From:

 jerry  norman  <jerryn40@gmail.com>  

Date:  Monday,  June  18,  2012  at  1:35  PM  
To:  Weldon  South  Coblin  <south-­‐coblin@uiowa.edu>,  Axel  Schuessler  
<xsch1678@wavecable.com>  
Subject:  Karlgrenianism  
 
Nanlin,  Axel:  
 
I  often  entertain  myself  with  what  I  might  call  counter-­‐thinking.    Suppose  
that  everything  we  believe  about  something  is  wrong.    Ordinarily  this  
entertaining  process  ends  in  failure  and  at  other  times  I  have  a  feeling  that  I  
have  just  approached  the  threshold  of  something  but  can't  quite  see  my  
way  forward.    This  brings  me  today  to  the  interesting  case  of  Bernhard  
Karlgen  (hereafter  K).  
 
The  curious  thing  is  that  K  began  his  academic  activities  with  Slavic  studies  
and  Swedish  dialectology.    In  the  latter  case  he  must  have  tried  to  elicit  the  
peculiarities  of  local  Swedish  dialects,  perhaps  in  order  to  draw  isoglosses  
or  dialect  maps.    Then  he  studied  Chinese,  and  like  almost  every  Westerner  
at  that  time,  he  became  fascinated  with  the  writing  system;  he  became  
aware  of  earlier  work  on  phonology  (the  Ching  philologists,  the  Sonq  
rimetable  compilers,  Schaank,  Volpicelli,  Pelliot).        His  passion  then  turned  
to  what  he  called  le  Chinois  ancien,  a  reconstruction  of  what  he  thought  
was  a  Tarng  time  koine.    Henceforth,  he  was  able  to  dismiss  further  dialect  
survey  work  if  it  did  not  somehow  feed  into  his  project  of  le  Chinois  
ancien.    He  declared  rather  imperiously  that  Chinese  dialectal  phonological  
categories  could  be  accounted  for  by  the  reconstructed  categories  of  le  
Chinois  ancien.    He  thought  that  this  possibly  wasn't  true  of  the  Min  dialects  
but  he  decided  early  on  not  to  pursue  that  line  of  investigation.      
 
If  we  look  at  his  own  practice  of  Chinese  dialectology,  we  see  immediately  
that  it  had  a  peculiar  character;  he  was  not  interested  in  the  actual  lexicon  
of  local  dialects  but  only  in  the  way  people  read  characters.    This  a  
reflection  of  the  tendency  of  both  Chinese  and  foreign  scholars  to  view  
Chinese  as  identical  to  the  characters.    As  stated  above,  he  had  dismissed  
the  relevance  of  genuine  dialect  data  early  on.    I  think  in  a  way  this  explains  
why  he  put  so  much  value  on  the  Sinoxenic  systems:    they  were  purely  
reading  systems  and  there  were  no  vernacular  languages  that  they  
matched.    Grootaers  tried  to  point  out  this  deficiency  but  was  by  and  large  
ignored.    The  essence  of  the  Karlgrenian  approach  then  is  to  take  the  
Chinese  writing  system  as  the  only  "real"  Chinese,  the  only  type  amenable  
to  scientific  study.    This  has  to  be  inferred  from  what  he  did  since  I  don't  
think  he  was  ever  very  explicit  about  it.    (Maybe  I'm  wrong  on  this.)  
 
In  China  Luo  Charngpeir,  Y.R.  Chao  and  Li  Fang-­‐kuei  translated  his  
Phonologie,  thus  setting  the  stage  for  decades  of  study  in  the  Karlgrenian  
spirit.    We  see  this  in  the  early  dialect  surveys  like  the  Hwubeei  survey;  
their  main  component  was  a  list  of  characters  and  a  matching  of  these  
forms  with  the  categories  of  the  rimebooks  and  rimetables.    It  is  to  the  
credit  of  these  survey  compilers  that  in  most  cases  they  did  include  data  on  
a  number  of  basic  dialect  components  such  as  pronouns  and  
demonstratives  and  some  very  basic  vocabulary.    But  in  true  Karlgrenian  
spirit,  almost  the  only  goal  of  Chinese  historical  phonology  became  
questions  of  reconstruction  and  how  various  dialects  reflected  the  
categories  thus  reconstructed.    Dialect  data  (overwhelmingly  comprised  of  
lists  of  character  readings)  became  ancillary  to  the  reconstruction  of  le  
Chinois  ancien  or  Middle  Chinese.    From  the  30s  of  the  last  century  down  to  
the  beginning  of  the  present  century  precious  little  real  dialectology  was  
done.    At  some  point,  linguists  like  Lii  Rong  and  Ding  Shengshuh  more  or  
less  abandoned  reconstruction  and  went  directly  to  an  abstract  system  
based  on  faanchieh  and  deengyunnshyue.    As  for  Middle  Chinese  (le  Chinois  
ancien)  perhaps  Pulleyblank  was  the  last  real  reconstructionist.  
 
But  K  convinced  himself  that  not  only  could  one  reconstruct  the  Tarng  
koine,  it  was  also  possible  to  reconstruct  a  much  older  stage  of  Chinese  
based  on  ancient  rimes  and  character  structure.    His  "reconstruction"  was  
very  different  from  his  earlier  endeavors  since  the  Archaic  (Old)  Chinese  
material  was  not  nearly  so  focused  as  that  for  le  Chinois  ancien.  
What  we  know  of  character  structure  actually  comes  from  the  Hann  
dynasty  and  it  is  possible  that  even  the  rimed  texts  underwent  major  re-­‐
editing  at  the  same  period.    So  it  is  questionable  that  the  so-­‐called  Old  
Chinese  (OC)  systems  can  be  dated  reasonably.    About  all  we  can  say  
realistically  is  that  such  systems  predate  the  systems  based  on  the  
Chiehyunn.    Moreover,  it  cannot  be  demonstrated  that  the  different  data  
on  which  OC  systems  are  based  were  even  contemporaneous.      
 
I  think  there  is  a  real  sense  in  which  the  reconstruction  of  earlier  stages  of  
Chinese  have  reached  a  dead-­‐end.    Although  people  continue  to  
reconstruct  OC  schemes,  these  become  ever  more  speculative  and  divorced  
from  actual  history.    I  suspect  that  even  these  endeavors  will  die  out  in  
time.    So  where  do  we  go  from  here?    Let's  go  back  to  the  study  of  dialects  
before  they  all  die  out.    Compared  to  K's  time,  we  now  have  an  immense  
wealth  of  new  data  on  dialects,  yet  without  a  new  method  to  study  it,  it  
mostly  remains  unexploited  for  historical  study.    Major  questions  like  "how  
did  the  present  configuration  of  the  Chinese  dialect  map  come  about?"  are  
not  really  addressed.    So  K's  ghost  remains  hovering  over  the  whole  field.  
 
An  even  broader  question  is,  to  what  extent  does  our  conventional  
approach  to  historical  comparison  correspond  to  reality?    Do  related  
languages  necessarily  go  back  to  some  unitary  protolanguage  or  is  that  
merely  a  gross  simplification  of  matters  that  we  don't  really  
understand?    Here  I  am  perplexed.      
 
Beeimen