In this study I explored the change of the Alveolar plosive initials and Alveolar sibilant affricate & fricative initials form Old Chinese to Middle Chinese. Findings can be summarized in the following five points.
1. There were two language groups...
In this study I explored the change of the Alveolar plosive initials and Alveolar sibilant affricate & fricative initials form Old Chinese to Middle Chinese. Findings can be summarized in the following five points.
1. There were two language groups in Old Chinese. The first group distinguished aspirated and tenuis initials. We call it Language “A”. The second group distinguished voiced and voiceless sounds, We call it Language “B”. It is thought that in Old Chinese, Language “A” was more influential than “B”. “A” was distributed widely in the north whereas “B” was in the south. Middle Chinese distinguished not only aspirated and tenuis sounds but also voiced and voiceless sounds, which was produced after the language contact between “A” and “B”.
2. Alveolar plosive initials and Alveolar sibilant affricate & fricative initials existed separately in Old Chinese. Postalveolar plosive initials and Alveolo-palatal affricate & fricative initials in Middle Chinese were derived from Alveolar plosive initials in Old Chinese and Postalveolar affricate & fricative initials in Middle Chinese were derived from Alveolar sibilant affricate & fricative initials in Old Chinese. The Cr-type consonant cluster was basically possible in Old Chinese. Alveolo-palatal affricate & fricative initials in Middle Chinese had two different sources form Old Chinese. One was form Tri-type, which we call Group “α” and the other one was from Ti-type, which we call Group “β”. After the disappearance of [r] of Group “α”, Group “α” and Group “β” underwent the palatalization during Northern and Southern Dynasties, and merged to Alveolo-palatal affricate & fricative initials.
3. The separation of Postalveolar plosive initials from Alveolar plosive initials happened in some areas of the Western Jin Dynasty. However, the separation had not occurred in some areas in the Northern and Southern Dynasties.
4. In Old Chinese, people who used Language “B” did not distinguish between Alveolar fricative and Sibilant affricate consonants.
5. Tongue-up sounds and Tooth-up sounds were Postalveolar initials in the Qie-yun system.