As we know, Shao Yong(1011~1077) was a peculiar philosopher of Song time of China, and he is often called the originator of sang-su(象數) school. He specially asserted that all the natural world including the sounds of the language can be explained ...
As we know, Shao Yong(1011~1077) was a peculiar philosopher of Song time of China, and he is often called the originator of sang-su(象數) school. He specially asserted that all the natural world including the sounds of the language can be explained by mathematical principles. And he also established the unique terms in the Chinese historical phonetics. For example, he defined the initial(聲母) as the sound of earth, and the final(韻母) as the sound of heaven. And he assumed by chorus of initials and finals, infinite number of sounds of human can be made. And finally he made a kind of sound table of initials and finals by selecting the actually used Chinese characters in Song period, i.e. 11th century. If we observe the phonetic aspect represented in the sound table, and compare them with the phonetic system of ancient Chinese, we can assume the following differences. 1. First in the Initial classes, ① voiced sounds of explosives, affricates and fricatives were changed by voiceless feature(ex. b, d, g>p, t, k). ② supradental sound of [t] classes were palatilzed. ③ labio-dentals of [f, f, v] were emerged into [f], and [n, n] also changed into a phoneme [n]. 2. Second in the Final classes, ① the phonetic distinctive features of division of I (ex. back low vowel α), II (front low vowel a) and III (which has medial j), IV(medial i) were obviously disappeared. 3. Third in the entering tone(入聲) system, the ending of -p maintained at that time, but -t, -k were disappeared. Therefore observing the above sound tables, we expect that the reconstruction of the oral sound system of the Luoyang(洛陽) dialect of 11th century would be possible.