1694-508: Is largely incomprehensible. However, the poem is perfectly comprehensible when read, and also uses homophones that were present even in Old Chinese. Romanizations have been devised to provide distinct spellings for Literary Chinese words, together with pronunciation rules for various modern varieties. The earliest was the Romanisation Interdialectique by French missionaries Henri Lamasse  [ fr ] of

1771-412: Is not always straightforward, as words were not marked for function, word classes overlapped, and words of one class could sometimes be used in roles normally reserved for a different class. The task is more difficult with written texts than it would have been for speakers of Old Chinese, because the derivational morphology is often hidden by the writing system. For example, the verb *sək 'to block' and

1848-597: Is not read with a reconstructed Old Chinese pronunciation; instead, it is read with the pronunciations as categorized and listed in a rime dictionary originally based upon the Middle Chinese pronunciation in Luoyang between the 2nd and 4th centuries. Over time, each dynasty updated and modified the official rime dictionary: by the time of the Yuan and Ming dynasties , its phonology reflected that of early Mandarin. As

1925-484: Is only partially intelligible when read or spoken aloud for someone only familiar with modern vernacular forms. Literary Chinese has largely been replaced by written vernacular Chinese among Chinese speakers; speakers of non-Chinese languages have similarly abandoned Literary Chinese in favour of their own local vernaculars. Although varieties of Chinese have diverged in various directions from the Old Chinese words in

2002-445: Is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from c.  the 5th century BCE . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary Chinese , which was used for almost all formal writing in China until the early 20th century. Each written character corresponds to a single spoken syllable, and almost always to

2079-467: Is the oldest attested stage of Chinese , and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese . The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, in the Late Shang period. Bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty . The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including classical works such as

2156-465: The Analects , the Mencius , and the Zuo Zhuan . These works served as models for Literary Chinese (or Classical Chinese ), which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century, thus preserving the vocabulary and grammar of late Old Chinese. Old Chinese was written with several early forms of Chinese characters , including oracle bone , bronze , and seal scripts . Throughout

2233-532: The Book of Han (111 CE) is the oldest extant bibliography of Classical Chinese, compiled c.  90 CE ; only 6% of its 653 listed works are known to exist in a complete form, with another 6% existing only in fragments. Compared to written vernacular Chinese, Classical Chinese is terse and compact in its style, and uses some different vocabulary. Classical Chinese rarely uses words two or more characters in length. Classical Chinese can be described as

2310-485: The Shuowen Jiezi , a dictionary compiled in the 2nd century, 82% of the 9,353 characters are classified as phono-semantic compounds. In the light of the modern understanding of Old Chinese phonology, researchers now believe that most of the characters originally classified as semantic compounds also have a phonetic nature. These developments were already present in the oracle bone script, possibly implying

2387-560: The Five Classics , is distinct from that found in later works. The term "pre-Classical Chinese" is used to distinguish this earlier form from Classical Chinese proper, as it did not inspire later imitation to a comparable degree despite the works' equal importance in the canon. After the Han dynasty, the divergence of spoken language from the literary form became increasingly apparent. The term "Literary Chinese" has been coined to refer to

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2464-512: The Han period and the subsequent Northern and Southern dynasties . Old Chinese verbs , like their modern counterparts, did not show tense or aspect; these could be indicated with adverbs or particles if required. Verbs could be transitive or intransitive . As in the modern language, adjectives were a special kind of intransitive verb, and a few transitive verbs could also function as modal auxiliaries or as prepositions . Adverbs described

2541-541: The Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . The evidence consists of some hundreds of proposed cognate words, including such basic vocabulary as the following: Although the relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austronesian . Although Old Chinese

2618-464: The Tang period. However, in some Min dialects the second-person pronoun is derived from 汝 . Case distinctions were particularly marked among third-person pronouns. There was no third-person subject pronoun, but *tjə 之 , originally a distal demonstrative , came to be used as a third-person object pronoun in the classical period. The possessive pronoun was originally *kjot 厥 , replaced in

2695-518: The Vietic branch of Austroasiatic have similar tone systems, syllable structure, grammatical features and lack of inflection, but these are believed to be areal features spread by diffusion rather than indicating common descent. The most widely accepted hypothesis is that Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in

2772-562: The Warring States period , writing became more widespread, with further simplification and variation, particularly in the eastern states. The most conservative script prevailed in the western state of Qin , which would later impose its standard on the whole of China. Old Chinese phonology has been reconstructed using a unique method relying on textual sources. The starting point is the Qieyun dictionary (601 AD), which classifies

2849-545: The imperial examination system required the candidate to compose poetry in the shi genre, pronunciation in non-Mandarin speaking parts of China such as Zhejiang , Guangdong and Fujian is either based on everyday speech, such as in Standard Cantonese , or is based on a special set of pronunciations borrowed from Classical Chinese, such as in Southern Min . In practice, all varieties of Chinese combine

2926-500: The 1980s usually propose six  vowels : Vowels could optionally be followed by the same codas as in Middle Chinese: a glide *-j or *-w , a nasal *-m , *-n or *-ŋ , or a stop *-p , *-t or *-k . Some scholars also allow for a labiovelar coda *-kʷ . Most scholars now believe that Old Chinese lacked the tones found in later stages of the language, but had optional post-codas *-ʔ and *-s , which developed into

3003-530: The Chinese language were found at the Yinxu site near modern Anyang identified as the last capital of the Shang dynasty , and date from about 1250 BC. These are the oracle bones , short inscriptions carved on turtle plastrons and ox scapulae for divinatory purposes, as well as a few brief bronze inscriptions . The language written is undoubtedly an early form of Chinese, but is difficult to interpret due to

3080-417: The Classical lexicon, many cognates can still be found. There is no universal agreement on the definition of "Classical Chinese". At its core, the term refers to the language used by the classics of Chinese literature roughly from the 5th century BCE to the end of the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE). The form of Chinese used in works written before the 4th century BCE, like

3157-510: The Japanese readings of Literary Chinese, is part of the high school curriculum in Japan. Japan is the only country that maintains the tradition of creating Literary Chinese poetry based on Tang-era tone patterns . Chinese characters are not phonetic and rarely reflect later sound changes in words. Efforts to reconstruct Old Chinese pronunciation began relatively recently. Literary Chinese

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3234-573: The Middle Chinese rising and departing tones respectively. Little is known of the grammar of the language of the Oracular and pre-Classical periods, as the texts are often of a ritual or formulaic nature, and much of their vocabulary has not been deciphered. In contrast, the rich literature of the Warring States period has been extensively analysed. Having no inflection , Old Chinese was heavily reliant on word order, grammatical particles , and inherent word classes . Classifying Old Chinese words

3311-483: The Old Chinese period, there was a close correspondence between a character and a monosyllabic and monomorphemic word. Although the script is not alphabetic, the majority of characters were created based on phonetic considerations. At first, words that were difficult to represent visually were written using a "borrowed" character for a similar-sounding word ( rebus principle ). Later on, to reduce ambiguity, new characters were created for these phonetic borrowings by appending

3388-477: The Zhou area. Although their language changed over time, it was highly uniform across this range at each point in time, suggesting that it reflected the prestige form used by the Zhou elite. Even longer pre-Classical texts on a wide range of subjects have also been transmitted through the literary tradition. The oldest sections of the Book of Documents , the Classic of Poetry and the I Ching , also date from

3465-462: The borrowed character would be modified slightly to distinguish it from the original, as with 毋 wú 'don't', a borrowing of 母 mǔ 'mother'. Later, phonetic loans were systematically disambiguated by the addition of semantic indicators, usually to the less common word: Such phono-semantic compound characters were already used extensively on the oracle bones, and the vast majority of characters created since then have been of this type. In

3542-414: The classical period by *ɡjə 其 . In the post-Han period, 其 came to be used as the general third-person pronoun. It survives in some Wu dialects, but has been replaced by a variety of forms elsewhere. There were demonstrative and interrogative pronouns , but no indefinite pronouns with the meanings 'something' or 'nothing'. The distributive pronouns were formed with a *-k suffix: As in

3619-424: The combination *-rj- to explain the retroflex and palatal obstruents of Middle Chinese, as well as many of its vowel contrasts. *-r- is generally accepted. However, although the distinction denoted by *-j- is universally accepted, its realization as a palatal glide has been challenged on a number of grounds, and a variety of different realizations have been used in recent constructions. Reconstructions since

3696-418: The core issues. For example, the Old Chinese initial consonants recognized by Li Fang-Kuei and William Baxter are given below, with Baxter's (mostly tentative) additions given in parentheses: Various initial clusters have been proposed, especially clusters of *s- with other consonants, but this area remains unsettled. Bernhard Karlgren and many later scholars posited the medials *-r- , *-j- and

3773-490: The core vocabulary of Old Chinese to Sino-Tibetan , with much early borrowing from neighbouring languages. During the Zhou period, the originally monosyllabic vocabulary was augmented with polysyllabic words formed by compounding and reduplication , although monosyllabic vocabulary was still predominant. Unlike Middle Chinese and the modern Chinese languages, Old Chinese had a significant amount of derivational morphology. Several affixes have been identified, including ones for

3850-468: The derived noun *səks 'frontier' were both written with the same character 塞 . Personal pronouns exhibit a wide variety of forms in Old Chinese texts, possibly due to dialectal variation. There were two groups of first-person pronouns: In the oracle bone inscriptions, the *l- pronouns were used by the king to refer to himself, and the *ŋ- forms for the Shang people as a whole. This distinction

3927-611: The dialect spoken in the Chu region during the Warring States period . These rhymes, together with clues from the phonetic components of xingsheng characters, allow most characters attested in Old Chinese to be assigned to one of 30 or 31 rhyme groups. For late Old Chinese of the Han period, the modern Southern Min languages, the oldest layer of Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary , and a few early transliterations of foreign proper names, as well as names for non-native flora and fauna, also provide insights into language reconstruction. Although many of

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4004-496: The early Zhou period, and closely resemble the bronze inscriptions in vocabulary, syntax, and style. A greater proportion of this more varied vocabulary has been identified than for the oracular period. The four centuries preceding the unification of China in 221 BC (the later Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period ) constitute the Chinese classical period in the strict sense. There are many bronze inscriptions from this period, but they are vastly outweighed by

4081-772: The extremely laconic style. Presently, pure Literary Chinese is occasionally used in formal or ceremonial contexts. For example, the National Anthem of the Republic of China is in Literary Chinese. Buddhist texts in Literary Chinese are still preserved from the time they were composed or translated from Sanskrit. In practice there is a socially accepted continuum between vernacular and Literary Chinese. For example, most official notices and formal letters use stock literary expressions within vernacular prose. Personal use of Classical phrases depends on factors such as

4158-481: The finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differed from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids . Most recent reconstructions also describe Old Chinese as a language without tones, but having consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, which developed into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Most researchers trace

4235-586: The hegemony by the kings of Zhou ( King Xi and King Xiang ) in 679 BCE and in 632 BCE respectively. Zuo Zhuan also recognizes Duke Dao of Jin as a hegemon. Duke Zhuang of Zheng ( 鄭莊公 ) and Fuchai King of Wu ( 吳王夫差 ) were also amongst the contenders aside of the seven rulers mentioned above. These lists are: The Ci Tong ( 辭通 ) lists: The Disquisition of Four Masters Discussing Virtue  [ zh ] lists: The Bai Hu Tong lists: The Book of Han lists: Old Chinese Old Chinese , also called Archaic Chinese in older works,

4312-632: The historical literary use of Latin in Europe, that of Arabic in Persia , or that of Sanskrit in South and Southeast Asia. However, unlike these examples, written Chinese uses a logography of Chinese characters that are not directly tied to their pronunciation. This lack of a fixed correspondence between writing and reading created a situation where later readings of Classical Chinese texts were able to diverge much further from their originals than occurred in

4389-541: The historical records of all non- Qin states to be burned, along with any literature associated with the Hundred Schools of Thought . The imperial library was destroyed upon the dynasty's collapse in 206 BCE, resulting in a potentially greater loss. Even works from the Classical period that have survived are not known to exist in their original forms, and are attested only in manuscripts copied centuries after their original composition. The " Yiwenzhi " section of

4466-476: The kanji represents a native word such as the reading of 行 in 行く ( iku ) or the reading of both characters in " Osaka " ( 大阪 ), as well as a system that aids Japanese speakers with a Classical word order. As pronunciation in modern varieties is different from Old Chinese as well as other historical forms such as Middle Chinese , characters that once rhymed may not any longer, or vice versa. Poetry and other rhyme-based writing thus becomes less coherent than

4543-548: The language. The corpus of xingsheng characters was greatly expanded in the following Zhou dynasty. In addition, the rhymes of the earliest recorded poems, primarily those of the Classic of Poetry , provide an extensive source of phonological information with respect to syllable finals for the Central Plains dialects during the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn periods . Similarly, the Chu Ci provides rhyme data for

4620-412: The later forms of written Chinese in conscious imitation of the classics, with sinologists generally emphasizing distinctions such as the gradual addition of new vocabulary and the erosion of certain points of Classical grammar as their functions were forgotten. Literary Chinese was used in almost all formal and personal writing in China from the end of the Han dynasty until the early 20th century, when it

4697-565: The laws of Taiwan are still written in a subset of Literary Chinese. As a result, it is necessary for modern Taiwanese lawyers to learn at least a subset of the literary language. Many works of literature in Classical and Literary Chinese have been highly influential in Chinese culture, such as the canon of Tang poetry . However, even with knowledge of its grammar and vocabulary, works in Literary Chinese can be difficult for native vernacular speakers to understand, due to its frequent allusions and references to other historical literature, as well as

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4774-466: The limited subject matter and high proportion of proper names. Only half of the 4,000 characters used have been identified with certainty. Little is known about the grammar of this language, but it seems much less reliant on grammatical particles than Classical Chinese. From early in the Western Zhou period, around 1000 BC, the most important recovered texts are bronze inscriptions, many of considerable length. These texts are found throughout

4851-520: The literary revolution in China that began with the 1919 May Fourth Movement , prominent examples of vernacular Chinese literature include the 18th-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber . Most government documents in the Republic of China were written in Literary Chinese until reforms spearheaded by President Yen Chia-kan in the 1970s to shift to written vernacular Chinese. However, most of

4928-431: The modern language, localizers (compass directions, 'above', 'inside' and the like) could be placed after nouns to indicate relative positions. They could also precede verbs to indicate the direction of the action. Nouns denoting times were another special class (time words); they usually preceded the subject to specify the time of an action. However the classifiers so characteristic of Modern Chinese only became common in

5005-586: The oracle bone characters, nearly a quarter of the total, are of this type, though 300 of them have not yet been deciphered. Though the pictographic origins of these characters are apparent, they have already undergone extensive simplification and conventionalization. Evolved forms of most of these characters are still in common use today. Next, words that could not be represented pictorially, such as abstract terms and grammatical particles, were signified by borrowing characters of pictorial origin representing similar-sounding words (the " rebus strategy"): Sometimes

5082-546: The original reading must have been. However, some modern Chinese varieties have certain phonological characteristics that are closer to the older pronunciations than others, as shown by the preservation of certain rhyme structures. Another particular characteristic of Literary Chinese is its present homophony . Reading Classical texts with character pronunciations from modern languages results in many homophonous characters that originally had distinct Old Chinese pronunciations, but have since merged to varying degrees. This phenomenon

5159-533: The other literary traditions, adding a unique dimension to the study of Literary Chinese. Literary Chinese was adopted in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature states that this adoption came mainly from diplomatic and cultural ties with China, while conquest, colonization, and migration played smaller roles. Unlike Latin and Sanskrit, historical Chinese language theory consisted almost exclusively of lexicography , as opposed to

5236-455: The reading pronunciation of each character found in texts to that time within a precise, but abstract, phonological system. Scholars have sought to assign phonetic values to these Middle Chinese categories by comparing them with modern varieties of Chinese , Sino-Xenic pronunciations and transcriptions. Next, the phonology of Old Chinese is reconstructed by comparing the Qieyun categories to

5313-574: The rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry (early 1st millennium BC) and the shared phonetic components of Chinese characters, some of which are slightly older. More recent efforts have supplemented this method with evidence from Old Chinese derivational morphology , from Chinese varieties preserving distinctions not found in the Qieyun , such as Min and Waxiang , and from early transcriptions and loans. Although many details are still disputed, recent formulations are in substantial agreement on

5390-412: The school curriculum is taught primarily by presenting a literary work and including a vernacular gloss that explains the meaning of phrases. The examinations usually require the student to read a paragraph in Literary Chinese and then explain its meaning in the vernacular. Contemporary use of Literary Chinese in Japan is mainly in the field of education and the study of literature. Learning kanbun ,

5467-412: The scope of a statement or various temporal relationships. They included two families of negatives starting with *p- and *m- , such as *pjə 不 and *mja 無 . Modern northern varieties derive the usual negative from the first family, while southern varieties preserve the second. The language had no adverbs of degree until late in the Classical period. Particles were function words serving

5544-467: The script continued during the pre-Classical and Classical periods, with characters becoming less pictorial and more linear and regular, with rounded strokes being replaced by sharp angles. The language developed compound words, though almost all constituent morphemes could also be used as independent words. Hundreds of morphemes of two or more syllables also entered the language, and were written with one phono-semantic compound character per syllable. During

5621-515: The study of grammar and syntax. Such approaches largely arrived with Europeans beginning in the 17th century. Christian missionaries later coined the term 文理 ( wénlǐ ; 'principles of literature', 'bookish language') to describe Classical Chinese; this term never became widely used among domestic speakers. According to the traditional " burning of books and burying of scholars " account, in 213 BCE Qin Shi Huang ordered

5698-445: The subject matter and the level of education of the writer. Excepting professional scholars and enthusiasts, most modern writers cannot easily write in Literary Chinese. Even so, most Chinese people with at least a middle school education are able to read basic Literary Chinese, because this ability is part of the Chinese middle school and high school curricula, and is a component of the college entrance examination. Literary Chinese in

5775-676: The two extremes of pronunciation: that according to a prescribed system, versus that based on everyday speech. Mandarin and Cantonese, for example, also have words that are pronounced one way in colloquial usage and another way when used in Literary Chinese or in specialized terms coming from Literary Chinese, though the system is not as extensive as that of Min or Wu . Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese readers of Literary Chinese each use distinct systems of pronunciation specific to their own languages. Japanese speakers have readings of Chinese origin called on'yomi for many words, such as for "ginko" ( 銀行 ) or "Tokyo" ( 東京 ), but use kun'yomi when

5852-612: The verbification of nouns, conversion between transitive and intransitive verbs, and formation of causative verbs. Like modern Chinese, it appears to be uninflected, though a pronoun case and number system seems to have existed during the Shang and early Zhou but was already in the process of disappearing by the Classical period. Likewise, by the Classical period, most morphological derivations had become unproductive or vestigial, and grammatical relationships were primarily indicated using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese and its southern neighbours Kra–Dai , Hmong–Mien and

5929-607: Was largely replaced by written vernacular Chinese . A distinct, narrower definition of the Classical period begins with the life of Confucius (551–479 BCE) and ends with the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE. The adoption of Chinese literary culture in the Sinosphere amid the existence of various regional vernaculars is an example of diglossia . The coexistence of Literary Chinese and native languages throughout China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam can be compared to

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