Coblin Brief History Mandarin

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A Brief History of Mandarin

Author(s): W. South CoblinSource: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 120, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 2000), pp. 537-552Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/606615

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A BRIEF

HISTORY

OF MANDARIN

W.

SOUTHCOBLIN

UNIVERSITYFIOWA

The

received

view

of

standard

Mandarins that

it has been

Pekingese-based

for at least six

hundred

years.

Recent

research,

ittle

known outside a small

circle of

specialists,

has revealed

thatthis view

is

flawed and that for

most of its

history

this standard

anguage

had little

to do with

Pekingese.

The

present paper

introduces these

new

developments

to the academic

community

at

large.

I.

INTRODUCTION

WHENUSED

N

REFERENCEO

anguage,

the term "Man-

darin"

has several distinct senses. Its first

and oldest

ap-

plication

was to the

universal standard

anguage

or koine

spoken by

officials and educated

people

in traditional

China

during

the

Ming (1368-1644)

and

Qing

(1644-

1912)

dynasties.

In

this use

it

parallels

and

may

in

fact be

modeled

on

early

southern

European

missionary expres-

sions,

such as la

lengua

mandarina,

alla

midarin, etc.,

which in

turn

directly

render the native

Chinese term

guanhua

~'t

("the

language

of

the

officials,

or manda-

rins"),

a

compound

first attested n

mid-Ming

times.

More

recently,

historical

linguists

have

extended

the venue of

the word

"Mandarin"back to

the Yudn

period

(1260-

1368);

they

refer to the

putative

standard

language

of

thattime as "Old Mandarin" in Chinese, usually zdoqi

guanhua

-.

^a?).

Concurrently,

dialectologists

and

comparative inguists

use

"Mandarin" n

reference to the

entire

family

of

northernor

northern-like

Chinese

speech

forms

which in modern

Chinese are

called

beifang

fangydn

jd;2j;)

or

guanhua

fangydn

f

;Tit

. And

finally,

"Mandarin,"

when not

otherwise

qualified,

is

often

taken

today

as

a

designation

for

modern

standard

Chinese,

the

language

now

called

guoyu

Wr,

putonghua

_i:l,

or

Hudyau

in

Chinese-speaking

areas. In the

present

article,

the

word

"Mandarin"will

be

understood

in its

oldest

sense,

and our

primary

concern

will therefore

be

with

the

history

of the

spoken

(as

opposed

to

written)

Chinese koin6 of the

Ming

and

Qing periods.

The re-

ceived

wisdom and

currently

prevalent

view

of this

history

is that

Mandarin

has

throughout

ts

life been iden-

tical

with or

closely

based

upon

the

language

of the

city

of

Peking.

But

recent

research,

still

little

known

outside

a small

circle of

specialists,

has

revealed that

this

view is

basically

flawed

and that for

most of its

history

standard

Mandarin

had little to do with

Pekingese.

In order

to understand

the

history

of Mandarin it

is

essentialthat we

treat t in terms

of three

separate

compo-

nents,

i.e.,

phonology,

lexicon,

and

syntax.

Consequently,

our

discussion will be

organized

around this

tripartite

division.

II. THE

DEVELOPMENT

OF MANDARIN

PHONOLOGY

Our

clearest views of

pre-modern

Mandarin

phonology

come to us

through

foreign alphabetic

transcriptions

de-

vised

by

non-Chinese who

wished

to learn and teach

the

standard

language.

The earliest of these

transcriptions

were

recorded

by

the Korean

sinologist

and

government

interpreter,

Sin

Sukchu

4EYki1f (1417-75),

and

are

written in the Han'guilalphabet. They are said by him

to

represent

the

"standard

readings" (zhengyin

IEiE)

of

the

period

in which he

wrote. Yhchi

(1990:

18)

argues

from

historical

evidence that

they

reflect a form of

fifteenth-century

Guanhua and

derive

from detailed

dis-

cussions

between

Sin

and one Ni

Qian

{X0,

a

Ming

official

who visited

Korea in

1450. The

"standardread-

ing"

forms are

preserved

in two

sources,

the

Hongmu

chong'un

yokhun

:iE? -I^il

(completed

in

1455),

and

the

Sasong

t'onggo

[Z]S4?_

(completed

ca.

1450),

a

lost work whose

spellings

are

preserved

in

the

Sasong

t'onghae

eZ_ij

(completed

1517)

of

Ch'we

Sejin

t

t?'

(1478?-1543).

All of this

material

has been the

sub-

ject

of a recent

study

in

English

(Kim 1991).

The

details

of

Sin's

"standard

reading" system

are not of

primary

concern to us

here,

but certain

salient features

of it can be

noted as

a matterof

interest. The

system possessed

a

sep-

arate

series

of

"turbid"or

zhu6

a initial

syllables,

cor-

responding

to the

zhu6

(sometimes

called

"voiced")

537



Journal

of

the

American Oriental

Society

120.4

(2000)

initial class

of

the traditionalChinese

phonologists,

e.g.,

b),

baw

(f_),

baw

(e),

d

y

(

f3),

i

dgy

(_he).'

Sin's

very precise

description

of these sounds

suggests

that the

feature

in

question

was not

really voicing

of

syl-

lable

initials but rather some

type

of

syllabic feature,

such as murmuror strident

breathiness,

probably

in sub-

tle association with

pitch

register.

The

language

had no

separate

series

of

palatal

initials.

Instead,

gutturals

and

sibilants could occur

freely

before

high

front

elements,

e.g,

,,2

ki

(XF),

f

tsiU

(:F),

RR

y

(X]), 40

sy

(1').

In

the

syllable

finals the most

striking

feature was a series of

checked finals

ending

in a

glottal stop

[-?].

There were

also

interesting

vowel

configurations.

For

example,

the

present-dayhomophones

gudn

'

and

guan

J

differed

n

vocalism and were realized as kwon

(:)

and kwan

(2),

respectively.

Another notable characteristic

was

the

pres-

ence of final -m in certain

syllables,

e.g.,

jL sim

(]),

_E

sam (X). There were five tones, yinping

9*:,

ydngping

2[W,

shang

_L,

qiu

,

and ru

A.

All

ru tone

syllables

had the final

glottal stop,

and this

sound occurred

only

in

ru

tone,

e.g.,

E

baj

(A),

phonetically:

[boj?];

1f

ru

(A),

phonetically:

[ru?].

What were the

origins, historically

and

geographically,

of the sound

system

recorded

by

Sin Sukchu?Sin

himself

has

nothing

to

say

on

this matter.

Comparison

of

his

sys-

tem with that

represented

n the

Yuan-period syllabary,

Zhongyudn

yinyiun

J-ff (published

1324),

shows

significant

differences,

both

in

general

features and in

numerous

points

of detail.

If,

as is

sometimes

averred,

the

Zhongyudnylnyiun

eflects the

pronunciation

used

at

the Yuan

capital,

Dadu

7t&[

(later

to become

Peking),

then the

Sin

system

must have

originated

somewhere

other

than

the

Peking

area.2

t

is also

interesting

to

com-

pare

Sin's forms with

those found in

'Phags-pa

Chinese

orthography.

The

'Phags-pa

system

was

devised in the

1260s,

somewhat before the

founding

of

the Yuan

capital

in

1276.

It

seems

to be a

mixed or

composite entity

and

may

to some extent

be a

conflation

of

several standard

sound

systems

current in

immediately pre-Yuan

times

(Coblin 1999).

It

bears

many striking

resemblances

to

Sin Sukchu's

"standard

eading"system.

Let us now con-

sider

again

the

same

syllables

cited as

examples

in the

preceding paragraph.Forms in squarebracketsindicate

1

Sin's

forms are

given

here in

IPA

transcription.

Subsequent

phonetic

forms

enclosed in

square

brackets

are

also rendered n

this

notation.

2

The dialectal base

of

the

Zhongyudnyinyiun

s

controversial.

An

alternate

view is

that the

text reflects a

Luoyang

or

upper

Central

Plains

phonological system.

See Mei

(1977:

258,

n.

4)

and Li

(1994).

phonetic

interpretations

f

orthographic

pellings. Hypo-

thetical

reconstructed

Zhongyudnyinyun

formsare

added

from

Pulleyblank

(1991)

for

comparison.

'Phags-pa ystem

Sin

System

ZYYY

paw

(

z)

[baw]

baw

(F)

*phaw'

paw

(_)

[baw]

baw

(_)

*paw'

c

yu

(f)

[dzy]

dgy

(5)

*tshy'

~

cyu

( )

[dzy] d.y

(_? .-)

*tSy'

,

gying

(f)

[kjir]

kir

(f)

*kir3

M

dzing

(?f)

[tsir]

tsiq

(~)

*tsirq

)T

hyu

(+)

[xy] xy

(X)

*xy

?X

syu

(f)

[sy] sy

()

*sy

gon

(T)

[kon]

kwon

p)

*kan

1

gwan (-_)

[kwan]

kwan

())

*kwan

L sim

(:) [sim]

sim

(:f1)

*sim

sam

(:f)

[sam]

sam (2) *sam

pay

(A)

[baj?] boj

(A)

[baj?] *paj'

F1

Zhyu

A)

[ry?]

ru

(A) [ru?]

*riw,

ry

In

these

examples,

the

Zhongyudnyinyun

reconstruc-

tions lack the murmuredor

zhuo

initial

types

and

glottal

stop

finals

which the

'Phags-pa

and Sin

systems

have

in

common.

Despite

their

similarities,

however,

detailed

comparison

reveals differences

which

preclude

the

possi-

bility

that the "standard

eading" system

of

Ming

times

could have evolved

directly

from the

'Phags-pa

one

(Cob-

lin

Forthcoming

a).

Compare,

or

example,

the

following

forms:

'Phags-pa

Sin

Sukchu

ZYYY

M

xyu

(f)

[fiy]

uy

()

*y'

RfI

yu

(_

)

[fiy]

y

(_

)

*y

Here,

Sin's

readings

maintain

an

archaic

nitial

distinction

which the

'Phags-pa

system

did not

preserve.

They

are

not

predictable

from

the

'Phags-pa

spellings.

Such

cases

lead us

to

suspect

that,

though

Sin's

"standard

eadings"

may have come from something similar to the 'Phags-pa

system,

they

cannot be

directly

derived

from it.

They

apparently

arose

out of

one

or more

late

pre-Yuan

pho-

nological systems

of

a

sort

to which

'Phags-pa

also

be-

longed

and

which

may

have

differed from

whatever

standard

underlies the

Zhongyudn

yinyun.

Our

next

clear

picture

of

standard

Mandarin

phonology

emerges

one

hundred

and

fifty years

after Sin

Sukchu and

comes

to us from

European

Catholic

missionaries

(Lu

1985;

Yang

1989).

From the

opening

years

of the

seven-

538



COBLIN:

Brief

History of

Mandarin

teenth

century

we have a set

of

literary

Chinese

essays

written

in

Peking by

Matteo Ricci

(1552-1610)

during

the decade before

his death. The Chinese

characters

in

these texts

are

accompanied by

romanized forms

which

survive

today

in a collection known

as the

Xizi

qiji Z

I

iI:g

(see

Wenzi

Gaig6

1957).

The

second source is

the

Xiru

e'rmizi

VI/Z

T

l

-,

a

large syllabary

of

zhengyin

readings compiled by

Niklaas

(Nicola, Nicolas)

Trigault

(1577-1628)

and

printed

in

1626.

The

phonological sys-

tem reflected

in

these materials is rather similar to

that

represented

in Sin's Korean

spelling

system,

with the

ex-

ception

that the

zhu6

series of initials and the final

nasal

-m

have been lost.

In

effect,

the Sin

system

appears

to

feed

directly

into that of Ricci and

Trigault,

and the

two

types

can

for

the most

part

be viewed as

belonging

to a

direct line of

development.

Let us

compare again

the

sample

syllables

cited above:

Sin

System

Trigault System

t

baw

(?)

'pao

[p'au]

t

baw

(_L)

po,

pao [pao]

r~

dz,y

(~)

c'hu

[ts'q]

-

d7.y

(?.)

chu.,

chu

[tsq]

i

kirj

(k)

kim

[kiq]

et

tsiq

(g)

9im

[tsiq]

1

xy

(F)

hiu

[xy]

X

sy

(O)

siu

[sy]

T

kwon

(F)

kuon

[kuon]

H

kwan

(f))

kuan

[kuan]

JL

sim

(T)

sin

[sin]

sam

(:)

san

[san]

E

baj

(A)

[baj?]

pe

[pe?]

1

ru

(A)

[ru?]

j6

[2o?]

As

we have

noted,

Sin

Sukchu had

relatively

little to

say

about

the actual

language

underlying

his

standard

readings.

But

the

European

missionaries

have on

the con-

trary

left

detailed

observations on the

speech

form

they

were

recording.

First

of

all,

it

is clear that

there

was in-

deed

a

standard

language,

by

this time

called

Guanhua,

of

which the zhengyin formed the phonological component.

From

Yang

(1989:

198-99)

we

adapt

the

following

sam-

ple

passages.

1.

Alessandro

Vilignano

(1539-1606),

Historia

del

Principio y

progresso

de

la

Compaia

de

Jesus en

las

Indias

Orientales

(1542-1564):

The

Chinese

have

different

languages

in

different

prov-

inces,

to

such

an

extent that

they

cannot

understand ach

other....

[They]

also have

another

language

which is

like a

universaland

common

language;

this is the

official

language

of the

mandarinsandof the

court;

it is

among

them

like Latin

among

ourselves.... Two of our

fathers

[Michele

Ruggieri

(1543-1607)

and Matteo

Ricci]

have

been

learning

this mandarin

anguage...

2. Matteo

Ricci,

letter dated November

12,

1592:

The letters are

common in

all fifteen

provinces

of

China.

However,

the

language

in each

of the

provinces

is

different. There is also

a universal

language.

We call

it

the

language

of

the law courts.

Because this

language

is

used in

all the

tribunals

by

all

magistrates

coming

from

different

provinces,

it

is the one that

we are

learning.

3.

Matteo

Ricci,

Storia dell'

introduzione

del

cristiane-

simo in Cina:

With all the

varieties of

languages,

there is also one

that

we call

cuonhoa,

that is to

say,

the

language

of

the

law

courts;

it is used in

audiencesand

tribunals;

and,

if

one

learns

this,

he can use it in all

the

provinces;

in

addition,

even the children

andwomen know

enough

of it

to be

able

to

communicatewith

all the

people

of another

province.

Further

references

in

texts of

this

period

throw

light

on

the

regional

affiliations of

the

Guanhua

koine. For ex-

ample,

from

Ricci's

diary

for the

year

1600 we

find an

account of a

journey

from

Nanking

to

Peking,

during

which Ricci

was

helped

in

various

ways by

a

friendly

court eunuch

named

Leupusie.

The

following

passage

occurs

there

(Yang

1989:

228):

Before

his

departure,

the

eunuch

Leupusie

was

very

happy

and as

a

present

he

gave

to

the Fathers

a

boy

whom

he had

bought

at

Nanking.

The

boy,

who

speaks

very good

Chinese,

can teach

Fr.

Pantoja

[i.e.,

Diego

de

Pantoja

(1571-1618)],

who is

going

to

study

Chinese

with

him.

In

Trigault's

adapted

and

published

version

of

Ricci's di-

ary, this passage reads (Yang 1989: 228):

The

eunuch

who had

been

in

charge

of

the

expedition,

sailed

away

joyfully,

and

as a

present

to the Fathers he

left

them

a

boy

because

he

spoke

so

distinctly,

and

he

could

teach

Father

Didaco the

purity

of the

Nanchinese

tongue.

Thus,

in

the

current

Chinese

view

as

represented

by

the

eunuch,

the

phonological

system

of

Guanhua

was

closely

539



Journal

of

the American Oriental

Society

120.4

(2000)

associated with the

language

of

the

city

of

Nanking.

The

reasons for this

are

now

fairly

well

understood.

Nanking

had

been

the

capital

of

China

from

1356 until

1421,

and

it was

presumably

during

this

period

that the dialect

of

thatareabecameidentified with the national standard.By

Ricci's

time

Peking

had been

the

major political

center

for

approximately

one

hundred

and

eighty

years,

but the

phonological

basis

for the koine had never shifted to

Pekingese.

The

reason for this

would seem

to be

that,

as

Ricci remarks

n his

diary

(1953:

268-69,

309),

in

late

Ming

times

Nanking,

rather

than

Peking,

still served

as

the

cultural hub of the

country.

From

later

in the

seventeenth

century

we

have further

missionary

records

of

standard Mandarin. Two of the

most extensive

and informative

are

a

complete grammar

(Arte

de la

Lengua

Mandarina

[Canton, 1703];

actually

completed

in

1682 at

F6zh6u)

and

a

romanized

Spanish-

Mandarindictionary("Vocabulariode la Lengua Man-

darina,"

MSS

n

the GermanState

Library,

Berlin,

and the

British

Library,

London)

by

the

Spanish

Dominican,

Francisco

Varo

(1627-87).

The

language

recorded

by

him was

phonologically

almost

identical

to

that

repre-

sented in the works of

Ricci and

Trigault,

and his

attitude

towards

correct

pronunciation

was also

similar

to

that of

his

predecessors.

In

his

grammar

(1703:

8)

he remarks

that,

in order to

enunciate Mandarin words

well,

"one

must understand he

way

in

which such

words are

pro-

nounced

by

the Chinese. Not

just

any

Chinese,

but

only

those who

have the natural

gift

of

speaking

the Mandarin

language

well,

such

as

those natives

of the Province

of

Nan

king,

and

of other

provinces

where the

Mandarin

tongue

is

spoken

well"

(Coblin

and

Levi 2000:

31).

And

in

the

preface

to

his

"Vocabulario"he

points

out that

the

spellings

he

gives

for his

Chinese entries

"conform

to

what

is

spoken

in

the

province

of

Nan

king"

(p.

2).

Moving

ahead

fifty

years

we

encounter

yet

another

grammar

of

Mandarin,

the

Notitia

Linguae

Sinicae

of

Joseph

Pr6mare

(1666-1736),

completed

ca.

1730

and

published

in

editions of

1831 and

1893. The

phonology

of

the

language

described

by

Pr6mare is

slightly

more

evolved

than that of

Varo,

e.g.,

the

distinction

between

[kuon]

H'

and

[kuan]

[j

was

lost,

both

being pronounced

as [kuan] in his time. However, it is clear thatPr6mare

was

describing

a later

stage

of

essentially

the

same

speech

form

his

predecessors

had

recorded.

Our next

step

forward n

the

history

of

Mandarin

pro-

nunciation

brings

us to

British

grammars

and

dictionaries

of

the

early

nineteenth

century.

The

foremost of these

is

the

great Dictionary of

the

Chinese

Language

by

Robert

Morrison

(1782-1834).

In

his

preface,

dating

from

1815,

he

remarks:

"What is

called

the

Mandarin

Dialect,

or

'i

Kwan

hwa,

is

spoken generally

in

3EM

Keang-

nan and

M1iA

Ho-nan

Provinces,

in both of

which,

the

Court once

resided"

(p.

x).

And

then,

somewhat

later,

he

says:

"The

pronunciation

n

this

work,

is

rather

what

the Chinese call the Nanking dialect, than the Peking"

(p.

xviii).

Interestingly,

e

describesthe

rejected

Pekingese

pronunciation

s

having

a

number

of featuresstill found

in

the

Peking-based

standardof our

times,

e.g., palatals

in

place

of velars

before

high

front

vowels,

absence

of a final

glottal

stop

in

rusheng

syllables,

etc.3 This

type

of

pro-

nunciation,

he tells

us,

is a "Tartar-Chinese

ialect."

But,

though

he

rejects

it as a standard

or his

dictionary,

he

re-

marks that it

is "now

gradually gaining ground,

and if

the

Dynasty

continues

ong,

will

finally

prevail"

p.

x).

The

orthographicrenderings

found

in

Morrison's

dictionary

and in

similarworks of

the

period

represent

a

sound

sys-

tem which

is

recognizably

a

later

stage

of that

described

by Varo and Premare a centuryearlier and is by Morri-

son's own accountdifferent

rom the

Pekingese

of

his

day.

Let us

refer

again

to our

set of

exemplary syllables:

Trigault

Premare

Morrison

M

'pao [p'au]

p'ao

[p'au]

paou

[p'au]

t

pao, pao [pao]

pao

[pau]

paou

[pau]

1

c'hO

[ts'q]

tch'f

[t~'y]

ch'6o

[tg'u]

t

chu.,

chu

[tgq]

tchu

[tsy]

choo

[tgu]

i

kim

[kiq]

king,

kin

[kii

-

kin]

king

[kiq]

9qim

tsiq]

tsing [tsiq]

tsing

[tsiq]

T hiu [xy] hiu[xy] heu[xy]

XI

sii

[sy] siui,

su

[sy]

seu

[sy]

'

kuon

[ku3n] kouon,

kouan

kwan

[kuon,

uan]

[kuan]

I

kuan

[kuan]

kouan

[kuan]

kwan

[kuan]

L

sin

[sin]

sin

[sin]

sin

[sin]

san

[san]

san

[san]

san

[san]

6

pe

pe[]

ph'

pi?]h

p

1

j6

[to?]

j6u,

j6

[?u?

-

?o?]

juh

[?u?]

From

Morrison's

account we

lear

that in

his time

the

northern,

Peking-based

pronunciation,

stigmatized

by

him

as

"Tartar-Chinese,"

as

gaining ground

against

this

standard

Mandarin

pronunciation.

Morrison's

opinion,

which

probably

reflected the

views of

the

Chinese

scholar-official

class of

his

day,

associated

northern

3

For

a full

citation f

the

pertinent

assage

nd ertain

elated

ones,

see

Coblin

1997:

288-91).

540



COBLIN:

Brief

History of

Mandarin

speech

habits

with

the

Manchu

governing

class,

who

were

pejoratively

referred

to as Dazi

HT

(i.e.,

"Tartars")

y

the Chinese.

But it is clear

that

many

Chinese

were

al-

ready

inclined

to

adopt

it as an

up-and-coming

standard.

Morrison himself

was resigned to the fact that this new

pronunciation

might "finally prevail,"

but for

his

own

time he

still

considered the traditional

tandard,

which

he

associated with

Jiangnan

or

Henan,

to be

preferable

for

the

phonological

component

of his

dictionary.

Morrison,

S.

Well

Williams,

and their

"Nankingist

school"of

transcribers,

were

primarily

missionaries,

work-

ing

in

various areas

of central and south

China. But

after

about 1850

there

emerged

a new

group

of

"Pekingist"

language specialists

who

were

in

many

cases

associated

with the

British

diplomatic

and

consular

services. These

persons,

who included

such

luminaries as

Sir

Thomas

Wade

(1818-95),

Joseph

Edkins

(1823-1905),

and

some-

what later, Herbert Giles (1845-1935), urged that Pe-

kingese

pronunciation

be

adopted by

British learners

of

standard

Chinese.

Edkins,

as

quoted

by

Wade

(1867: vi)

explained

that

though

"the

Nanking

Mandarin is more

widely

understood

han that of

Peking

...

the

Peking

dia-

lect

must be

studied

by

those

who

would

speak

the lan-

guage

of

the

imperial

court,

and what

is,

when

purified

of

its

localisms,

the

accredited kuan

hua of

the

empire."

We

see,

then,

that

from the

British

standpoint

a

change

had

occurred in

the

status of

Pekingese

over a

period

of

some four

or five

decades.

Though

the

Nanking-related

pronunciation

of

Mandarinwas

still

more

widely

under-

stood in

China,

the

Pekingese-based

system

(minus

identifiably

dialectal

"localisms")

had

by

mid-century

assumed the

true

mantle of

Guanhua

phonology.

It was

the

preferred

inguistic

medium of

the

imperial

court

and

was

rapidly

gaining ground

among

the

scholar-official

class. As

Morrisonhad

predicted

fifty years

earlier,

it

did

finally prevail,

becoming

the

standard

pronunciation

of

late

Qing

Guanhua,

and

subsequently,

of the

new

koine,

gu6yu/puitnghua,

the

standard

Mandarin

of

today.

The

ultimate

origins

of

the

features

we now

charac-

terize as

Pekingese

pronunciation

are a

part

of

the

gen-

eral

history

of

Peking

dialect

per

se,

for

ground-breaking

surveys

of

which,

see Y6

(1984)

and Lin

(1987).

As we

have seen, they were fully present n Morrison's ime, but

it is

clear

that

they

predate

him.

Some

of

them

are

already

reflected

in

certain

Korean

transcriptions

of

the

mid-

eighteenth

century

(Kim

1991:

265-68).

Others

were

heard

by

John

Barrow,

who

visited

Peking

in

1793 as

a

member of

the

Macartney

embassy

to

the

court of

Qian-

16ng

(Barrow

1806:

241-70).

Exactly

what

happened

to

the

language

of

Peking

after

the

major

population

disrup-

tions

attendant

on the

Manchu

conquest,

and

how it

evolved

during

the

further

course

of the

dynasty,

is an

area

awaiting

further

study.

In

any

case,

it is

certainthat

by

Edkins'

time a

phonology

based on

this

speech

type

represented

he

"accredited

guanhua

of the

country."4

Let us now summarizeour observationson the history

of

Ming-Qing

Mandarin

phonology.

The

"standard ead-

ing"

or

zhengyin

system

first

recorded

by

Sin

Sukchu in

the

mid 1400s

differs

from but

bears a close

resemblance

to the

'Phags-pa

Chinese

system

dating

from the

1260s.

Sin's

system

may

therefore

derive

from one or

more of

the

standard

ystems

current

n

the

CentralPlain

in late

pre-

Yuan

times. In

fact,

it

may

to some

extent

be a

continu-

ation

of late

Sbng

standards

cf.

Norman

1997:

26-27).

It does

not

appear

to

have been

directly

associated with

the

sound

system

of the

Zhongyudnyinyun,

which some

believe

represents

he

standard

pronunciation

f the

Yuan

capital,

D'adu.

We

may

suspect

that

it came

into

ascen-

dancy during the initial decades of the Ming dynasty,

when

the locus

of

political power

lay

in

thelower

Yangtze

watershed and

the

capital

was

at

Nanking. By

the late

1500s

this

koine was

universally

called

Guanhua.In the

technical

terminology

of the

native

phonological

tradi-

tion,

the terms

zhengyin

"standard

pronunciation"

and

Guanhua

"language

of the

officials"

were

fairly

carefully

distinguished

(Geng

1992:

117-26),

but

in

common

par-

lance,

as

reflected n the

missionary

dictionariesand

glos-

saries

of the

vernacular,

hey

were

synonymous,

thus la

lengua

mandarina =

Guanhua =

zhengyin.

Missionary

accounts,

almost

certainly

reflecting

native

perceptions,generally

describe the

standard

ronunciation

of

Guanhua

as

"Nankingese."

However

the

significance

of this

identification

requires

urther

consideration.For it

is clear

that,

although

similar

to

Nankingese

pronuncia-

tion in

many

ways,

the

zhengyin

system

from its

incep-

tion

lackeda

numberof

typically

Nankingese

and

central

Jiang-Huai

features,

such

as the

failure

to

distinguish

initial 1-

and n- and

(in

certain

environments)

inal

-n

and

-y

(Coblin

Forthcoming

b).

Consider

the

following:

4 It shouldbe noted,however,hat helinguistic ituationn

the

city

during

his

period

was still

far

from

stable.

Phonologi-

cally

mixed

or

composite

ystems

were

encountered

here ven

in

Edkins'

ay.

He

remarks

1864:

279):

"Many

men

rom

Kiang-

nan

esiden

Peking,

specially

f the

classof

scholars.

hey

re-

tain

manypeculiarities

f thesouthern

ronunciation,

ven

after

the

apse

of

three r

four

generations.

n

such

cases,

hetones

of

Peking

are sometimes

sed

n

conjunction

ith

the

initials

and

finalsof

Nanking."

541



Journal

of

the American

Oriental

Society

120.4

(2000)

Sin

Trigault

Pr6mare

Morrison

nL

najq

Nz)

nem

[ner]

neng [nerj] nang

[naeIj]

lajrj i) lem [irj] leng [ler] lang

[laej]

7q

nuj

( :)

nui

[nui]

nu6i,

nuii

ny

[nui]

[nuei

-

nui]

i.

luj

(T)

lui

[lui]

loui

[lui]

luy

[lui]

In

these cases all standardGufnhua sources

strictly

dis-

tinguish

initial

n-

and

1-.

Now

compare

the

following

central

Jiang-Huai

dialect

forms,

taken from

Jiangsu

sheng

he

Shanghai

shi

(1960: 499):

Nanking Jur6ng Yangzh6u Gaoy6u

[la313F] [nn24WV]

[a

]

[a34WF] [la3213

]

[1ar22-]

[nan213L]

[1l1342&]

[laJ21i]

F

[luai441]

[nai55t] [luoi551]

[luoi53"]

,

[luoi44`]

[nai551 ] [

uoi55a]

[luoi53:]

No

dialects

of

this

type

make an

n-/l- distinction com-

parable

to that found in

the standard

system.

Similar

data can be cited for the final

-n/-y

distinction after the

vowel i:

Sin

Trigault

Pr6mare Morrison

3

pin

(F)

pin

[pin]

pin

[pin]

pin

[pin]

E

piIJ p) pim[pij] ping[pii] ping[pii]

Nanking

Jur6ng

Yangzh6u

Gaoy6u

[piti31iV]

[pin31r]

[pin319V]

[pirJ44T]

[pin31VL] [pin3

P]

pint31^

]

[pir44**]

Nevertheless,

comparison

of

the Sin

and

missionary

spelling systems

shows that

between

1450 and

1600 the

standard

system

did in

fact take on

certain

Nankingese-

like

features which it

had

originally

lacked

(Coblin

Forthcoming

c).

As

an

exemplar,

consider the

following:

Sin

Trigault

Pr6mare

Morrison

R

zjari

F)

siam,

q'iam

ts'iang

tseang

[siar

-

ts'iar] [ts'iarj]

[ts'iarj]

In

this

case,

the

syllable

in

question

had a fricative ini-

tial

z-

in

Sin's

system,

but

by

Trigault's

ime

competing

fricative/affricate

readings

in

s-/ts'-

had

developed;

and

it

was the

affricate forms that

prevailed.

It is

therefore

noteworthy

that

Nankingese

and

other

closely

related di-

alects have

affricate initials in

syllables

of this

type.

In

the same dialects cited above we find

for

xidng

-T

the

following

forms:

Nanking

Jur6ng

Yangzh6u

Gaoy6u

[t?'ifi13]

ti'iai324]T]

'i

t?'ia2

34

4]

[t?'iar213R*]

How are we to understandsuch

phenomena?

At

the

outset

we

may

suppose

that the

zhengytn

system

of

ca.

1450 was based not

on the

pronunciation

of a

single

dia-

lect or

area

but

was

instead

a

composite

entity reflecting

the sound

systems

of a

congeries

of

southerly

Central

Plains-type

dialects,

including

those of the lower

Yangtze

watershed,

such as

Nankingese.

(We

may,

for

example,

remember that

Morrison

in one

passage

cited

above

characterized the

zhengyin

system

as that of the

Nan-

king region

and

H6enn,

rather han of the former

alone.)

The fact that this standardsystem was used continually

in

Nanking

from at least 1400

until about 1850

would

have led

to

ongoing convergence throughout

hat

period,

contributing

o the

perception

that the two were

more-or-

less identical. But

it

should be remembered

hat such

no-

tions were

general

and

impressionistic

sentiments

rather

than

technically

accurate taxonomic

judgments.

In

any

case,

in

traditional

imes

Nanking

probably

was

the

most

prominent

urban

area

of China where

something

ap-

proaching

an

accurate

rendition of

zhengyin

phonology

could be heard in

everyday

use.

When

the

national

capital

was

moved from

Nanking

to

Peking

in 1421 there was no

concomitant

shift

in

the re-

gional

basis

of the

standard sound

system.

Instead,

the

Nanking-like system

remained in

place

as the

national

standard.And this situation

had

not

changed by

the

early

Qing period,

when Varo

was

active.

However,

Pr6mare

begins

to mention here

andthere

alternate

Pekingese

pro-

nunciations,

which

he nonetheless seems

to

regard

as sus-

pect

ornon-standard. or

example,

he

observes

(1893: 15)

that the

syllable

tchu

[tsy]

(as

in

zhiu

4

"pig")

is

(mis-)

pronouncedby

the

Pekingese

as

tchou

[tsu].

By

the

mid-

1700s,

Korean

observers

record

more

of these

features,

and

by

the

1790s

Barrow

clearly

hears them

competing

with

standard

i.e.,

Nanking-like) pronunciations

n

the

streets

of Peking.A decade or so laterMorrisongrudginglyad-

mits

that the

imperial

court

prefers

this

"Tartar

Chinese,"

which he

predicts

may

eventually

become the

national

standard.

By

about

1850

this

prediction

has

been

realized,

and

a wholesale

shift

to

a

Pekingese-like

phonological

base

has

occurred.

The

result remains with

us to this

day.

In

closing

this

section

we

may

take some

account of

several

orthographically

ttested

"non-standard"

arieties

of

Guanhua

pronunciation.

Examples

of

the first

of

these

are

found

in

a

Portuguese-Chinese

Dictionary

manuscript

542



COBLIN:

Brief History of

Mandarin

held

in the

Archivum

RomanumSocietatis Jesu in

Rome.

This text

is attributed to Matteo Ricci and/or

Michele

Ruggieri

and is

believed to have

been

compiled

in

the

1580s

near Canton

(Yang

1989).

It

may represent

a

re-

gional (andprobably outhern)variety

of late

MingGuan-

hua. Ricci

and his confreres had

abandoned

his form

of

pronunciation

by

ca. 1600

in favor of the

variety

attested

in the sources

discussed above.

A second and

very

closely

related Guanhua

variety

is

found in

a

set of

vernacular

dialogues

included

in the

same Jesuit

manuscript.

The

material

has

been studied

and

analyzed by Furuya

(1988,

1989).

A thirdGuanhua

ype

is

attested

n the

Towa

sanyo

Xfi5$ V,

a

Chinese

language

primer

published

in

Japan

in 1716. This text has been examined

by

Richard

Sim-

mons

in two

recent articles

(1995, 1997)

and

is

thought

to

represent

a

Guanhua

variety

used in the

Hangzhou

area.

The

language

resembles Sin's

zhengyin

variety

in

retain-

ing a zhu6 series of initials. Interrelationshipsbetween

these different

Guanhua

types

and that reflected in the

standardmaterials

discussed here remain o be clarified

by

detailed

comparisons.

But what is

recognizable

at this

point

is thatwithin Guanhuaas a whole there

existed com-

peting

regional

sub-varieties of

standard

pronunciation,

some

of which

were

clearly

felt

by

European

observers to

have

higher

prestige

than

others.

III.

LEXICON

Jiang Shaoyu

A7],

perhaps

the

leading

modern

au-

thority

on

the

history

of the

Chinese

lexicon,

has ob-

served that work in post-Tang lexical studies is still in

its

infancy

(1989:

240).

In his own

researchhe has drawn

a

careful distinction

between

traditional

koines as actual

spoken

languages (kouyu

de

gbngtongyu

2

--Hj:~,r)

and

contemporary

written or

literary

vernaculars

(shu-

mian

gongtongyu fjjfit-l

)

based on

or related

to

these

spoken

koines

(see,

e.g.,

1994:

126).

In

this con-

nection

he has also

pointed

out

that

spoken

material has

heretofore

been accessible

only

indirectly

through

the

medium

of

the

literary

sources

(1994: 252).

The

result

has been a

scholarly

emphasis

on the

identification and

study

of

individually gleaned

lexical

items,

without

suf-

ficient

consideration of the

spoken lexicon as a system-

atic

whole

(1989:

ch.

10;

1994:

287-88).

With

regard

to

the

Guanhuh

koine,

a

solution to

the

problem

posed

by

Jiang

would now

seem to

be

offered

by

the recent

discov-

ery

of

grammars,

dictionaries,

and

dialogue

texts of the

sort

mentioned

in

the

preceding

section.

For these works

were

composed

specifically

as

language-learning

materi-

als

and were

intended

to

reflect

actual

speech

rather han

the

usage

of

the

literary

vernaculars.

It will

be

necessary

to

compare

this

material

systematically

with

the

lexical

stock of the written

texts,

on the

one

hand,

and of

mod-

ern

standard

Mandarin,

on the

other,

before the

precise

relationships

among

them

can be established.

However,

a few

preliminary

observationscan

be

ventured.

Considering,

for

example,

Varo's "Vocabulario

de la

Lengua

Mandarina,"

ext

samples

selected

at random

ap-

pear

to show a

rather

high degree

of

continuity

with the

lexicon of moder

Mandarin,

once

neologisms

known

to

have

appeared

n the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries

have been excluded.5

Let us examine the

following

ex-

cerpt

of ten

contiguous

entries fromthe Berlin

manuscript

of Varo's

text

(p.

44),

to

which Chinese characters

have

been added

here for reference:

Casamentero

male

matchmaker].

oey in

A.

Casamentera

femalematchmaker].

oey

p6'

.

Cascaras,

t

de

guebos,

o cosas

duras

shells,

as of

eggs

or hard hings].ki6'UQ.

Cascaras,

mondaduras

e frutas

[rinds

or

peels

of

fruit].

py'

12.

Cascarase texas

quebradas

flat

pieces

of broken

iles].

ua

sty

2i

/ uh

pi6n'

t".

Cascajo, iedrequelas

shards

f broken

essels;

gravel,

pebbles].

a

lieXtt.

Cascos

de calabaza

skull,

cranium].

ao ki6'

SfOfi.

Cascosde cebollas

[onion

skins].

ghing' py'

Xi..

de

canas

of canes].

cho6

hing'

qt.

Cascabeles

hawksbells,

mallbells for

animals].

ing

ul

Jl

/

hiang ling

M/

chu6n'

ling

-P.

Cascode morrion

a

steel

helmet].

ie'

kuey'

9

.

Most items in

this

passage

are

still current n

moder

standard

Mandarin.

Wdpian

A

t'

is in

common use.

Wasuii

TLF

is attested

in

texts

of

Ming

and

Qing

times

but is

probably

no

longer

used in

spoken

Mandarinto-

day.

Naoke

'SK

is listed

in

moder

dictionaries in the

sense

"head,"

ather

han

"skull,"

and is

said to have

a dia-

lectal flavor.

Chuan

ling

$

occurs in

vernacular

exts

of late

Qing

and

early Republican

times and is

perhaps

still

current

among

at least

some

speakers.

The

rate of

continuity

here

may

be as

high

as

85-90%,

with

attrition

and

substitutionof

a sort

which would

be

expected

in

suc-

cessive

stages

of the

same

language

for

the

time

period

in

question.This would suggest that in the area of lexicon

there

has

been no

large-scale

shift of

the sort observed

in

the

phonological

component

of the

language.

However,

if

specific

common

lexical items are chosen

for

scrutiny,

a

different

picture

emerges.

Let us now

consider

several

of

these.

5

For

a

very

detailed

iscussion

f

such

neologisms,

ee

Masini

(1993),

who

provides

references to

earlier studies.

543



Journal

of


Society

120.4

(2000)

1.

Difang

ttfi

"place."

This word

appears

n the

gen-

eral sense

"place"

in

Qing

novels

and is well known

to

the

mid-nineteenth

century

"Pekingist"

extbook

and

dic-

tionary

compilers.

Varo

uses it in

the

specialized

sense

"region, vicinity."He also lists it both alone andin longer

expressions

in the

general

sense

"place,"

but

always

in

second

position

behind

his

preferred

word,

su6ozi

jfi.

In

his

grammar

he

never

uses

difang

in

example

sen-

tences,

employing

su6zaai

nstead.

Su6zai

is

still current

n

certaindialects

of

centraland south China.

It

is also

listed

in

nineteenth-century

ictionariesof

Pekingese,

e.g.,

Stent

(1877: 438);

but

difang

is

the

ordinary

word used in

the

language

textbooks. This

word had

apparently

com-

pletely replaced

suozai

in

the lexicon of the

standard

koin6

by

the

mid-

1800s,

and its

origin

seems to have

been

either

Pekingese

or the

northern

dialects

generally.

2.

Dou

V

"all." For

this word the

Guanhua

materials

of Varo, Pr6mare,and Morrisonall write tia(= moder

Mandarin

di);

and the

nineteenth-century

extbooks

also

give

this

pronunciation

or

standard

Pekingese

Mandarin

of

thattime.

However,

Edkins

(1864: 69)

remarks

hat

the

word

actually

used in the

Pekingese

dialect

(as

opposed

to

standard

Pekingese

Mandarinof

the

day)

was

not

tu

but

rathera sort of

vulgarism

pronounced

eu

(=

modern

standard

dou).

Giles

(1892:

1187)

identifies

this

dou

as

a

northern

dialect form.

By

the

early

twentieth

century

it

had

entered he

standardkoin6

and

completely ejected

dii,

for

in his

spoken

Mandarin

language

materials

Giles

(1901)

gives only

dou in

the

sense "all."

It

is

important

o

note

that this

development

was not

simply

a

sound

change

as such

but rather

a

lexical

replacement

n

which

the

Pekingese

word

supplanted

he

Guanhuaone.

3.

Gei

M,

"to

give."

This

word is

unknown

n

the

older

Guanhua

sources,

which

always

identify yu

ff

or

bdyu

tEfi

as their

words for "to

give."

Morrison

does list

gei,

along

with

yui

n this

sense.

Ota

(1958

[1987]: 241)

states

that

gei

was an

established

Pekingese

form in

Qing

times;

and it

must in

fact be

much

older

than that in

some

types

of north

Chinese,

since

it

appears

in

a

Tibeto-

Chinese

colloquial

phrasebook

from

Dunhuang

(Takata

1988:

199).

It

was well

known to

mid-nineteenth-century

Pekingists.

It is

also

found

in

the

modern

Jiang-Huai

di-

alects, but almost always in an unusual syllabic shape.

For

example,

in

Nankingese

it

is

ki11,

which

violates the

syllable

canon

of

that

language by

placing

a

high

front

vowel

after a

guttural

nitial.

This

suggests

that it is

prob-

ably

a

later

intrusion

in

such

dialects

(Coblin

Forthcom-

ing

b).

And,

in

fact,

Edkins

(1864:

278-79)

remarks

hat

ba

tf

rather

han

gei

was the

common

word for

"to

give"

in

the

Yangtze

watershed

dialects

of

his

time. In

sum-

mary,

gei

may

have

entered

the

lexicon

of

the

standard

koine

from a

northerndialect such

as

Pekingese

during

the

latter

part

of

the

eighteenth

century.

4. Hdi

X

"still,

yet."

In

the

Guanhua

materials the

word

"still,"

written

by

Premare as

X,

is

always spelled

as the equivalentof modernMandarinhudn. A number

of

Jiang-Huai

dialects

preserve

this

form,

where it is

the

preferred reading

among elderly

speakers.

Ch'we

Sejin

mentions that in

his time

it was

sometimes

pronounced

as a

homophone

of

hdi

r

"child"

(Kim

1991:

218,

n.

1).

The

nineteenth-century

Pekingese

textbook

compilers

list

two

readings

for

it,

hai and

hdn. It

would

appear

that

hdi

replaced

hudn as

the

standard

koin6 form

at some

point

after

Morrison's

ime.

5.

He

Xg

"to

drink."This

word is

already

attested in

Yuan-time texts

and is

well

known to the

nineteenth-

century Pekingists.

But it does

not

appear

in the

spoken

Guanhua

sources

until Morrison's

time.

Like

gei

it

seems to be an eighteenth-century importation from

northChinese.

6.

Hen

fR

(earlier

also

I,

RR)

very."

This is the

ordi-

nary

intensifier

or stative

and

certainother

verbsin

mod-

ern standard

Mandarin. t

does not

appear

at all in

Varo's

dictionary,

nor for

thatmatter in

any

other

of the

alpha-

betically

recorded

mid-Qing

Guanhua

materials,

even as

late

as

Morrison's time.

The

usual

spoken

Guanhua

forms

were

insteadwords

like shen

:

"very,

extremely"

and

ji

1&

"extremely."

However,

the

use of

hen as an

in-

tensifieris

textually

attested

as

early

as

Yuan times

and

is

common

in

various

Qing

novels.

It

was also

well

known

to the

Pekingist grammarians. tsadoption n stan-

dard

Mandarin

by

this

time

may

indicate a shift

towards

a

Pekingese

lexical

base

by

the

standard

koine

during

the

nineteenth

century.

7.

H6uzi 4-F

"wart,

pimple."

This

word

is

already

at-

tested in

Song-period

texts

and is

well

represented

in


dictionaries of

Pekingese

(e.g.,

Stent 1877:

175).

Thus,

it

was

by

this

time an

established

Pekingese

noun

with a

long

pedigree.

Morrison

also lists

it.

Interestingly,

however,

Varo

does not

know it

at all.

In-

stead,

he

gives

an

entirely

different

expression,

ldoshunadi

jM~,

which

occurs twice

in his

dictionary.

Ldoshundi

is

found

today

in

certain

Yangtze-watershed

dialects6

but

does not seem to be used elsewhere. Itwas apparentlyhe

standardGuanhua

erm in

Varo's

ime.

By

the

early

nine-

teenth

century,

the

Pekingese

word had

replaced

it

and

remains

the

usual

term for

"wart" in

modern

standard

Mandarin.

6I am

grateful

to

Professor

Richard

Simmons

for

this

information.

544



COBLIN:

A

Brief

History

of

Mandarin

8.

Suoyoude

PTi

t

"all,

whatsoever."This term

first

appears

n

Ming

and

Qing

novels. It is well knownto

the

nineteenth-century

Peking

Mandarin

extbook writers

but

is not found

in

the

Guanhua

records

of

Varo,

Premare,

and Morrison.Instead,they use other modifiers such as

qudnde

wi,

wdnqudnde

zh:t,

zhenggede

SfflJ,

simiande

[ m

t

etc.

Thus,

su6youde

would

appear

o

be

a

nineteenth-century

dditionto the standard

koine,

prob-

ably

from

Pekingese.

9.

Xin

{

"letter,

epistle."

The

compound

shaxin

mB

"letter"

is

quite

old,

dating

from at least Six

Dynasties

times.

The term

jiaxin

*f

"tidings

from

home" is

at-

tested in

Taing

exts.

The

monosyllable

xin

in the

sense

of

"tidings,

news"

is

attested

in

Qing

novels such

as

H6ngl6umeng

g,TI

I.

Xin in the sense of "letter" s well

known to the

nineteenth-century ekingese

textbook writ-

ers and

is

the usual word

in modern standardMandarin.

Varo,on the otherhand,uses only shu - for "letter."But

the word xin

in this sense must have existed somewhere

in his

time,

for he

gives xinqidn

f I

as an alternate orm

for

daishuqidn ft-l

"postage

for letters."

Nevertheless,

he

apparently

did not consider

xin

to be a standardword

for "letter."There

appears

o be no case of

xin

"letter" n

Premare's

grammar.

Morrison ists the

compound

shuxin,

but

this

may

be a

literary

form taken from texts. It would

seem that in

Guanhuh he

ordinary

word for "letter"was

sha,

which was later

replaced

in the

standardkoin6

by

Pekingese

xin,

the form still

current

oday.

10. Zhdo

Vtz

to seek." This verb is

unknown

in

the

Guanhua

sources until

Morrison's

dictionary,

where it is

said to have

the sense "to

supply."

However,

he

also

gives

the

compound

zhaoxun :ti-,

which he

glosses

as

"to seek for."

The

monosyllable

xuin

H

is the

normal

word

for "seek"

n

the

Guanhuamaterials.

Zhdo s

attested

in

Ming

and

Qing

vernacular

exts and is

found

in

all the

nineteenth-century

extbooks of

Pekingese

Mandarin.It

may

have entered the

standard

koin6 from

Pekingese

be-

tween the times

of

Pr6mareand

Morrison.

Examples

of this

sort

suggest

that,

while the bulk,of

the

Ming-Qing

Guanhua

koin6 lexicon

may

have

passed

more or

less

directly

into

modern

standard

Mandarin,

a

number of common or high-frequencylexemes were not

inherited

n

this

way.

Instead,

these

may

have entered

the

word-stock from

the

north

Chinese

speech

area

generally

or from

the

local

language

of

Peking

in

particular.

This

development

can

therefore

be

viewed as a

smaller-scale

lexical

parallel

of

the

wholesale

phonological

shift

to a

Pekingese

base

during

the

eighteenth

and

nineteenthcen-

turies,

especially

since it

usually

resulted

in

complete

re-

placement

of

received

Guanhuh

exical

material.

A muchsmaller but

equally

interesting

body

of lexical

discrepancies

between older

Guanhu'a ndthemodern tan-

dard

lexicon

may

in fact have been

dialect

syllables

and

compounds

in

Guanhua

phonological

garb,

which

crept

into particularregional sub-varieties of the koin6 but

neverbecame a

permanent

part

of the

general

lexicon of

Guanhua.

Consider,

for

example,

Varo's

expressions

tung

-

"grain

harvest"and xeu

tung

1>-

"to

harvest,"

which

are

widely

found

in Fukien

and

contiguous

Mm-speaking

areas

but are not

generally

known

elsewhere.

Another

example

is

Varo'snunniui

41:-,

given

along

with

xiaoniu

/J\4

for "calf."

Niunniu

appears

to be a

Mtnd6ng

rj

dialect

form,

adopted

from the

speech

of the area

where

Varo lived and worked.

With this we

may

compare

the

Ricci-Ruggieri

dictionary

orm

niuizai

ff

"yearling

alf"

(written

gnieu

zai

4#

in the

text),

which

appears

to

be

a

Yue

-

dialect

borrowing

nto the

Guanhua

variety

used

in the Cantonregion.None of these expressionsremained

part

of

the standard

exicon of

subsequent

periods,suggest-

ing

thatthe koin6

word-stock

may

have been

relatively

m-

permeable

o

regional

nfluencesand shifts in dialect

base,

accepting briefly

but then

ultimately shedding

most

pa-

tently

dialectal or

regional

material

cf.

Hanan

1981:

2,

8).

Significantly, hough

Varo's

dictionary

contains no

Chi-

nese

characters,

almost

all

syllables

in it can be

directly

associated

with

written

Chinese

graphs.

And

Pr6mare

has

no

difficulty

at all

in

supplying

characters or his

example

phrases

and sentences. Unlike

the

spoken

dialects

known

to

us

today,

which often

possess

hundreds

of

etymolog-

ically

and

graphically

obscure

morphemes, nearly every

lexical item in

spoken

Guanhua

would

seem to

be for-

mally

"authorizable" n

terms of

the Chinese

script.

It is

almost as if the

growth

of

the

standard exicon was con-

sciously

monitored

with

such

"authorizability"

n

mind.

How

much older

than

the

early Qing period

is

the com-

mon

word-stock

shared

by

works such as Varo's

"Vocab-

ulario"

and the

moder

standardMandarin

exicon? What

is

the

relationship

of this old

word-stock to

the lexical

corpus

of

the

Ming-Qing literary

vernaculars?Did north-

ern dialect

words

which had

alreadyappeared

n

vernacu-

lar

literary

exts have a

particular

advantage

hat

enabled

them

to enter

the

newly forming

nineteenth-century

oine

more easily? Or were they simply more robustbecause

they

were

widely

current n

the

spoken

vernacularof

the

current

cultural and

political

heartland?

Full-scale com-

parison

of entire

lexical

systems,

as

called for

by

Jiang

Shaoyi,

may

shed

further

ight

on the

interrelationships

between the

spoken

and

literary

sources

and

may

ulti-

mately

show

that

the standard

Mandarin

lexicon

as a

whole is

quite

old,

perhaps

predating

"Mandarin"

s we

have

defined it

here.

545



Journal

of


Society

120.4

(2000)

IV. SYNTAX

The

syntax

of the

literary

or written vernaculars has

been

the

subject

of

increasingly

intense

study during

the

pasthalf centurybothin China and elsewhere.7Heretoo,

however,

we

should remain

mindful

of

Jiang Shaoyu's

counsel

regarding

he difference between

shumian

gong-

tongyua

and

k6uyu' gongtongya.

Similar

thoughts

have

been

expressed by

others. For

example,

Norman

(1988:

111)

remarks

hat,

"in

no case can one

point

to a

particular

text

and

say

unequivocally

that

it

is written

in

a

purely

vernacular

style.

All

texts

represent

to

one

degree

or

another a

mixture

of

the

literary

and

spoken languages."

More

recently

Chen

(1999: 69-70)

has characterized ra-

ditional bdihua

6 5

(as

opposed

to

wenydn

-

`)

as

"closer to the

contemporary

vernacular"

nd

"an

approx-

imation of the

spoken

vernacular."There

seems to

be

consensus amongthese observers that traditional iterary

texts

are

at best

approximations

of

spoken

language.

And the

obvious

corollary

is that

they

must be

viewed

circumspectly

when

attempting

o unearthevidence

about

the

spoken

language

of

earlier

periods.

For this

reason

Chinese

language-teaching

materials of

the

sort men-

tioned

in the

preceding

sections are of

particular

nter-

est for

the

study

of

spoken

Guanhua

syntax.

The

various

dictionary

and

dialogue manuscripts

all contain direct

recordings

of

spoken

language.

But of even more

sig-

nificance for the

study

of

syntax

are the

analytical

and

teaching

grammars,

such as

those

of

Varo and

Premare,

andthe

newly

discovered

manuscript,

Principios

da

lingua

Sinica

Mandarina,"

of

Joseph

Monteyro

(1646-1720),

held

by

the

Royal Academy

of

Sciences

in

Lisbon. These

materials

can now be

studied

in

their own

right

as

exem-

plars

of

early spoken

Mandarinand

then

compared

with

the written

vernacular,

on one

hand,

and modern

standard

Mandarin,

on

the other.

Viewed in

toto,

the

grammar

of

the

spoken

Guanhua

materials does

not seem

sharply

different

from that of

moder

Mandarin,

once

allowance is

made for the

chro-

nological gap

between

the two. This

might suggest

that

the

differences between

old Guanhua and the

standard

language

of

today

have in the

main resulted

from a

linear

process of historical evolution. The following are three

illustrative

examples,

with modern

Mandarinromaniza-

tions and

Chinese

characters

added

(except

in

the

case

of

Pr6mare,

wherecharacters re

already

present

n the

origi-

nal).

English

versions

are direct

translations

of

the ori-

7

For

extensive

ibliographical

eferenceso these

see,

forex-

ample,Jiang

1989:

ch.

4)

and

Sun

(1996).

Cf.

also the

biblio-

graphical

ectionsof Norman

1988)

and

Chen

1999).

ginal Spanish

and Latin

renderings,

rather

than of

the

Chinese.

Varo

(1703: 2):

El que quiesieresubir a el cielo, le conviene obrar a vir-

tud,

y

de

no,

segino

no lo

conseguira.

[He

who

wishes

to ascend to heaven must

practice

virtue,

and

if he

does

not

do

so,

surely

he will not succeed

in

it.]

Tan fan

jin

iao

xing

t'ien,

kai

tang goei

xen,

jo

po

goei

xen,

chui

en

p6

hooi

xing

t'ien.

Dan fan

r6n

yao

sheng

tian,

gai dang

wei

shan,

rub bu

wei

shan,

zi ran bh hui

sheng

tian.

Basilio Brollo

de

Glemona:

Confesionario

(Varo

1703:

76,

appendix):

1. Furatus ne es

aliquid

alienius?

[Did

you

steal

some-

thing of someone else's?]

N'i t'eu

leao

jin

tie

vue kien

mb?

Ni t6u

le ren de

wh

jian

ma

2.

Hoc

aliquid quanti

valet?

[How

much

is

the

thing

which

you

stole

worth?]

Che

k6

vue

kien che

to

xao

in

chu?

Zhe

ge

wh

jian

zhi duo shao

yin

zi

3.

Quae

post postremam

confesionem furatus

es,

simul

sumpta

quanti

valent?

How

much

s the

total

value

of

thethingsyouhave stolen since yourlastconfession?]

N'i

kao

kiai

heu

t'eu

tie

tuing

i,

king

che

t6 xao

in

chu?

Ni

gao jie

hbu

t6u

de

dong

xi

gbng

zhi duo shao

yin

zi

Premare

(1893:

46):

Utinam

possem

illius

cor

jecurque

avellere,

et

dare

cani-

bus ad vorandum

Would

hat I

might

tear

out his

heart

and liver and

give

them

to be

devoured

by

the

dogs ]

Ngb

hen

pou

te oua

t'chout'a

ti sin

kan,

pa

ii

keou k'i.

W6

hen

b'u

de

wa

chi

ta

de

xin

gan, pa

yui

g6u

chi.

WfRTN4

fflj9f

ii mU

One does not detect in these samplesa wholesale shift

of

language

base

comparable

to that

which

occurred

in

the

area

of

phonology.

However,

as was the

case with

lex-

icon,

if

particular

grammatical

elements

or

features

are

examined,

a

more

complex picture

emerges.

Let us

now

consider

several

such

cases.

1.

Gender

markers for

animals. In

modern

standard

Mandarin

and in

northChinese

dialects

generally

the

gen-

der

markers for domestic

animals,

gong

5'

"male" and

546



COBLIN:A

Brief

History

of

Mandarin

mu

f-

"female,"

are

prefixed, e.g.,

gongniu

/X4

"bull,"

muniu

f-t

"cow."

In the

Guanhua

sources the

markers

are

usually

suffixed,

and

the form for the

male is often

gu

E

rather han

gong,

e.g., gougu

nJnt

"male

dog,"

goumu

Ja

"bitch";

igong

16

"cock,"

ima

i

"hen."

This

configuration

s

typical

of the

central and southern

dia-

lects of Norman's

nomenclature

1988).

It has been

com-

pletely

replaced

by

the northern

pattern

in

the

modern

standard

koine.

2.

Classifiers or

measure words.

Certain

measure

words in

the

Guanhuh materials

differ from

those

used

in

modern

standard

Mandarin and

standard

Pekingese

Mandarinof the

mid-1800s. This can

be

determined

by

comparing

full

lists of

the two sets

as

given

in

Varo

(1703: 72-73;

and

passim

in

the

"Vocabulario"),

Edkins

(1864:

ch.

5),

and

Chao and

Yang

(1962:

283-86).

For

example,

the

present

day

and


Pe-

king Mandarinclassifier for mountains and hills is zub

IT.

Varo in

such

cases

consistently

uses

t6u

i,

a

word

cited as a

classifier

for a

range

of

domestic

animals

by

Edkins and more

specifically by

Chao

and

Yang

for

cat-

tle.

Wade

(1867:

pt.

III,

p.

17)

gives

ge

{1

as

the

classifier

for

wan

l

"bowl,"

and

this

usage

is still

current n

stan-

dard

Mandarin

oday.

Varo on

the other

hand

gives

kuai

5,

which

is

used

today

as a

classifier n

the

standard

ang-

uage

but

is not

applied

to

bowls. In

cases

of this

type,

what are

probably

ndigenous

Pekingese

forms

have

been

substituted

for

the old

Guanhua

classifiers.

3.

The

inclusive

pronoun

zd(men)

[nff

"we."

This

word is

attested n

Sbng

and

Yuan texts

and

is

mentioned

in all the nineteenth-centurygrammars of Pekingese.

Modern

Chinese

dictionaries

today

list it

as

a

standard

form.

It

is,

however,

totally

unknown n

the

Guanhua

ma-

terials

until

one

reaches

Morrison.He

gives

it

but

then re-

marks:

"This

word is

confined

to

the

northern

people."

It

is

therefore

probably

a

nineteenth-century

contribution

of

north

Chinese to

the

standard

Mandarin

pronominal

system.

4.

The

interrogative

adverb

zem(me)

1-

"how."

Modern

standard

zem(me)

is

widely

thought

to

be

a

reflex of

an

earlier

form,

zub

m6

ftI,

already

found in

Sbng-time

vernacular

exts. It

has

a

literary

reading

zen

(me)

but is

normallypronouncedem(me)

n

actual

speech.

It

is well

attested

n

the

nineteenth-century

ekingese

Man-

darin

handbooks.In

the

Guanhua

ources

the

comparable

form

is

tseng

(m6)

[=

Mod.

zeng

(mo)].

Premare

writes

it

as

,EV,

but the

first

syllable

is

never

spelled

either

tsen

or

tsem in

any

of

the

Guanhua

materials.

Nor can

a

Guanhua

seng

be

regularly

derived

from

an

earlier

-n or

-m

final

syllable

in

the

sound

system

of

this

language.

Now,

in

Tang

times

there

was

another

word,

written

zheng

-,

which

also

meant

"how."

Wang

(1958,

II:

294)

considers

this to

be

cognate

to

later

~,~,

while

Lu

(1985: 336)

argues

against

this

view. In

this

connection,

we

should note

that

-

is

regularly

spelled

tseng

in the

Guanhua

sources,

a

reading

which

differs

from

that of

Guanhua

tseng

,

only by

tone.

One

wonders if

there

could

be an

historical

connection

between the

two. In

any

case,

by

about 1860

the

Guanhua

word

tseng

(mo)

had

already

been

replaced

in the

standard

koine

by

zem(me),

which

was also

the

Pekingese

dialect

form

for

"how" in

that

period

(Stent

1877:

568).

5. The

perfective

negative.

In the

Guanhua

materials,

in

addition to

certain

rarer

and

clearly

literary expres-

sions,

there

is for

this

construction

apparent

reedom

of

choice

between

three

equally

current

orms,

wei

ceng

7

i,

bi

ceng

T^f1,

and

meiyou

r

.

Edkins

(1864:

196)

also

reports

all

three of

these

in the

standard

Mandarinof

his

time. The

first

two are

today

associated

with the

cen-

traldialects, whereasthe third,which is identical in form

with

the

existential

negative,

is a

typically

northern

onfig-

uration. It

is

only

this

last

expression

which

has

been re-

tained

in the

moder standard

koine.

This

choice

seems

to

reflect

northern

nfluence.

6.

Agent

markers

n

passivization.

Agents

of

passive-

like verbs

are

marked

by

the

word bei

a in

the

Guanhua

materials.In

this

role

Premare

also uses

chi

[t,

a

particle

found

in

Ming

and

Qing

novels

(Jiang

1994:

229).

Varo

does not

use

this chi at

all.

Moder standard

Mandarin

employs

the

bei

passivizer

in

the

same

way

that

Guanhua

did. But

in

addition it

also

uses the

causative

words

jiao

n1

-

t

and

rang

a

in this role. Jiao

t

as

a

passivizer

is in fact quite old,

occurring

already

in

Tang

texts. The

use

of the

graph

l-

to

write it

began

in

Qing

times

(Ota

1958

[1987]:

232).

It is

common in

the

nineteenth-

century

Pekingist

materials

see,

e.g.,

Wade

1867:

pt.

VIII,

pp.

256-57).

Edkins

(1864:

126)

specifically

identifies it

as

a

Pekingese

form.

Rang

is

not

used as a

passivizer

in

these

works.

The

use of

jiao

as an

agent

marker n

mod-

ern

standard

Mandarin

appears

o

derive

from

Pekingese,

for

it is

not

inherited

from

Guanhua.

7. The

durativesuffix

-zhe

i.

Durative

-zhe

(also

pro-

nounced

-zhi)

was

known

to

the

nineteenth-century ram-

mariansof

Peking

Mandarin,

who

were

wont to

call it a

"participial" lement. They usually romanized it as cho.

Wade

(1867)

records

variant

readings,

cho and

che,

but

he

uses

only

cho in

his

examples.

Edkins

(1864:

192)

gives

the

pronunciations

choh

and

chi

(=

moder

stan-

dard

zhi)

for it.

The

latter

he

says

is

derived

from

"the

colloquial

of

Shantung."

He

further

remarks,

"This

is a

colloquialism

not

authorized

by

books,

nor

is it

correct

mandarin.

Perhaps

t

is a

corruption

rom

;

choh,

which

is

the form

used

by

correct

speakers."

The

older

Guanhua

word

spelled

cho

X has

a numberof

functions

as a

verbal

547



Journal

of


Society

120.4

(2000)

suffix,

but durativeorcontinuative

aspect

is

not

explicitly

identified

as one of

them

in

the

grammars.

Nonetheless,

there

are

examples

in the materialwhich are

suspiciously

reminiscent of

modem

Mandarin

-zhe.

For

example,

in

Varo's

"Vocabulario"

we

find:

Dormir e lado

[to

sleep

on one's

ide].

che'

ch6

xuy

Estar n

pie

[to

be

standing].

han

ch6

Mt.

Estar entado

to

be

seated,

itting].qh6

chio

=.:.

The

process

of

grammaticalization

hrough

which the

du-

rative sense

of

-zhe

evolved

out of earlier full verbs was

exceedingly

subtle and

complex

(cf.,

Mei

1989;

Chen

1995;

Sun

1998),

and

it is

possible

that the

durative

markerwas

in fact

already present

in

Guanhua

but

was

not

fully

understood

by

Varo and Pr6mare.On the other

hand, if they were correctin not findingit there,then we

may suspect

that it entered

nineteenth-century

Mandarin

from

Pekingese.

8.

The sentential

particle

le

T.

It is

widely

believed

that the verbal suffix-le is a reducedform of the verb

liao

7

"to finish."

On

the other

hand,

Y. R.

Chao

(1968: 246)

suggested

that

sentence-final

e,

a

perfect particlemarking

currently

elevant

state,

is in

fact a weakened form of final

ldi

5,

as first ound

in texts of

the

Sbng

and

Yuan

periods.

This

hypothesis

has

garnered

ome later

support e.g.,

Sun

1996:

ch.

4,

with references to

earlier

studies).

However,

alternate heories have also been

suggested,

such as

that

of Lif

(1985),

who

argues

on the

basis

of

parallels

in

Qingjian Mi#, a Shanxi Rl dialect, that sententialle is

a fusion of earlier

e

ye'

7tt.

These theories

have

in

com-

mon the view that sentential

e

is not

directly,

or in

Chao's

case even

indirectly,

derived

from earlier lido.

The

following

are

examples

of

sentential le from our

Guanhua

materials:

Varo

(1703:

57):

t'a

xi

Petelo a tie

leao

fft;l

Petelo

Tf

T

Aquel

ue

aporreado

e Pedro.

That

ne was

beaten

by

Peter.]

de Glemona:

Confesionario

(Varo

1703:

2a,

appendix):

nl

j6

p6 k'eng

h6

m6,

9hi6u

p6

k'b

vuang

'ien

chu

xe ni

tie

chhui

eao

Si tu non

vis

inimico

reconciliari,

on

potes sperare

Deum

tibi tua

peccata

dimissurum.

If

you

are not

willing

o be

reconciledwith

your

nemy, ou

cannot

expect

hatGod

will

forgive

you your

sins.]

Premare

(1893: 72):

tchi

p'a

ni ki6n eao

kouei eao

Lemures,

redo,vides;

e

crois

que

tu reves

[(Latin)

think ouareseeingghosts./ French)thinkyouare

dreaming.]

In all such

cases,

sentential

le is

spelled

leao

[= liao]

in

the Guanhua ources.

Parallelsfor this

reading

of the

par-

ticle are found in certain conservative

Jiang-Huai

dia-

lects. For

example,

in

the Lishan

i

[II

dialect of

Hiubi

i

jb

we find

(Chao

et al. 1948:

896):

0o53

mn

tciau44 iau55

iau424

tau1I

tii53

tien3

to55

S44

niau

"Nowwe need

o hit the books

again

ora

couple

of

hours."

Edkins (1864) gave for 7 the reading liao in all posi-

tions,

with no furthercomment. But Wade

(1867:

pt.

III,

p.

7)

has more to

say regarding

sentential

le. He

remarks,

"at the end of a clause

[it is]

very

often a mere

expletive,

and then

pronounced

a,

or lo."

By

the

beginning

of the

twentieth

century

Giles

(1901)

gave only

[la]

as the

pronunciation

of both verbal and sentential

le. It would

appear,

then,

that

in

the


he

pro-

nunciations liao and

le

for

the final

particle

were in

com-

petition

in

standard

Pekingese

Mandarin. How are

we

to

interpret

this? One

possibility

is that Chao

and

Lif

were

simply wrong

and

that the sentential

particle

was

originally

derived from

liao "to

finish,"

whose

pronunci-

ation was reduced to le

during

the nineteenth

century.

But

there

is

another,

and

perhaps preferable,

interpretation.

Chao and Lif

may

have been

right

that

in

certain

parts

of China

the sentential

particle

arose in

such a

way

as

to

yield

le

as

the actual form in

regional

vernaculars

of

the

north,

including

that of

Peking. Early

nineteenth-

century

standard

Pekingese

Mandarin

as

opposed

to the

spoken

dialect of

the

city)

may

have

continued the

use

of

the

Guanhua

orm

lido,

itself

perhaps

based on

Jiang-

Huii

usage.

But

by

mid-century

the northern

vernacular

form

le

may

have come into

competition

with this lido

in

the

standard

speech

of

Peking, ultimately

unseating

it

as the preferred orm by around 1900. If this scenario is

valid,

then

what we

see here is a shift

of

grammatical

base from

old

Guanhua to the

vernacular

usage

of the

north.

9. Sentence

final ba

m

-

nE.

This

particle

is

common

in

modern

standard

Mandarin,

where it

conveys

various

imperative,

suggestive,

and

advisative nuances.

It is at-

tested in

vernacular exts

by

at least

the Yuan

period

and

is

well-known

to the


rammari-

ans

of

Peking

Mandarin. t

does not occur

at all in

the old

548



COBLIN:

Brief

History of

Mandarin

Guanhua

materials. Premare

does list a final

particle

bo

which

is

similar

to ba

in certain

ways,

e.g., (p.

77):

k'b

poil

che

po

an-non ta est?[Isn'tt so?]

This

word

bo,

which

appears

n

early

vernacular exts

in

the

written form

[&,

is considered

by

Ota

(1958 [1987]:

340)

to

be

etymologically

related to modern ba. Be

that

as it

may,

it seems

clear

that the additionof ba itself

to

the

grammar

of

the standard

koin6 coincides with

the

emergence

of

Peking-based

standard Mandarin in

the

nineteenth

century.

The

Ming-Qing

koine of

Varo,

Pre-

mare,

etc.,

did not have

it.

10. The sentential

interrogative

ma Rn.

According

to

Ota

(1958

[1987]:

334)

the use of the

graph

RI

to

repre-

sent a final

interrogativeparticle

first

appears

n

texts of

the

Qing period.

His

examples

for it come from the

Hongl6umeng.

Before

this time the

graph

1

was com-

monly

used

for a word which functioned ike ma

UP

n

the

old vernacular exts.

In the

Guanhua

materials ma is not

used at all.

Instead,

there is a final

interrogativeparticle,

spelled

mb

(=

moder

m6),

which behaves like

moder

Mandarinma. Pr6mare

writes this mb with the character

)V.

A final

interrogativehaving

this

phonetic shape

(i.e.,

initial

m- with

a

mid back rounded

vowel)

occurs

in a num-

ber of

moder

Jiang-Huai

dialects.

Among

the nineteenth-

century

textbook

compilers,

Edkins

(1864)

usually

spells

the

sentential

interrogative

as mo and writes it as

S.

However,he occasionallyuses the spellingma, which he

says

(1864:

218)

is

"frequently

heard

n

colloquial

usage"

and

may

also be written

RIj.

Wade

gives

the variant

pro-

nunciationsmo and

ma,

with

alternate

writings

)

and

nj

for

each

spoken

variant.It is

possible

that ma was the

true

northern or local

Pekingese particle,

while mo

was a

carry-over

rom earlier

Guanhua.Ma

has,

of

course,

won

out in modern

standardMandarin.

In

summary,

his brief

survey

of

selected

grammatical

features

uggests parallels

with

the

development

of the lex-

icon. To

wit,

while the bulk

of the

pre-nineteenth-century

Guanhua

syntactic

system may

indeed have

passed

over

into late Qing standardMandarin, t seems probablethat

a number of

basic,

high-frequency

functors in

the new

koin6

were derived from the

Pekingese

dialect,

or at

least

from

northern

dialects

generally.

Detailed

comparative

studies are needed

before this

mattercan

be

fully

clarified.

V.

CONCLUSIONS

Let us now

summarize our

findings

regarding

the his-

tory

of

Mandarin.We

began

with the

intention

of

showing

that

"Mandarin,"

efined as the standard

Chinese koin6 of

Ming

and

Qing

times,

was

not,

as is often still

asserted,

the

dialect of

Peking.

But our

engagement

with this

ques-

tion

has led

us

beyond

it to further

considerations.

For

in

the

end it

would seem

that

Mandarin

was in fact

never

the

dialect of

any

particular

place.

Nor was it

really

a

"dia-

lect" at all. In its

earliest

stages

we

hypothesize

that t

was

a

language

with a

composite,

southerly

Central

Plains-

like

phonological

structure. This

system

progressively

converged

at

certain

points

with

that of

the

city

of

Nan-

king,

but it

was never

really

identical with the

Nankingese

system.

On

the

contrary,

it remained

"dialectally

ab-

stract."

Mandarin

exicon and

syntax may

have been

of

a

general literary

or

text-based

character,

rather than

regionally

dialectalin

any

real sense. Over

the

centuries,

lexicon and

syntax

remained

relatively

stable,

while the

pronunciation

shifted

dramatically

to

a

Pekingese-like

phonology in the mid-nineteenthcentury.Modernstan-

dard

Mandarin,

which

is in no sense

the

actual dialect

of the

city

of

Peking

(cf.

Hi

1987:

27-31;

Chen

1999:

37-41),

is the

direct descendant of this late nineteenth-

century

koine.

What we have

envisaged

here is rather different

from

the

expected history

of

a

"natural"

anguage

or

dialect,

and the reason for this

may

have

been that Mandarinwas

indeed a koin6 rather han a

regional

vernacular,

as such.

In

fact,

in traditional

imes it

may

not even have been the

native

language

of

very

many people,

but

rathera second

language

for

nearly everyone

who used

it.8 This

supposi-

tion then

leads to the

question

of how

such an

"unnatu-

ral" or second

language

was learned and transmitted.

About

this we have at

hand some

interesting

anecdotal

evidence. Y.

R. Chao

(1892-1982)

was

born near the end

of the

traditionalGuanhua

period.

His

description

of the

transmission

process

as he had

observed it was as fol-

lows: "Most

educated

persons

acquire

a Mandarin of

sorts either

by

'picking

it

up'

from

people

who

speak-or

have

learned to

speak-Mandarin,

or

merely by

adopting

the

vocabulary

of

Mandarin

novels like

the

Dream

of

the

Red

Chamberwithout

attemptingany adjustment

n

pro-

nunciation"

(1948:

7).

Some three

hundred

years

earlier

Varo had

remarked n

the

preface

to his

grammar

that,

just as aspiring Latinists should be thoroughly conver-

sant with

Cicero,

anyone

who would learn

to

speak

Man-

darin

well

"should be

exposed

to all those

[present

day]

Ciceros

who in

China are in

fact the books

they

call sido

8

Exceptions

robably

xisted n

newly

settledareas

uch as

the

southwest nd

northwestrontier

egions,

where

military

nd

colonial

varieties f the

koin6

couldhave

become he

primary

linguistic

media

used

by many peakers.

549



Journal

of

the American

Oriental

Society

120.4

(2000)

xue

/JJ\

['vernacularnovels']."

Fifty years

after

Varo,

Premare

(1893:

35)

was to

express

a similar view.

Thus,

it would seem

that vernacular

iterature ame to be both a

repository

of

Mandarin exicon and

syntax

and the vehi-

cle for

their transmission

during

much of the

language's

history. Regardless

of what native

dialect one

spoke,

for

correct Mandarin

usage

it was to sources such

as these

that one could

turn for

guidance.

This

intimate

relationship

between

spoken

Guanhua

and the broad

corpus

of written

vernacularor bdihua

lit-

erature eads to a

further consideration.

Previous

gram-

matical studies of these

texts have sometimes

focused

on

the

question

of

their dialectal

underpinnings,

even

attempting

to

determine

"which dialect"

they

represent.

But

our

findings

suggest

that,

to the extent

that these writ-

ings

reflect

spoken

Chinese,

they may

not be

directly

con-

nected with

dialects

per

se but

ratherwith varieties

of the

spoken koin6, Guanhua.At most, vernaculartexts may

contain

nothing

more dialectal

than occasional

intrusive

regionalisms,

like Varo's

xeu

tung

lt,

grafted

onto the

general

trunk of the

received

lexicon and

syntax.

In

the

end,

the full extent

to which

spoken

Guanhuaand

vernac-

ular

iterary

anguage

are

relatedremains o

be

determined

by

detailed

comparison

between source

materialssuch as

those mentioned

here and

the broad

corpus

of

vernacular

literary

texts.

The

transmission

process

for

Mandarin

phonology

is

less

clear than that for

lexicon and

syntax.

Throughout

he

life of

Ming-Qing

Mandarin

here were

traditional

rime

tables and

related

works which

dealt in

one

way

or

another

with Guanhua see Geng 1992), but these were the baili-

wick of

adepts

in

the

very

specialized

field of

traditional

phonology.

It

is

uncertain o

what extent

the

general

run of

educated

speakers

would

have

delved into

them. In

the

1730s

the

central

government

established

schools

for

Guanhua

pronunciation

n the

provinces

of

Fijian

and

Guangdong

Paderni 1988;

Geng

1992:

120,

n.

1;

Masini

1993:

4),

but

the

rest of

the

country

seems to

have been

left to its

own

resources.9For the

majority

of

Guanhua

9

What

ortof textbooks

were

used n

the

mid-Qing

Guanhuh

schools

remains

ninteresting uestion.A possiblerepresenta-

tive of

them

may

be

the

somewhat

ater

Zhengyin

Qieyun

htndn

users,

acquiring

correct

pronunciation

may

have

been a

rather

informal and

individual

matter,

as Chao's

obser-

vations

suggest.

This

might

explain why

a

large-scale

shift of the

sort observed

in the


Guanhuasound

system

was more

likely

to occur

in the

phonological sphere

thanin

the

textually

codified

areas

of

lexicon and

syntax.

In

closing,

the above

conclusions

lead us to

a more

general

reflectionon the

natureof

Chinese koin6s.

Ming-

Qing

Mandarin s

the traditional

koine

which lies

closest

to the

present

and

which we

are best able

to observe

in

detail.

For this

reason it

provides

a

suggestive

model

for

hypotheses

about

the natureof

even earlier

standard

an-

guages,

such as

those of the medieval

period,

concerning

which

we have less

direct

evidence. To

begin,

we

must

entertain the

possibility

that these

earlier standard

an-

guages

were

never,

within

the

period

of

imperial unity

at

least, the naturaldialects of particularplaces. Secondly

and

more

specifically,

we must

grapple

with the

likeli-

hood that

their

phonologies

were eclectic

and

composite

and that their

exicons were to some

extent text-based

and

therefore

unnaturally

onstrained

by

textual

norms.

And,

finally,

we must

question

whether koin6s

of this

type

could ever

have been ancestral

o

true,

spoken

dialects

of

later

periods,

as traditional

philologists

such as

Bernhard

Karlgren

have sometimes

suggested,

and

whether

suc-

cessive

koines fell

into direct

lines of

historical

filiation,

of the "Old

Chinese >

"Middle Chinese"

> "Modern

Chinese"

variety,

as has hitherto

often been assumed

by

Chinese

historical

linguists.

The

study

of

Mandarin,

he

Ming-Qing

koin6, is

important

n its own

right

as a

spe-

cialty

within

Chinese historical

linguistics.

But

beyond

that it

may

serve as a

laboratory

or the

study

of

tradi-

tional Chinese koin6s

throughout

history.

-E'tEJffi

hti

(Canton,

860)

of Sha

Yizun

y?

i4.This

work

is in facta collection

f

tabularly

rranged

omophone

ists.

One

can

magine

hat

he

teaching echnique

was to

impart

rally

o

the students

he

correct

pronunciation

f

each

ist

and

thenre-

quire

hem

o

practice

he

said

reading

nd

memorize ll

charac-

ters in the list.

Twomoresuch

textbooks,

ot

available o

me,

havebeenmentionedyPaderni1988:262,n.20).

550



COBLIN:

A

Brief History of Mandarin51

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