Rhyme Dictionaries in Reconstruction

Although Chinese did not have alphabetic writing, we can still use Chinese written records to help us in the reconstruction of older stages of pronunciation. But the evidence is different in nature from dialectal pronunciation and Chinese loan words in foreign languages. Dialectal and foreign evidence may tell us how a word once sounded, but written evidence only provides us with relational information such as “A is the same as B in some way”. Such relational evidence is still useful however. If we know what B is like but do not know what A is like, then from such evidence we can find out what A is like by inference. Rhyme groups and Fanqie spelling, found in rhyme dictionaries, both contain such relational information.

Format of rhyme dictionaries

Rhyme dictionaries were among the first Chinese dictionaries compiled, for the purpose of providing guidance in the matter of poetic rhymes. But they can also help us with our reconstruction tasks. The format of these dictionaries is like this. Typically, a rhyme dictionary comes in several volumes, each volume listing words with the same tone. Therefore, from the number of volumes, we can find out the number of tones. Then, within a volume, the characters are grouped according to rhymes, i.e., each group lists words sharing the same rhyme. We not only know from this arrangement which characters rhyme with which, but also how many distinct rhymes groups there were. Finally, for each character entry, a fanqie spelling is provided to indicate the pronunciation.

The use of Rhyme Groups

The rhyme groups can be used in reconstruction in the following fashion: if two characters are not pronounced the same in modern Chinese, but they belong to the same rhyme group as indicated in rhyme dictionaries, then we can assume that the two characters must have been identical in the rime part of the syllable (final). For example, 新xīn and 心xīn in modern Mandarin are pronounced the same way, but they did not belong to the same rhyme group. Therefore, their rimes (final) must have been different.

Use of Fanqie spelling

Fanqie反切is a revolutionary step in the description of the Chinese language. Before the fanqie method was used, the pronunciation of an unknown character had to be indicated with that of another character (a homophone) in the form of: “This character is read as that character (音同yīntóng).” The problem with this scheme is obvious. What if you don’t know the pronunciation of the character used to gloss the pronunciation in the first place? What if you can’t find a character that has the exact pronunciation and furthermore is known by everybody? Another way to indicate pronunciation is to use a character that has a similar pronunciation (读若dúruò). This is even worse because of its inaccuracy.

Why didn’t they use letters to spell the pronunciation, in something like the pinyin system? Well, at that time, the idea of a romanization system using vowels and consonant letters wasn’t around in China. What’s more, the idea that a syllable can be broken down into a series of sounds wasn’t even around. Although we now take the analyzability of a syllable for granted and may even think of taking the syllable as a whole as odd, breaking down the syllable into smaller units is not as natural as it seems. After all, we don’t speak nor hear language in sub-syllabic components. It wasn’t until the Chinese came into contact with the Indian classical language of Sanskrit through the introduction of Buddhism that people started to break down the syllable. The invention of the Fanqie method was the beginning.

How is fanqie used? It may be useful to think of rhyming and alliteration, concepts that you may have learned in your literature classes. Rhyming (押韵, 叠韵) means having the same finals. The final is the syllable minus the initial consonant, including the tone in the case of Chinese. Alliteration (双声) means having the same initials. The initial is the initial consonant of a syllable. Some examples in English and Chinese are given below:

English syllables that rhyme: light, bright, kite, site,

Chinese syllables that rhyme: 坏huài, 块kuài, 帅shuài, 踹chuài

English syllables that alliterate: fan, fame, five, fought,

Chinese syllables that alliterate: 赛 sài, 算 suàn, 岁 suì, 桑 àng,

Fanqie makes use of both rhyming and alliteration in indicating the pronunciation of a character. Two characters of known pronunciation are used, one rhyming with the character to be glossed and the other alliterating with the same character:

1^st fanqie character has same initial as the character glossed (alliteration)

2^nd fanqie character has same final + tone as the character glossed (rhyming)

Given below are four characters and their possible fanqie spellings:

Characters to be glossed	Fanqie characters	How fanqie indicated pronunciation
豁huō	好说hǎo shuō	H(ǎo sh)uō
段duàn	打乱dà luàn	D(à l)uàn
民mín	马林mǎ lín	M(ǎ l)ín
特tè	他贺tā hè	T(ā h)è

The use of fanqie spelling as evidence in reconstruction is obvious: if two characters share the same first character in their fanqie spelling, then the initial consonant of the two characters must have been the same; on the other hand, if two characters share the same last character in their fanqie spelling, then the final of the two characters must have been the same.

Rhyme groups and fanqie spelling are different in the kind of evidence they provide. While fanqie spellings can provide information about both the initial consonant and the rime, rhyme groups can only tell us about whether two characters have the same rime. It is indeed nice that rhyme dictionaries both rhyme groups and fanqie spelling are provided.