Several scholars noted that the pronunciations of 天 “sky” tiān and 風 “wind” fēng in Bai appear to be akin to the western variants of the words attested in the paronomastic gloss dictionary Shìmíng 釋名. I will demonstrate in the current study that there are additional commonalities shared by both Bai and the ancient western dialect, termed Old Western Chinese (OWC) in this study. In both languages, one can identify words with zy- in Middle Chinese (MC) that are pronounced j-. Bai and Old Western Chinese use the same word (椹 shèn) for “fungus”. Furthermore, Old Chinese (OC) cluster *-p/t-s yields -t in both languages in lieu of yielding -j as observed in Middle Chinese. Last but not least, it appears that in both languages, words with *lˤ- (whence MC d-) and -ʔ (whence MC rising tone) are distinct from other words with d- in Middle Chinese. Hence, this paper puts the claim that Bai is akin to Old Western Chinese on a stronger footing. As a side note, judging from the fact that 四 “four” sì contains -t in Old Western Chinese and early Bai, its Old Chinese form most likely ends in *-[t]-s.

Two kinds of grain, “millet, 粟米 sùmǐ” and “husked rice, 稻 dào”, frequently appear in the Liye Qin Slips. Aside from these grains, another character seen in the Liye Qin Slips, nǎo, is thought to represent grain. It also represents the words for “brain, 腦 nǎo” in other excavated documents. Since the archaeological data show that rice cultivation was practised around the middle and lower Yangtze Valley, the homeland of Proto-Hmong Mien (formerly the state of Chu 楚地), the word for “rice plant, 稻 dào” seems to be a loanword from Proto-Hmong Mien *mbləu. The character nǎo is reconstructed as *nˤuʔ, which bears the same onset as the sound for “rice plant (or husked rice)” in North and East Hmongic languages nɯ (< *mbləu). Hence, we propose that the assimilation (*mbl- > *n-) in these languages could have occurred at the latest just before or after the Qin dynasty.

While sound glosses from the Six Dynasties and early Tang provide direct evidence for morphological alternations in Archaic Chinese, studies on the syntax of this language generally disregard these data. This neglect is due in part to perceived unreliability of these sound glosses. In this paper, I first argue that the arguments against their reliability do not stand scrutiny, and that they are not a simple philological curiosity, but have the potential to enrich studies on Archaic Chinese syntax, and plead for more collaboration between syntacticians and historical phonologists.

Loanword analysis is a unique contribution of historical linguistics to our understanding of prehistoric cultural interfaces. As language reflects the lives of its speakers, the substantiation of loanwords draws on the composite evidence from linguistic as well as auxiliary data from archaeology and genetics through triangulation. The Bronze Age of Central Asia is in principle linguistically mute, but a host of recent independent observations that tie languages, cultures and genetics together in various ways invites a comprehensive reassessment of six highly diagnostic loanwords (‘seven’, ‘name/fame’, ‘sister-in-law’, ‘honey’, ‘metal’ and ‘horse’) that are associated with the Bronze Age. Moreover, they are shared between Indo-European, Uralic, Turkic and sometimes Old Chinese. The successful identification of the interfaces for these loanwords can help settle longstanding debates on languages, migrations and the items themselves. Each item is analysed using the comparative method with reference to the archaeological record to assess the plausibility of a transfer. I argue that the six items can be dated to have entered Central and East Asian languages from immigrant Indo-European languages spoken in the Afanasievo and Andronovo cultures, including a novel source for the ‘horse’ in Old Chinese.

In this article we review the newly published fourth-century bce manuscript of the Book of Odes (Shi jing 詩經) in the collection of Anhui University. We describe the preservation and material features of the manuscript, discuss issues of provenance, and compare the text with the received version of the Odes. We conclude that the text of the Odes was already fundamentally stable by the date of the manuscript, and that written versions like the Anda manuscript provided important support for the stability of the text. However, we also argue that the manuscript shows signs of having been produced from memory, rather than sight-copying from another manuscript. We suggest that the function of the Anda manuscript was to support the learning and memorization of the Odes.

The present paper discusses the hypothesis according to which a devoicing sound shift *sb- > sp-, *sd- > st-, *sg- > sk- took place in pre-Tibetan. I show that all examples supporting this putative sound shift have better explanations, and that this hypothesis creates more problems than it solves. In addition, I discuss data from modern Tibetic varieties, showing that no typological parallel for such a sound shift is attested.

In his Research Note, “Shun 舜 and the Interpretation of Early Orthographical Variation,” in this issue of Early China, Jonathan Smith made several claims about the early evolution of the graph 舜, in particular suggesting that it should be identified with the graph lin 粦 that occurs in certain Western Zhou bronze inscriptions. While showing that these claims are ill-supported, I nevertheless concur in the identification with the bronze-inscriptional graph, but show that the word being written is 濬 ~ 浚 “deep, profound” and in no way connected with lin 粦.

The graph used to write the name of the mythical emperor Shun 舜 in received texts is a puzzling one. It is not obvious that any component in the graph, as it appears today, is semantically motivated, nor is there any element well suited to representing the name Shun phonetically. Texts like the Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 preserve an alternate writing of the name under the rubric “guwen 古文,” but this too is hard to analyze in terms of the semantic and phonological motivation of the graph components. Without a clear understanding of why the name Shun is written the way it is, a reliable reconstruction of its Old Chinese pronunciation is difficult, and many of the graphic and phonological associations with “Shun” and related words made by early Chinese script, texts, and commentaries would be opaque.

A graph that is clearly writing the name Shun, seen for the first time in two of the Warring States-period manuscripts from Guodian 郭店, partially resolved these difficulties, and in particular the question of the phonological spelling of the name. This in turn allows a series of interesting textual problems to be resolved. This article presents a selection of these, and discusses their implications for the history of the Chinese script and for textual transmission.