A Brief History of Mandarin Author A BRIEF HISTORY OF MANDARIN

A Brief History of MandarinAuthor(s): W. South CoblinReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 120, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 2000), pp. 537-552Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/606615 .

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF MANDARIN

W. SOUTH COBLIN

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

The received view of standard Mandarin is that it has been Pekingese-based for at least six hundred

years. Recent research, little known outside a small circle of specialists, has revealed that this view is flawed and that for most of its history this standard language had little to do with Pekingese. The

present paper introduces these new developments to the academic community at large.

I. INTRODUCTION

WHEN USED IN REFERENCE TO language, the term "Man- darin" has several distinct senses. Its first and oldest ap- plication was to the universal standard language or koine spoken by officials and educated people in traditional China during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644- 1912) dynasties. In this use it parallels and may in fact be modeled on early southern European missionary expressions, such as la lengua mandarina, falla midarin, etc., which in turn directly render the native Chinese term guanhua ~'t ("the language of the officials, or manda-

rins"), a compound first attested in mid-Ming times. More recently, historical linguists have extended the venue of the word "Mandarin" back to the Yudn period (1260- 1368); they refer to the putative standard language of that time as "Old Mandarin" (in Chinese, usually zdoqi guanhua -. ̂ a?). Concurrently, dialectologists and comparative linguists use "Mandarin" in reference to the entire family of northern or northern-like Chinese speech forms which in modern Chinese are called beifang fangydn jd;2j;) or guanhua fangydn f ;Tit . And finally, "Mandarin," when not otherwise qualified, is often taken today as a designation for modern standard Chinese, the language now called guoyu I Wr, putonghua

_ di:l, or Hudyau a in Chinese-speaking areas. In the present article, the word "Mandarin" will be understood in its oldest sense, and our primary concern will therefore be with the history of the spoken (as opposed to written) Chinese koin6 of the Ming and Qing periods. The received wisdom and currently prevalent view of this history is that Mandarin has throughout its life been identical with or closely based upon the language of the city of Peking. But recent research, still little known outside a small circle of specialists, has revealed that this view is

basically flawed and that for most of its history standard Mandarin had little to do with Pekingese.

In order to understand the history of Mandarin it is essential that we treat it in terms of three separate compo- nents, i.e., phonology, lexicon, and syntax. Consequently, our discussion will be organized around this tripartite division.

II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MANDARIN PHONOLOGY

Our clearest views of pre-modern Mandarin phonology come to us through foreign alphabetic transcriptions devised by non-Chinese who wished to learn and teach the standard language. The earliest of these transcriptions were recorded by the Korean sinologist and government interpreter, Sin Sukchu 4EYki1f (1417-75), and are written in the Han'guil alphabet. They are said by him to represent the "standard readings" (zhengyin IEiE) of the period in which he wrote. Yhchi (1990: 18) argues from historical evidence that they reflect a form of fifteenth-century Guanhua and derive from detailed dis- cussions between Sin and one Ni Qian {X0, a Ming official who visited Korea in 1450. The "standard reading" forms are preserved in two sources, the Hongmu chong'un yokhun :iE? -I^il (completed in 1455), and the Sasong t'onggo [Z]S4 ?_ (completed ca. 1450), a lost work whose spellings are preserved in the Sasong t'onghae eZ_ij (completed 1517) of Ch'we Sejin t t?' (1478?-1543). All of this material has been the subject of a recent study in English (Kim 1991). The details of Sin's "standard reading" system are not of primary concern to us here, but certain salient features of it can be noted as a matter of interest. The system possessed a separate series of "turbid" or zhu6 a initial syllables, cor- responding to the zhu6 (sometimes called "voiced")

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 120.4 (2000)

initial class of the traditional Chinese phonologists, e.g., b), baw (f_), baw (e), d y ( f3), i dgy (_he).' Sin's very precise description of these sounds suggests that the feature in question was not really voicing of syllable initials but rather some type of syllabic feature, such as murmur or strident breathiness, probably in subtle association with pitch register. The language had no separate series of palatal initials. Instead, gutturals and sibilants could occur freely before high front elements, e.g, ,,2 ki (XF), f tsiU (:F), RR xy (X]), 40 sy (1'). In the syllable finals the most striking feature was a series of checked finals ending in a glottal stop [-?]. There were also interesting vowel configurations. For example, the present-day homophones gudn

' and guan J differed in vocalism and were realized as kwon (:) and kwan (2), respectively. Another notable characteristic was the pres- ence of final -m in certain syllables, e.g., jL sim (]), _E sam (X). There were five tones, yinping 9*:, ydngping 2[W, shang _L, qiu , and ru A. All ru tone syllables had the final glottal stop, and this sound occurred only in ru tone, e.g., E baj (A), phonetically: [boj?]; 1f ru (A), phonetically: [ru?].

What were the origins, historically and geographically, of the sound system recorded by Sin Sukchu? Sin himself has nothing to say on this matter. Comparison of his system with that represented in the Yuan-period syllabary, Zhongyudn yinyiun J-ff (published 1324), shows significant differences, both in general features and in numerous points of detail. If, as is sometimes averred, the Zhongyudn ylnyiun reflects the pronunciation used at the Yuan capital, Dadu 7t&[ (later to become Peking), then the Sin system must have originated somewhere other than the Peking area.2 It is also interesting to compare Sin's forms with those found in 'Phags-pa Chinese orthography. The 'Phags-pa system was devised in the 1260s, somewhat before the founding of the Yuan capital in 1276. It seems to be a mixed or composite entity and may to some extent be a conflation of several standard sound systems current in immediately pre-Yuan times (Coblin 1999). It bears many striking resemblances to Sin Sukchu's "standard reading" system. Let us now consider again the same syllables cited as examples in the preceding paragraph. Forms in square brackets indicate

1 Sin's forms are given here in IPA transcription. Subsequent phonetic forms enclosed in square brackets are also rendered in this notation.

2 The dialectal base of the Zhongyudn yinyiun is controversial. An alternate view is that the text reflects a Luoyang or upper Central Plains phonological system. See Mei (1977: 258, n. 4) and Li (1994).

phonetic interpretations of orthographic spellings. Hypo- thetical reconstructed Zhongyudn yinyun forms are added from Pulleyblank (1991) for comparison.

'Phags-pa System Sin System ZYYY

paw ( z) [baw] baw (F) *phaw' paw (_) [baw] baw (_) *paw' c cyu (f) [dzy] dgy (5) *tshy'

~ cyu ( ) [dzy] d.y (_? .-) *tSy' , gying (f) [kjir] kir (f) *kir3 M dzing (?f) [tsir] tsiq (~) *tsirq )T hyu (+) [xy] xy (X) *xy ?X syu (f) [sy] sy () *sy

gon (T) [kon] kwon (p) *kan 1 gwan (-_) [kwan] kwan ()) *kwan L sim (:) [sim] sim (:f1) *sim

sam (:f) [sam] sam (2) *sam

pay (A) [baj?] boj (A) [baj?] *paj' F1 Zhyu (A) [ry?] ru (A) [ru?] *riw, ry

In these examples, the Zhongyudn yinyun reconstruc- tions lack the murmured or zhuo initial types and glottal stop finals which the 'Phags-pa and Sin systems have in common. Despite their similarities, however, detailed comparison reveals differences which preclude the possibility that the "standard reading" system of Ming times could have evolved directly from the 'Phags-pa one (Cob- lin Forthcoming a). Compare, for example, the following forms:

'Phags-pa Sin Sukchu ZYYY

M xyu (f) [fiy] uy () *y' RfI xyu (_ ) [fiy] y (_ ) *y

Here, Sin's readings maintain an archaic initial distinction which the 'Phags-pa system did not preserve. They are not predictable from the 'Phags-pa spellings. Such cases lead us to suspect that, though Sin's "standard readings" may have come from something similar to the 'Phags-pa system, they cannot be directly derived from it. They apparently arose out of one or more late pre-Yuan phonological systems of a sort to which 'Phags-pa also be- longed and which may have differed from whatever standard underlies the Zhongyudn yinyun.

Our next clear picture of standard Mandarin phonology emerges one hundred and fifty years after Sin Sukchu and comes to us from European Catholic missionaries (Lu 1985; Yang 1989). From the opening years of the seven-

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COBLIN: A Brief History of Mandarin

teenth century we have a set of literary Chinese essays written in Peking by Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) during the decade before his death. The Chinese characters in these texts are accompanied by romanized forms which survive today in a collection known as the Xizi qiji Z I iI:g (see Wenzi Gaig6 1957). The second source is the

Xiru e'rmizi VI/Z T l -, a large syllabary of zhengyin readings compiled by Niklaas (Nicola, Nicolas) Trigault (1577-1628) and printed in 1626. The phonological system reflected in these materials is rather similar to that

represented in Sin's Korean spelling system, with the ex-

ception that the zhu6 series of initials and the final nasal -m have been lost. In effect, the Sin system appears to feed directly into that of Ricci and Trigault, and the two

types can for the most part be viewed as belonging to a direct line of development. Let us compare again the

sample syllables cited above:

Sin System Trigault System

t baw (?) 'pao [p'au] t baw (_L) po, pao [pao] r~ dz,y (~) c'hu [ts'q] - d7.y (?.) chu., chu [tsq] i kirj (k) kim [kiq]

et tsiq (g) 9im [tsiq] 1 xy (F) hiu [xy] X sy (O) siu [sy] T kwon (F) kuon [kuon] H kwan (f)) kuan [kuan] JL sim (T) sin [sin]

sam (:) san [san] E baj (A) [baj?] pe [pe?] 1 ru (A) [ru?] j6 [2o?]

As we have noted, Sin Sukchu had relatively little to

say about the actual language underlying his standard

readings. But the European missionaries have on the con-

trary left detailed observations on the speech form they were recording. First of all, it is clear that there was indeed a standard language, by this time called Guanhua, of which the zhengyin formed the phonological component. From Yang (1989: 198-99) we adapt the following sam-

ple passages.

1. Alessandro Vilignano (1539-1606), Historia del Principio y progresso de la Compaia de Jesus en las Indias Orientales (1542-1564):

The Chinese have different languages in different provinces, to such an extent that they cannot understand each

other.... [They] also have another language which is like a universal and common language; this is the official

language of the mandarins and of the court; it is among them like Latin among ourselves.... Two of our fathers [Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607) and Matteo Ricci] have been learning this mandarin language...

2. Matteo Ricci, letter dated November 12, 1592:

The letters are common in all fifteen provinces of China. However, the language in each of the provinces is different. There is also a universal language. We call it the language of the law courts. Because this language is used in all the tribunals by all magistrates coming from different provinces, it is the one that we are learning.

3. Matteo Ricci, Storia dell' introduzione del cristiane- simo in Cina:

With all the varieties of languages, there is also one that we call cuonhoa, that is to say, the language of the law courts; it is used in audiences and tribunals; and, if one learns this, he can use it in all the provinces; in addition, even the children and women know enough of it to be able to communicate with all the people of another province.

Further references in texts of this period throw light on the regional affiliations of the Guanhua koine. For ex-

ample, from Ricci's diary for the year 1600 we find an account of a journey from Nanking to Peking, during which Ricci was helped in various ways by a friendly court eunuch named Leupusie. The following passage occurs there (Yang 1989: 228):

Before his departure, the eunuch Leupusie was very happy and as a present he gave to the Fathers a boy whom he had bought at Nanking. The boy, who speaks very good Chinese, can teach Fr. Pantoja [i.e., Diego de

Pantoja (1571-1618)], who is going to study Chinese with him.

In Trigault's adapted and published version of Ricci's diary, this passage reads (Yang 1989: 228):

The eunuch who had been in charge of the expedition, sailed away joyfully, and as a present to the Fathers he left them a boy because he spoke so distinctly, and he could teach Father Didaco the purity of the Nanchinese tongue.

Thus, in the current Chinese view as represented by the eunuch, the phonological system of Guanhua was closely

539




associated with the language of the city of Nanking. The reasons for this are now fairly well understood. Nanking had been the capital of China from 1356 until 1421, and it was presumably during this period that the dialect of that area became identified with the national standard. By Ricci's time Peking had been the major political center for approximately one hundred and eighty years, but the phonological basis for the koine had never shifted to Pekingese. The reason for this would seem to be that, as Ricci remarks in his diary (1953: 268-69, 309), in late Ming times Nanking, rather than Peking, still served as the cultural hub of the country.

From later in the seventeenth century we have further missionary records of standard Mandarin. Two of the most extensive and informative are a complete grammar (Arte de la Lengua Mandarina [Canton, 1703]; actually completed in 1682 at F6zh6u) and a romanized Spanish- Mandarin dictionary ("Vocabulario de la Lengua Man- darina," MSS in the German State Library, Berlin, and the British Library, London) by the Spanish Dominican, Francisco Varo (1627-87). The language recorded by him was phonologically almost identical to that represented in the works of Ricci and Trigault, and his attitude towards correct pronunciation was also similar to that of his predecessors. In his grammar (1703: 8) he remarks that, in order to enunciate Mandarin words well, "one must understand the way in which such words are pronounced by the Chinese. Not just any Chinese, but only those who have the natural gift of speaking the Mandarin language well, such as those natives of the Province of Nan king, and of other provinces where the Mandarin tongue is spoken well" (Coblin and Levi 2000: 31). And in the preface to his "Vocabulario" he points out that the spellings he gives for his Chinese entries "conform to what is spoken in the province of Nan king" (p. 2).

Moving ahead fifty years we encounter yet another grammar of Mandarin, the Notitia Linguae Sinicae of Joseph Pr6mare (1666-1736), completed ca. 1730 and published in editions of 1831 and 1893. The phonology of the language described by Pr6mare is slightly more evolved than that of Varo, e.g., the distinction between [kuon] H' and [kuan] [j was lost, both being pronounced as [kuan] in his time. However, it is clear that Pr6mare was describing a later stage of essentially the same speech form his predecessors had recorded.

Our next step forward in the history of Mandarin pronunciation brings us to British grammars and dictionaries of the early nineteenth century. The foremost of these is the great Dictionary of the Chinese Language by Robert Morrison (1782-1834). In his preface, dating from 1815, he remarks: "What is called the Mandarin Dialect, or

'i Kwan hwa, is spoken generally in 3EM Keang- nan and M1iA Ho-nan Provinces, in both of which, the Court once resided" (p. x). And then, somewhat later, he says: "The pronunciation in this work, is rather what the Chinese call the Nanking dialect, than the Peking" (p. xviii). Interestingly, he describes the rejected Pekingese pronunciation as having a number of features still found in the Peking-based standard of our times, e.g., palatals in place of velars before high front vowels, absence of a final glottal stop in rusheng syllables, etc.3 This type of pronunciation, he tells us, is a "Tartar-Chinese dialect." But, though he rejects it as a standard for his dictionary, he remarks that it is "now gradually gaining ground, and if the Dynasty continues long, will finally prevail" (p. x). The orthographic renderings found in Morrison's dictionary and in similar works of the period represent a sound system which is recognizably a later stage of that described by Varo and Premare a century earlier and is by Morri- son's own account different from the Pekingese of his day. Let us refer again to our set of exemplary syllables:

Trigault Premare Morrison

M 'pao [p'au] p'ao [p'au] paou [p'au] t pao, pao [pao] pao [pau] paou [pau] 1 c'hO [ts'q] tch'f [t~'y] ch'6o [tg'u] t chu., chu [tgq] tchu [tsy] choo [tgu]

i kim [kiq] king, kin [kii - kin] king [kiq] 9qim [tsiq] tsing [tsiq] tsing [tsiq]

T hiu [xy] hiu [xy] heu [xy] XI sii [sy] siui, su [sy] seu [sy] ' kuon [ku3n] kouon, kouan kwan

[kuon, kuan] [kuan] I kuan [kuan] kouan [kuan] kwan

[kuan] L sin [sin] sin [sin] sin [sin]

san [san] san [san] san [san] 6 pe pe[] ph' [pi?]h [p

1 j6 [to?] j6u, j6 [?u? - ?o?] juh [?u?]

From Morrison's account we lear that in his time the northern, Peking-based pronunciation, stigmatized by him as "Tartar-Chinese," was gaining ground against this standard Mandarin pronunciation. Morrison's opinion, which probably reflected the views of the Chinese scholar-official class of his day, associated northern

3 For a full citation of the pertinent passage and certain related ones, see Coblin (1997: 288-91).

540




speech habits with the Manchu governing class, who were pejoratively referred to as Dazi HT (i.e., "Tartars") by the Chinese. But it is clear that many Chinese were already inclined to adopt it as an up-and-coming standard. Morrison himself was resigned to the fact that this new pronunciation might "finally prevail," but for his own time he still considered the traditional standard, which he associated with Jiangnan or Henan, to be preferable for the phonological component of his dictionary.

Morrison, S. Well Williams, and their "Nankingist school" of transcribers, were primarily missionaries, work- ing in various areas of central and south China. But after about 1850 there emerged a new group of "Pekingist" language specialists who were in many cases associated with the British diplomatic and consular services. These persons, who included such luminaries as Sir Thomas Wade (1818-95), Joseph Edkins (1823-1905), and somewhat later, Herbert Giles (1845-1935), urged that Pe- kingese pronunciation be adopted by British learners of standard Chinese. Edkins, as quoted by Wade (1867: vi) explained that though "the Nanking Mandarin is more widely understood than that of Peking ... the Peking dialect must be studied by those who would speak the language of the imperial court, and what is, when purified of its localisms, the accredited 'kuan 'hua of the empire."

We see, then, that from the British standpoint a change had occurred in the status of Pekingese over a period of some four or five decades. Though the Nanking-related pronunciation of Mandarin was still more widely understood in China, the Pekingese-based system (minus identifiably dialectal "localisms") had by mid-century assumed the true mantle of Guanhua phonology. It was the preferred linguistic medium of the imperial court and was rapidly gaining ground among the scholar-official class. As Morrison had predicted fifty years earlier, it did finally prevail, becoming the standard pronunciation of late Qing Guanhua, and subsequently, of the new koine, gu6yu/puitnghua, the standard Mandarin of today.

The ultimate origins of the features we now charac- terize as Pekingese pronunciation are a part of the general history of Peking dialect per se, for ground-breaking surveys of which, see Y6 (1984) and Lin (1987). As we have seen, they were fully present in Morrison's time, but it is clear that they predate him. Some of them are already reflected in certain Korean transcriptions of the mid- eighteenth century (Kim 1991: 265-68). Others were heard by John Barrow, who visited Peking in 1793 as a member of the Macartney embassy to the court of Qian- 16ng (Barrow 1806: 241-70). Exactly what happened to the language of Peking after the major population disrup- tions attendant on the Manchu conquest, and how it

evolved during the further course of the dynasty, is an area awaiting further study. In any case, it is certain that by Edkins' time a phonology based on this speech type represented the "accredited guanhua of the country."4

Let us now summarize our observations on the history of Ming-Qing Mandarin phonology. The "standard reading" or zhengyin system first recorded by Sin Sukchu in the mid 1400s differs from but bears a close resemblance to the 'Phags-pa Chinese system dating from the 1260s. Sin's system may therefore derive from one or more of the standard systems current in the Central Plain in late pre- Yuan times. In fact, it may to some extent be a continu- ation of late Sbng standards (cf. Norman 1997: 26-27). It does not appear to have been directly associated with the sound system of the Zhongyudn yinyun, which some believe represents the standard pronunciation of the Yuan capital, D'adu. We may suspect that it came into ascen- dancy during the initial decades of the Ming dynasty, when the locus of political power lay in the lower Yangtze watershed and the capital was at Nanking. By the late 1500s this koine was universally called Guanhua. In the technical terminology of the native phonological tradi- tion, the terms zhengyin "standard pronunciation" and Guanhua "language of the officials" were fairly carefully distinguished (Geng 1992: 117-26), but in common par- lance, as reflected in the missionary dictionaries and glos- saries of the vernacular, they were synonymous, thus la lengua mandarina = Guanhua = zhengyin.

Missionary accounts, almost certainly reflecting native perceptions, generally describe the standard pronunciation of Guanhua as "Nankingese." However the significance of this identification requires further consideration. For it is clear that, although similar to Nankingese pronunciation in many ways, the zhengyin system from its incep- tion lacked a number of typically Nankingese and central Jiang-Huai features, such as the failure to distinguish initial 1- and n- and (in certain environments) final -n and -y (Coblin Forthcoming b). Consider the following:

4 It should be noted, however, that the linguistic situation in the city during this period was still far from stable. Phonologi- cally mixed or composite systems were encountered there even in Edkins' day. He remarks (1864: 279): "Many men from Kiang- nan reside in Peking, especially of the class of scholars. They retain many peculiarities of the southern pronunciation, even after the lapse of three or four generations. In such cases, the tones of Peking are sometimes used in conjunction with the initials and finals of Nanking."

541




Sin Trigault Pr6mare Morrison

nL najq (Nz) nem [ner] neng [nerj] nang [naeIj] lajrj (i) lem [irj] leng [ler] lang [laej]

7q nuj ( :) nui [nui] nu6i, nuii ny [nui] [nuei - nui]

i. luj (T) lui [lui] loui [lui] luy [lui]

In these cases all standard Gufnhua sources strictly distinguish initial n- and 1-. Now compare the following central Jiang-Huai dialect forms, taken from Jiangsu sheng he Shanghai shi (1960: 499):

Nanking Jur6ng Yangzh6u Gaoy6u

[la313F] [nn24WV] [a ] [a34WF] [la3213 ]

[1ar22-] [nan213L] [1l1342&] [laJ21i] F [luai441] [nai55t] [luoi551] [luoi53"]

, [luoi44`] [nai551 ] [ luoi55a] [luoi53:]

No dialects of this type make an n-/l- distinction comparable to that found in the standard system. Similar data can be cited for the final -n/-y distinction after the vowel i:


3 pin (F) pin [pin] pin [pin] pin [pin] E piIJ ( p) pim [pij] ping [pii] ping [pii]


[piti31iV] [pin31r] [pin319V] [pirJ44T] [pin31VL] [pin3 l P] [pint31^ [ ] [pir44**]

Nevertheless, comparison of the Sin and missionary spelling systems shows that between 1450 and 1600 the standard system did in fact take on certain Nankingese- like features which it had originally lacked (Coblin Forthcoming c). As an exemplar, consider the following:


R zjari (F) siam, q'iam ts'iang tseang [siar - ts'iar] [ts'iarj] [ts'iarj]

In this case, the syllable in question had a fricative initial z- in Sin's system, but by Trigault's time competing fricative/affricate readings in s-/ts'- had developed; and it was the affricate forms that prevailed. It is therefore noteworthy that Nankingese and other closely related di-

alects have affricate initials in syllables of this type. In the same dialects cited above we find for xidng -T the following forms:


[t?'ifi13] [ti'iai324]T] 'i [t?'ia2 ] 34 4] [t?'iar213R*]

How are we to understand such phenomena? At the outset we may suppose that the zhengytn system of ca. 1450 was based not on the pronunciation of a single dialect or area but was instead a composite entity reflecting the sound systems of a congeries of southerly Central Plains-type dialects, including those of the lower Yangtze watershed, such as Nankingese. (We may, for example, remember that Morrison in one passage cited above characterized the zhengyin system as that of the Nan- king region and H6enn, rather than of the former alone.) The fact that this standard system was used continually in Nanking from at least 1400 until about 1850 would have led to ongoing convergence throughout that period, contributing to the perception that the two were more-or- less identical. But it should be remembered that such no- tions were general and impressionistic sentiments rather than technically accurate taxonomic judgments. In any case, in traditional times Nanking probably was the most prominent urban area of China where something ap- proaching an accurate rendition of zhengyin phonology could be heard in everyday use.

When the national capital was moved from Nanking to Peking in 1421 there was no concomitant shift in the regional basis of the standard sound system. Instead, the Nanking-like system remained in place as the national standard. And this situation had not changed by the early Qing period, when Varo was active. However, Pr6mare begins to mention here and there alternate Pekingese pronunciations, which he nonetheless seems to regard as suspect or non-standard. For example, he observes (1893: 15) that the syllable tchu [tsy] (as in zhiu 4 "pig") is (mis-) pronounced by the Pekingese as tchou [tsu]. By the mid- 1700s, Korean observers record more of these features, and by the 1790s Barrow clearly hears them competing with standard (i.e., Nanking-like) pronunciations in the streets of Peking. A decade or so later Morrison grudgingly ad- mits that the imperial court prefers this "Tartar Chinese," which he predicts may eventually become the national standard. By about 1850 this prediction has been realized, and a wholesale shift to a Pekingese-like phonological base has occurred. The result remains with us to this day.

In closing this section we may take some account of several orthographically attested "non-standard" varieties of Guanhua pronunciation. Examples of the first of these are found in a Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary manuscript

542




held in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Jesu in Rome. This text is attributed to Matteo Ricci and/or Michele Ruggieri and is believed to have been compiled in the 1580s near Canton (Yang 1989). It may represent a regional (and probably southern) variety of late Ming Guan- hua. Ricci and his confreres had abandoned this form of pronunciation by ca. 1600 in favor of the variety attested in the sources discussed above. A second and very closely related Guanhua variety is found in a set of vernacular dialogues included in the same Jesuit manuscript. The material has been studied and analyzed by Furuya (1988, 1989). A third Guanhua type is attested in the Towa sanyo

Xfi5$ V, a Chinese language primer published in Japan in 1716. This text has been examined by Richard Sim- mons in two recent articles (1995, 1997) and is thought to represent a Guanhua variety used in the Hangzhou area. The language resembles Sin's zhengyin variety in retain- ing a zhu6 series of initials. Interrelationships between these different Guanhua types and that reflected in the standard materials discussed here remain to be clarified by detailed comparisons. But what is recognizable at this point is that within Guanhua as a whole there existed competing regional sub-varieties of standard pronunciation, some of which were clearly felt by European observers to have higher prestige than others.

III. LEXICON

Jiang Shaoyu A7], perhaps the leading modern au- thority on the history of the Chinese lexicon, has observed that work in post-Tang lexical studies is still in its infancy (1989: 240). In his own research he has drawn a careful distinction between traditional koines as actual spoken languages (kouyu de gbngtongyu 2 i--Hj:~,r) and contemporary written or literary vernaculars (shumian gongtongyu fjjfit-l ) based on or related to these spoken koines (see, e.g., 1994: 126). In this connection he has also pointed out that spoken material has heretofore been accessible only indirectly through the medium of the literary sources (1994: 252). The result has been a scholarly emphasis on the identification and study of individually gleaned lexical items, without suf- ficient consideration of the spoken lexicon as a system- atic whole (1989: ch. 10; 1994: 287-88). With regard to the Guanhuh koine, a solution to the problem posed by Jiang would now seem to be offered by the recent discov- ery of grammars, dictionaries, and dialogue texts of the sort mentioned in the preceding section. For these works were composed specifically as language-learning materials and were intended to reflect actual speech rather than the usage of the literary vernaculars. It will be necessary to compare this material systematically with the lexical

stock of the written texts, on the one hand, and of modern standard Mandarin, on the other, before the precise relationships among them can be established. However, a few preliminary observations can be ventured.

Considering, for example, Varo's "Vocabulario de la Lengua Mandarina," text samples selected at random appear to show a rather high degree of continuity with the lexicon of moder Mandarin, once neologisms known to have appeared in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been excluded.5 Let us examine the following ex- cerpt of ten contiguous entries from the Berlin manuscript of Varo's text (p. 44), to which Chinese characters have been added here for reference:

Casamentero [male matchmaker]. moey jin A. Casamentera [female matchmaker]. moey p6' . Cascaras, ut de guebos, o cosas duras [shells, as of eggs

or hard things]. ki6' UQ. Cascaras, o mondaduras de frutas [rinds or peels of

fruit]. py' 12. Cascaras de texas quebradas [flat pieces of broken tiles].

ua sty 2i / uh pi6n' It". Cascajo, piedrequelas [shards of broken vessels; gravel,

pebbles]. ua lieXtt. Cascos de calabaza [skull, cranium]. nao ki6' SfOfi. Cascos de cebollas [onion skins]. ,ghing' py' Xi.. de

canas [of canes]. cho6 hing' tqt. Cascabeles [hawksbells, small bells for animals]. ling ul

Jl / hiang ling M/ chu6n' ling -P. Casco de morrion [a steel helmet]. tie' kuey' 9 .

Most items in this passage are still current in moder standard Mandarin. Wdpian A t' is in common use. Wasuii TLF is attested in texts of Ming and Qing times but is probably no longer used in spoken Mandarin today. Naoke 'SK is listed in moder dictionaries in the sense "head," rather than "skull," and is said to have a dialectal flavor. Chuan ling $ occurs in vernacular texts of late Qing and early Republican times and is perhaps still current among at least some speakers. The rate of continuity here may be as high as 85-90%, with attrition and substitution of a sort which would be expected in suc- cessive stages of the same language for the time period in question. This would suggest that in the area of lexicon there has been no large-scale shift of the sort observed in the phonological component of the language. However, if specific common lexical items are chosen for scrutiny, a different picture emerges. Let us now consider several of these.

5 For a very detailed discussion of such neologisms, see Masini (1993), who provides references to earlier studies.

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1. Difang ttfi "place." This word appears in the general sense "place" in Qing novels and is well known to the mid-nineteenth century "Pekingist" textbook and dictionary compilers. Varo uses it in the specialized sense "region, vicinity." He also lists it both alone and in longer expressions in the general sense "place," but always in second position behind his preferred word, su6ozi jfi. In his grammar he never uses difang in example sentences, employing su6zaai instead. Su6zai is still current in certain dialects of central and south China. It is also listed in nineteenth-century dictionaries of Pekingese, e.g., Stent (1877: 438); but difang is the ordinary word used in the language textbooks. This word had apparently completely replaced suozai in the lexicon of the standard koin6 by the mid- 1800s, and its origin seems to have been either Pekingese or the northern dialects generally.

2. Dou V "all." For this word the Guanhua materials of Varo, Pr6mare, and Morrison all write tia (= moder Mandarin di); and the nineteenth-century textbooks also give this pronunciation for standard Pekingese Mandarin of that time. However, Edkins (1864: 69) remarks that the word actually used in the Pekingese dialect (as opposed to standard Pekingese Mandarin of the day) was not tu but rather a sort of vulgarism pronounced teu (= modern standard dou). Giles (1892: 1187) identifies this dou as a northern dialect form. By the early twentieth century it had entered the standard koin6 and completely ejected dii, for in his spoken Mandarin language materials Giles (1901) gives only dou in the sense "all." It is important to note that this development was not simply a sound change as such but rather a lexical replacement in which the Pekingese word supplanted the Guanhua one.

3. Gei M, "to give." This word is unknown in the older Guanhua sources, which always identify yu ff or bdyu tEfi as their words for "to give." Morrison does list gei, along with yui in this sense. Ota (1958 [1987]: 241) states that gei was an established Pekingese form in Qing times; and it must in fact be much older than that in some types of north Chinese, since it appears in a Tibeto- Chinese colloquial phrasebook from Dunhuang (Takata 1988: 199). It was well known to mid-nineteenth-century Pekingists. It is also found in the modern Jiang-Huai dialects, but almost always in an unusual syllabic shape. For example, in Nankingese it is ki11, which violates the syllable canon of that language by placing a high front vowel after a guttural initial. This suggests that it is probably a later intrusion in such dialects (Coblin Forthcom- ing b). And, in fact, Edkins (1864: 278-79) remarks that ba tf rather than gei was the common word for "to give" in the Yangtze watershed dialects of his time. In summary, gei may have entered the lexicon of the standard

koine from a northern dialect such as Pekingese during the latter part of the eighteenth century.

4. Hdi X "still, yet." In the Guanhua materials the word "still," written by Premare as X, is always spelled as the equivalent of modern Mandarin hudn. A number of Jiang-Huai dialects preserve this form, where it is the preferred reading among elderly speakers. Ch'we Sejin mentions that in his time it was sometimes pronounced as a homophone of hdi r "child" (Kim 1991: 218, n. 1). The nineteenth-century Pekingese textbook compilers list two readings for it, hai and hdn. It would appear that hdi replaced hudn as the standard koin6 form at some point after Morrison's time.

5. He Xg "to drink." This word is already attested in Yuan-time texts and is well known to the nineteenth- century Pekingists. But it does not appear in the spoken Guanhua sources until Morrison's time. Like gei it seems to be an eighteenth-century importation from north Chinese.

6. Hen fR (earlier also I, RR) "very." This is the ordinary intensifier for stative and certain other verbs in modern standard Mandarin. It does not appear at all in Varo's dictionary, nor for that matter in any other of the alpha- betically recorded mid-Qing Guanhua materials, even as late as Morrison's time. The usual spoken Guanhua forms were instead words like shen : "very, extremely" and ji 1& "extremely." However, the use of hen as an intensifier is textually attested as early as Yuan times and is common in various Qing novels. It was also well known to the Pekingist grammarians. Its adoption in standard Mandarin by this time may indicate a shift towards a Pekingese lexical base by the standard koine during the nineteenth century.

7. H6uzi 4-F "wart, pimple." This word is already attested in Song-period texts and is well represented in mid-nineteenth-century dictionaries of Pekingese (e.g., Stent 1877: 175). Thus, it was by this time an established Pekingese noun with a long pedigree. Morrison also lists it. Interestingly, however, Varo does not know it at all. In- stead, he gives an entirely different expression, ldoshunadi

jM~, which occurs twice in his dictionary. Ldoshundi is found today in certain Yangtze-watershed dialects6 but does not seem to be used elsewhere. It was apparently the standard Guanhua term in Varo's time. By the early nineteenth century, the Pekingese word had replaced it and remains the usual term for "wart" in modern standard Mandarin.

6I am grateful to Professor Richard Simmons for this information.

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8. Suoyoude PTi t "all, whatsoever." This term first appears in Ming and Qing novels. It is well known to the nineteenth-century Peking Mandarin textbook writers but is not found in the Guanhua records of Varo, Premare, and Morrison. Instead, they use other modifiers such as qudnde wi, wdnqudnde zh:t, zhenggede SfflJ, simiande [ m t , etc. Thus, su6youde would appear to be a nineteenth-century addition to the standard koine, probably from Pekingese.

9. Xin { "letter, epistle." The compound shaxin mB "letter" is quite old, dating from at least Six Dynasties times. The term jiaxin *f "tidings from home" is attested in Taing texts. The monosyllable xin in the sense of "tidings, news" is attested in Qing novels such as H6ngl6umeng g,TI I. Xin in the sense of "letter" is well known to the nineteenth-century Pekingese textbook writers and is the usual word in modern standard Mandarin. Varo, on the other hand, uses only shu - for "letter." But the word xin in this sense must have existed somewhere in his time, for he gives xinqidn f I as an alternate form for daishuqidn -ft-l "postage for letters." Nevertheless, he apparently did not consider xin to be a standard word for "letter." There appears to be no case of xin "letter" in Premare's grammar. Morrison lists the compound shuxin, but this may be a literary form taken from texts. It would seem that in Guanhuh the ordinary word for "letter" was sha, which was later replaced in the standard koin6 by Pekingese xin, the form still current today.

10. Zhdo Vtz "to seek." This verb is unknown in the Guanhua sources until Morrison's dictionary, where it is said to have the sense "to supply." However, he also gives the compound zhaoxun :ti-, which he glosses as "to seek for." The monosyllable xuin H is the normal word for "seek" in the Guanhua materials. Zhdo is attested in Ming and Qing vernacular texts and is found in all the nineteenth-century textbooks of Pekingese Mandarin. It may have entered the standard koin6 from Pekingese between the times of Pr6mare and Morrison.

Examples of this sort suggest that, while the bulk,of the Ming-Qing Guanhua koin6 lexicon may have passed more or less directly into modern standard Mandarin, a number of common or high-frequency lexemes were not inherited in this way. Instead, these may have entered the word-stock from the north Chinese speech area generally or from the local language of Peking in particular. This development can therefore be viewed as a smaller-scale lexical parallel of the wholesale phonological shift to a Pekingese base during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially since it usually resulted in complete replacement of received Guanhuh lexical material.

A much smaller but equally interesting body of lexical discrepancies between older Guanhu'a and the modern standard lexicon may in fact have been dialect syllables and compounds in Guanhua phonological garb, which crept into particular regional sub-varieties of the koin6 but never became a permanent part of the general lexicon of Guanhua. Consider, for example, Varo's expressions tung - "grain harvest" and xeu tung 1>- "to harvest," which

are widely found in Fukien and contiguous Mm-speaking areas but are not generally known elsewhere. Another example is Varo's nunniui 41:-, given along with xiaoniu /J\4 for "calf." Niunniu appears to be a Mtnd6ng rj dialect form, adopted from the speech of the area where Varo lived and worked. With this we may compare the Ricci-Ruggieri dictionary form niuizai ?ff "yearling calf" (written gnieu zai 4# in the text), which appears to be a Yue - dialect borrowing into the Guanhua variety used in the Canton region. None of these expressions remained part of the standard lexicon of subsequent periods, suggest- ing that the koin6 word-stock may have been relatively im- permeable to regional influences and shifts in dialect base, accepting briefly but then ultimately shedding most pa- tently dialectal or regional material (cf. Hanan 1981: 2, 8).

Significantly, though Varo's dictionary contains no Chi- nese characters, almost all syllables in it can be directly associated with written Chinese graphs. And Pr6mare has no difficulty at all in supplying characters for his example phrases and sentences. Unlike the spoken dialects known to us today, which often possess hundreds of etymologically and graphically obscure morphemes, nearly every lexical item in spoken Guanhua would seem to be for- mally "authorizable" in terms of the Chinese script. It is almost as if the growth of the standard lexicon was con- sciously monitored with such "authorizability" in mind.

How much older than the early Qing period is the common word-stock shared by works such as Varo's "Vocab- ulario" and the moder standard Mandarin lexicon? What is the relationship of this old word-stock to the lexical corpus of the Ming-Qing literary vernaculars? Did northern dialect words which had already appeared in vernacular literary texts have a particular advantage that enabled them to enter the newly forming nineteenth-century koine more easily? Or were they simply more robust because they were widely current in the spoken vernacular of the current cultural and political heartland? Full-scale comparison of entire lexical systems, as called for by Jiang Shaoyi, may shed further light on the interrelationships between the spoken and literary sources and may ultimately show that the standard Mandarin lexicon as a whole is quite old, perhaps predating "Mandarin" as we have defined it here.

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IV. SYNTAX

The syntax of the literary or written vernaculars has been the subject of increasingly intense study during the past half century both in China and elsewhere.7 Here too, however, we should remain mindful of Jiang Shaoyu's counsel regarding the difference between shumian gong- tongyua and k6uyu' gongtongya. Similar thoughts have been expressed by others. For example, Norman (1988: 111) remarks that, "in no case can one point to a particular text and say unequivocally that it is written in a purely vernacular style. All texts represent to one degree or another a mixture of the literary and spoken languages." More recently Chen (1999: 69-70) has characterized traditional bdihua 6 5 (as opposed to wenydn

- `) as

"closer to the contemporary vernacular" and "an approx- imation of the spoken vernacular." There seems to be consensus among these observers that traditional literary texts are at best approximations of spoken language. And the obvious corollary is that they must be viewed circumspectly when attempting to unearth evidence about the spoken language of earlier periods. For this reason Chinese language-teaching materials of the sort mentioned in the preceding sections are of particular interest for the study of spoken Guanhua syntax. The various dictionary and dialogue manuscripts all contain direct recordings of spoken language. But of even more significance for the study of syntax are the analytical and teaching grammars, such as those of Varo and Premare, and the newly discovered manuscript, "Principios da lingua Sinica Mandarina," of Joseph Monteyro (1646-1720), held by the Royal Academy of Sciences in Lisbon. These materials can now be studied in their own right as exem- plars of early spoken Mandarin and then compared with the written vernacular, on one hand, and modern standard Mandarin, on the other.

Viewed in toto, the grammar of the spoken Guanhua materials does not seem sharply different from that of moder Mandarin, once allowance is made for the chro- nological gap between the two. This might suggest that the differences between old Guanhua and the standard language of today have in the main resulted from a linear process of historical evolution. The following are three illustrative examples, with modern Mandarin romaniza- tions and Chinese characters added (except in the case of Pr6mare, where characters are already present in the origi- nal). English versions are direct translations of the ori-

7 For extensive bibliographical references to these see, for example, Jiang (1989: ch. 4) and Sun (1996). Cf. also the bibliographical sections of Norman (1988) and Chen (1999).

ginal Spanish and Latin renderings, rather than of the Chinese.

Varo (1703: 2):

El que quiesiere subir a el cielo, le conviene obrar la vir- tud, y de no, segino no lo conseguira. [He who wishes to ascend to heaven must practice virtue, and if he does not do so, surely he will not succeed in it.] Tan fan jin iao xing t'ien, kai tang goei xen, jo po

goei xen, chui jen p6 hooi xing t'ien. Dan fan r6n yao sheng tian, gai dang wei shan, rub bu

wei shan, zi ran bh hui sheng tian.

Basilio Brollo de Glemona: Confesionario (Varo 1703: 76, appendix):

1. Furatus ne es aliquid alienius? [Did you steal something of someone else's?]

N'i t'eu leao jin tie vue kien mb? Ni t6u le ren de wh jian ma

2. Hoc aliquid quanti valet? [How much is the thing which you stole worth?]

Che k6 vue kien che to xao in chu? Zhe ge wh jian zhi duo shao yin zi

3. Quae post postremam confesionem furatus es, simul sumpta quanti valent? [How much is the total value of the things you have stolen since your last confession?]

N'i kao kiai heu t'eu tie tuing si, king che t6 xao in chu? Ni gao jie hbu t6u de dong xi gbng zhi duo shao yin zi

Premare (1893: 46):

Utinam possem illius cor jecurque avellere, et dare cani- bus ad vorandum! [Would that I might tear out his heart and liver and give them to be devoured by the dogs!]

Ngb hen pou te oua t'chou t'a ti sin kan, pa ii keou k'i. W6 hen b'u de wa chi ta de xin gan, pa yui g6u chi.

WfRTN4 t 'fflj9f ii mU One does not detect in these samples a wholesale shift

of language base comparable to that which occurred in the area of phonology. However, as was the case with lexicon, if particular grammatical elements or features are examined, a more complex picture emerges. Let us now consider several such cases.

1. Gender markers for animals. In modern standard Mandarin and in north Chinese dialects generally the gender markers for domestic animals, gong 5' "male" and

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mu f- "female," are prefixed, e.g., gongniu /X4 "bull," muniu f-t "cow." In the Guanhua sources the markers are usually suffixed, and the form for the male is often gu E rather than gong, e.g., gougu nJnt "male dog," goumu

Ja "bitch"; jigong 16 "cock," jima i "hen." This configuration is typical of the central and southern dialects of Norman's nomenclature (1988). It has been completely replaced by the northern pattern in the modern standard koine.

2. Classifiers or measure words. Certain measure words in the Guanhuh materials differ from those used in modern standard Mandarin and standard Pekingese Mandarin of the mid-1800s. This can be determined by comparing full lists of the two sets as given in Varo (1703: 72-73; and passim in the "Vocabulario"), Edkins (1864: ch. 5), and Chao and Yang (1962: 283-86). For example, the present day and mid-nineteenth-century Pe- king Mandarin classifier for mountains and hills is zub IT. Varo in such cases consistently uses t6u i, a word cited as a classifier for a range of domestic animals by Edkins and more specifically by Chao and Yang for cat- tle. Wade (1867: pt. III, p. 17) gives ge {1 as the classifier for wan l "bowl," and this usage is still current in standard Mandarin today. Varo on the other hand gives kuai 5, which is used today as a classifier in the standard language but is not applied to bowls. In cases of this type, what are probably indigenous Pekingese forms have been substituted for the old Guanhua classifiers.

3. The inclusive pronoun zd(men) [nff "we." This word is attested in Sbng and Yuan texts and is mentioned in all the nineteenth-century grammars of Pekingese. Modern Chinese dictionaries today list it as a standard form. It is, however, totally unknown in the Guanhua materials until one reaches Morrison. He gives it but then remarks: "This word is confined to the northern people." It is therefore probably a nineteenth-century contribution of north Chinese to the standard Mandarin pronominal system.

4. The interrogative adverb zem(me) 1- "how." Modern standard zem(me) is widely thought to be a reflex of an earlier form, zub m6 ftI, already found in Sbng-time vernacular texts. It has a literary reading zen (me) but is normally pronounced zem(me) in actual speech. It is well attested in the nineteenth-century Pekingese Man- darin handbooks. In the Guanhua sources the comparable form is tseng (m6) [= Mod. zeng (mo)]. Premare writes it as ,EV, but the first syllable is never spelled either tsen or tsem in any of the Guanhua materials. Nor can a Guanhua tseng be regularly derived from an earlier -n or -m final syllable in the sound system of this language. Now, in Tang times there was another word, written zheng -, which also meant "how." Wang (1958, II: 294)

considers this to be cognate to later ~,~, while Lu (1985: 336) argues against this view. In this connection, we should note that - is regularly spelled tseng in the Guanhua sources, a reading which differs from that of Guanhua tseng , only by tone. One wonders if there could be an historical connection between the two. In any case, by about 1860 the Guanhua word tseng (mo) had already been replaced in the standard koine by zem(me), which was also the Pekingese dialect form for "how" in that period (Stent 1877: 568).

5. The perfective negative. In the Guanhua materials, in addition to certain rarer and clearly literary expressions, there is for this construction apparent freedom of choice between three equally current forms, wei ceng 7 i, bi ceng T^f1, and meiyou r . Edkins (1864: 196) also reports all three of these in the standard Mandarin of his time. The first two are today associated with the central dialects, whereas the third, which is identical in form with the existential negative, is a typically northern configuration. It is only this last expression which has been re- tained in the moder standard koine. This choice seems to reflect northern influence.

6. Agent markers in passivization. Agents of passive- like verbs are marked by the word bei a in the Guanhua materials. In this role Premare also uses chi [t, a particle found in Ming and Qing novels (Jiang 1994: 229). Varo does not use this chi at all. Moder standard Mandarin employs the bei passivizer in the same way that Guanhua did. But in addition it also uses the causative words jiao n1 - t and rang a in this role. Jiao t as a passivizer is in fact quite old, occurring already in Tang texts. The use of the graph l- to write it began in Qing times (Ota 1958 [1987]: 232). It is common in the nineteenth- century Pekingist materials (see, e.g., Wade 1867: pt. VIII, pp. 256-57). Edkins (1864: 126) specifically identifies it as a Pekingese form. Rang is not used as a passivizer in these works. The use of jiao as an agent marker in modern standard Mandarin appears to derive from Pekingese, for it is not inherited from Guanhua.

7. The durative suffix -zhe i. Durative -zhe (also pronounced -zhi) was known to the nineteenth-century grammarians of Peking Mandarin, who were wont to call it a "participial" element. They usually romanized it as cho. Wade (1867) records variant readings, cho and che, but he uses only cho in his examples. Edkins (1864: 192) gives the pronunciations choh and chi (= moder standard zhi) for it. The latter he says is derived from "the colloquial of Shantung." He further remarks, "This is a colloquialism not authorized by books, nor is it correct mandarin. Perhaps it is a corruption from ; choh, which is the form used by correct speakers." The older Guanhua word spelled cho X has a number of functions as a verbal

547




suffix, but durative or continuative aspect is not explicitly identified as one of them in the grammars. Nonetheless, there are examples in the material which are suspiciously reminiscent of modem Mandarin -zhe. For example, in Varo's "Vocabulario" we find:

Dormir de lado [to sleep on one's side]. che' ch6 xuy

Estar en pie [to be standing]. chan ch6 Mt. Estar sentado [to be seated, sitting]. qh6 chio =.:.

The process of grammaticalization through which the durative sense of -zhe evolved out of earlier full verbs was exceedingly subtle and complex (cf., Mei 1989; Chen 1995; Sun 1998), and it is possible that the durative marker was in fact already present in Guanhua but was not fully understood by Varo and Pr6mare. On the other hand, if they were correct in not finding it there, then we may suspect that it entered nineteenth-century Mandarin from Pekingese.

8. The sentential particle le T. It is widely believed that the verbal suffix -le is a reduced form of the verb liao 7 "to finish." On the other hand, Y. R. Chao (1968: 246) suggested that sentence-final le, a perfect particle marking currently relevant state, is in fact a weakened form of final ldi 5, as first found in texts of the Sbng and Yuan periods. This hypothesis has garnered some later support (e.g., Sun 1996: ch. 4, with references to earlier studies). However, alternate theories have also been suggested, such as that of Lif (1985), who argues on the basis of parallels in Qingjian Mi T#, a Shanxi Rl dialect, that sentential le is a fusion of earlier le ye' 7tt. These theories have in common the view that sentential le is not directly, or in Chao's case even indirectly, derived from earlier lido.

The following are examples of sentential le from our Guanhua materials:

Varo (1703: 57):

t'a xi Petelo ta tie leao fft;l Petelo Tf T 7

Aquel fue aporreado de Pedro. [That one was beaten by Peter.]

de Glemona: Confesionario (Varo 1703: 2a, appendix):

nl j6 p6 k'eng h6 m6, 9hi6u p6 k'b vuang t'ien chu xe ni tie chhui leao

Si tu non vis inimico reconciliari, non potes sperare Deum tibi tua peccata dimissurum. [If you are not willing to be reconciled with your enemy, you cannot expect that God will forgive you your sins.]

Premare (1893: 72):

tchi p'a ni ki6n leao kouei leao

Lemures, credo, vides; je crois que tu reves [(Latin) I think you are seeing ghosts./ (French) I think you are dreaming.]

In all such cases, sentential le is spelled leao [= liao] in the Guanhua sources. Parallels for this reading of the particle are found in certain conservative Jiang-Huai dialects. For example, in the Lishan i [II dialect of Hiubi i jb we find (Chao et al. 1948: 896):

0o53 mn tciau44 iau55 iau424 tau1I tii53 tien3 to55 S44 niau

"Now we need to hit the books again for a couple of hours."

Edkins (1864) gave for 7 the reading liao in all posi- tions, with no further comment. But Wade (1867: pt. III, p. 7) has more to say regarding sentential le. He remarks, "at the end of a clause [it is] very often a mere expletive, and then pronounced la, or lo." By the beginning of the twentieth century Giles (1901) gave only [la] as the pronunciation of both verbal and sentential le. It would appear, then, that in the mid-nineteenth-century the pronunciations liao and le for the final particle were in competition in standard Pekingese Mandarin. How are we to interpret this? One possibility is that Chao and Lif were simply wrong and that the sentential particle was originally derived from liao "to finish," whose pronunciation was reduced to le during the nineteenth century. But there is another, and perhaps preferable, interpretation. Chao and Lif may have been right that in certain parts of China the sentential particle arose in such a way as to yield le as the actual form in regional vernaculars of the north, including that of Peking. Early nineteenth- century standard Pekingese Mandarin (as opposed to the spoken dialect of the city) may have continued the use of the Guanhua form lido, itself perhaps based on Jiang- Huii usage. But by mid-century the northern vernacular form le may have come into competition with this lido in the standard speech of Peking, ultimately unseating it as the preferred form by around 1900. If this scenario is valid, then what we see here is a shift of grammatical base from old Guanhua to the vernacular usage of the north.

9. Sentence final ba m - nE. This particle is common in modern standard Mandarin, where it conveys various imperative, suggestive, and advisative nuances. It is attested in vernacular texts by at least the Yuan period and is well-known to the mid-nineteenth-century grammarians of Peking Mandarin. It does not occur at all in the old

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Guanhua materials. Premare does list a final particle bo which is similar to ba in certain ways, e.g., (p. 77):

k'b poil che po

an-non ita est? [Isn't it so?]

This word bo, which appears in early vernacular texts in the written form [&, is considered by Ota (1958 [1987]: 340) to be etymologically related to modern ba. Be that as it may, it seems clear that the addition of ba itself to the grammar of the standard koin6 coincides with the emergence of Peking-based standard Mandarin in the nineteenth century. The Ming-Qing koine of Varo, Pre- mare, etc., did not have it.

10. The sentential interrogative ma Rn. According to Ota (1958 [1987]: 334) the use of the graph RI to represent a final interrogative particle first appears in texts of the Qing period. His examples for it come from the Hongl6umeng. Before this time the graph 1 was commonly used for a word which functioned like ma UP in the old vernacular texts. In the Guanhua materials ma is not used at all. Instead, there is a final interrogative particle, spelled mb (= moder m6), which behaves like moder Mandarin ma. Pr6mare writes this mb with the character )V. A final interrogative having this phonetic shape (i.e., initial m- with a mid back rounded vowel) occurs in a number of moder Jiang-Huai dialects. Among the nineteenth- century textbook compilers, Edkins (1864) usually spells the sentential interrogative as mo and writes it as S. However, he occasionally uses the spelling ma, which he says (1864: 218) is "frequently heard in colloquial usage" and may also be written RIj. Wade gives the variant pronunciations mo and ma, with alternate writings ) and nj for each spoken variant. It is possible that ma was the true northern or local Pekingese particle, while mo was a carry-over from earlier Guanhua. Ma has, of course, won out in modern standard Mandarin.

In summary, this brief survey of selected grammatical features suggests parallels with the development of the lexicon. To wit, while the bulk of the pre-nineteenth-century Guanhua syntactic system may indeed have passed over into late Qing standard Mandarin, it seems probable that a number of basic, high-frequency functors in the new koin6 were derived from the Pekingese dialect, or at least from northern dialects generally. Detailed comparative studies are needed before this matter can be fully clarified.

V. CONCLUSIONS

Let us now summarize our findings regarding the history of Mandarin. We began with the intention of showing

that "Mandarin," defined as the standard Chinese koin6 of Ming and Qing times, was not, as is often still asserted, the dialect of Peking. But our engagement with this question has led us beyond it to further considerations. For in the end it would seem that Mandarin was in fact never the dialect of any particular place. Nor was it really a "dialect" at all. In its earliest stages we hypothesize that it was a language with a composite, southerly Central Plains- like phonological structure. This system progressively converged at certain points with that of the city of Nan- king, but it was never really identical with the Nankingese system. On the contrary, it remained "dialectally ab- stract." Mandarin lexicon and syntax may have been of a general literary or text-based character, rather than regionally dialectal in any real sense. Over the centuries, lexicon and syntax remained relatively stable, while the pronunciation shifted dramatically to a Pekingese-like phonology in the mid-nineteenth century. Modern standard Mandarin, which is in no sense the actual dialect of the city of Peking (cf. Hi 1987: 27-31; Chen 1999: 37-41), is the direct descendant of this late nineteenth- century koine.

What we have envisaged here is rather different from the expected history of a "natural" language or dialect, and the reason for this may have been that Mandarin was indeed a koin6 rather than a regional vernacular, as such. In fact, in traditional times it may not even have been the native language of very many people, but rather a second language for nearly everyone who used it.8 This supposi- tion then leads to the question of how such an "unnatu- ral" or second language was learned and transmitted. About this we have at hand some interesting anecdotal evidence. Y. R. Chao (1892-1982) was born near the end of the traditional Guanhua period. His description of the transmission process as he had observed it was as fol- lows: "Most educated persons acquire a Mandarin of sorts either by 'picking it up' from people who speak-or have learned to speak-Mandarin, or merely by adopting the vocabulary of Mandarin novels like the Dream of the Red Chamber without attempting any adjustment in pronunciation" (1948: 7). Some three hundred years earlier Varo had remarked in the preface to his grammar that, just as aspiring Latinists should be thoroughly conver- sant with Cicero, anyone who would learn to speak Man- darin well "should be exposed to all those [present day] Ciceros who in China are in fact the books they call sido

8 Exceptions probably existed in newly settled areas such as the southwest and northwest frontier regions, where military and colonial varieties of the koin6 could have become the primary linguistic media used by many speakers.

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xue /JJ\ ['vernacular novels']." Fifty years after Varo, Premare (1893: 35) was to express a similar view. Thus, it would seem that vernacular literature came to be both a repository of Mandarin lexicon and syntax and the vehi- cle for their transmission during much of the language's history. Regardless of what native dialect one spoke, for correct Mandarin usage it was to sources such as these that one could turn for guidance.

This intimate relationship between spoken Guanhua and the broad corpus of written vernacular or bdihua literature leads to a further consideration. Previous grammatical studies of these texts have sometimes focused on the question of their dialectal underpinnings, even attempting to determine "which dialect" they represent. But our findings suggest that, to the extent that these writings reflect spoken Chinese, they may not be directly con- nected with dialects per se but rather with varieties of the spoken koin6, Guanhua. At most, vernacular texts may contain nothing more dialectal than occasional intrusive regionalisms, like Varo's xeu tung lt, grafted onto the general trunk of the received lexicon and syntax. In the end, the full extent to which spoken Guanhua and vernacular literary language are related remains to be determined by detailed comparison between source materials such as those mentioned here and the broad corpus of vernacular literary texts.

The transmission process for Mandarin phonology is less clear than that for lexicon and syntax. Throughout the life of Ming-Qing Mandarin there were traditional rime tables and related works which dealt in one way or another with Guanhua (see Geng 1992), but these were the baili- wick of adepts in the very specialized field of traditional phonology. It is uncertain to what extent the general run of educated speakers would have delved into them. In the 1730s the central government established schools for Guanhua pronunciation in the provinces of Fijian and Guangdong (Paderni 1988; Geng 1992: 120, n. 1; Masini 1993: 4), but the rest of the country seems to have been left to its own resources.9 For the majority of Guanhua

9 What sort of textbooks were used in the mid-Qing Guanhuh schools remains an interesting question. A possible representa- tive of them may be the somewhat later Zhengyin Qieyun zhtndn

users, acquiring correct pronunciation may have been a rather informal and individual matter, as Chao's observations suggest. This might explain why a large-scale shift of the sort observed in the mid-nineteenth-century Guanhua sound system was more likely to occur in the phonological sphere than in the textually codified areas of lexicon and syntax.

In closing, the above conclusions lead us to a more general reflection on the nature of Chinese koin6s. Ming- Qing Mandarin is the traditional koine which lies closest to the present and which we are best able to observe in detail. For this reason it provides a suggestive model for hypotheses about the nature of even earlier standard languages, such as those of the medieval period, concerning which we have less direct evidence. To begin, we must entertain the possibility that these earlier standard languages were never, within the period of imperial unity at least, the natural dialects of particular places. Secondly and more specifically, we must grapple with the likeli- hood that their phonologies were eclectic and composite and that their lexicons were to some extent text-based and therefore unnaturally constrained by textual norms. And, finally, we must question whether koin6s of this type could ever have been ancestral to true, spoken dialects of later periods, as traditional philologists such as Bernhard Karlgren have sometimes suggested, and whether suc- cessive koines fell into direct lines of historical filiation, of the "Old Chinese > "Middle Chinese" > "Modern Chinese" variety, as has hitherto often been assumed by Chinese historical linguists. The study of Mandarin, the Ming-Qing koin6, is important in its own right as a spe- cialty within Chinese historical linguistics. But beyond that it may serve as a laboratory for the study of traditional Chinese koin6s throughout history.

-E'tEJffi hti (Canton, 1860) of Sha Yizun iy? i4. This work is in fact a collection of tabularly arranged homophone lists. One can imagine that the teaching technique was to impart orally to the students the correct pronunciation of each list and then re- quire them to practice the said reading and memorize all characters in the list. Two more such textbooks, not available to me, have been mentioned by Paderni (1988: 262, n. 20).

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COBLIN: A Brief History of Mandarin51

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