DONG, Tonghe 董同龢.

Shang gu yin yun biao kao 上古音韵表稿 [A Tentative Chart of Archaic Chinese Phonology].

x, 188 pp. Large 4to, orig. printed wrappers, stitched as issued in Western style. Lizhuang, Sichuan: Guo li zhong yang yan jiu yuan Li shi yu yan yan jiu suo, 1944.

First edition of this extremely useful and groundbreaking work, printed lithographically from the author’s manuscript.

The reconstruction of ancient or “archaic” Chinese—roughly the language of the Shijing 詩經 [Poetry Classic]—occupied a central place in Chinese historical linguistics at least from the 1930s onward. Early attempts were made by Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren. His reconstructions were later taken further by other scholars, many of whom were Chinese.

In this work, Dong proposed certain changes to Bernhard Karlgren’s reconstruction of Old Chinese; Dong’s book served “as a bridge between Karlgren’s Grammata Serica (1940) and later works such as Yakhontov (1960) and Li Fang-kuei (1971)” (Sybesma, ed., Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics).

Dong (1911-63), made lasting contributions to old Chinese phonology and pioneered the comparative study of Min dialects.

Fine copy, preserved in a hantao.

References

Sybesma, Rint et al., eds. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. Leiden: Brill, 2017.