Everything about Rime Table totally explained
A
rime table or
rhyme table is a
syllable chart of the
Chinese language, a significant advance on the
fanqie analysis used in earlier
rime dictionaries. As China's native
phonological model, it tabulates the syllables of
Middle Chinese by their
onsets,
rimes, grades of rime,
tones and other properties.
Tradition holds that rime tables were invented by
Buddhist monks, who were inspired by the
Sanskrit syllable charts in the
Siddham script they used to study the language. The
Song Dynasty Yunjing and
Qiyin lüe are the oldest extant rime tables. Based on numerous internal similarities, linguists conclude they shared a common prototype of phonological tables with accompanying texts, a tradition that may date back to the late
Tang Dynasty. (Baxter 1992: 41)
Structure
A rime table book consists of a number of tabular charts, each devoted to either the "inner" (
nèi 內) or "outer" (
wài 外) part of a particular rime group (
shè 攝).
The inner/outer subdivision is thought to be related to the vocalic heights contrasting
close vowels and
open vowels respectively.
Each
shè (攝) is characterized as either "open" (
kāi 開) and "closed" (
hé 合), which are interpreted to indicate the absence or presence of lip rounding (often transcribed as -w- or -u-).
Within a table, syllables are classified using other features:
- The initial consonant (shēngmǔ 聲母 lit. "sound mother"). A syllable beginning with a vowel is considered to have a "zero initial." Initials are classified according to
- The tone (shēngdiào 聲調 "sound intonation"), using the same four tone names as used in the Qieyun. These tones differ from the four tones of modern Standard Chinese, though related tone systems are retained by some southern varieties. In particular, syllables ending in stops (-p, -t or -k) were classified as the entering tone of the corresponding syllables with nasal endings (-m, -n or -ng).
- The least understood classification is the four děng (等 "class", "grade" or "group"), which Bernhard Karlgren translated as "divisions" while other linguists prefer "grades". The exact nature of the grades is still open to debate, but is believed to describe palatalization (transcribed as the presence or absence of -j- or -i-), retroflex features, vowel quality (high vs. low) or some combination of these.
To illustrate the significance of děng, the science of classifying vowels is called děngyùn (等韻 "division rime") and traditional phonology is děngyùnxué (等韻學 "division rime study").
For example,
Yùnjìng comprises 43 charts covering 16 rime groups.
The following is the first chart (the arabic numerals are modern annotations):
The five big characters on the right-hand side read
Nèi zhuǎn dìyī kāi (內轉第一開). In
Yùnjìng, each chart is called a
zhuǎn (lit. "turn"). The characters indicate that the chart is the first (第一) one in the book, and that the syllables of this chart are "inner" (內) and "open" (開).
Although the preface of
Yunjing lists 36 onsets, the table contains only 23 columns, which means some columns represent more than one onset. This is possible because some onsets only combine with some particular grades of rime: say onset A only combines with grade 1 and 4, and onset B only with grade 2 and 3, then the same column can represent both onset A and B. This kind of space-saving representation can cause confusion, and results in so-called
jiǎděng (假等 "pseudo-grade"): for example, a syllable shown to be grade-4 on the table is in fact grade-3, and finds itself at the grade-4 position only because the slot has been occupied by another syllable.
The 16 rows are grouped by tone into four
yùn, or rimes (represented by the level-toned 東, the rising-toned 董, the departing-toned 送, and the entering-toned 屋). Each
yùn has a row for each of the four grades. The symbol
○ indicates that there's no character with that particular syllable.
The pronunciation of a character as indicated by
fanqie spelling can be known by looking at such a chart. However, due to
sound change, the traditional
fanqie spellings and the rime tables may become incongruous. In such cases some special rules, called
menfa 門法, have been made to resolve the incongruities.
| |
a href=http://tenuis.totallyexplained.com title="tenuis - Totally Explained">Clear
清 |
a href=http://Aspiration__phonetics.totallyexplained.com title="Aspiration (phonetics) - Totally Explained">Aspirate
次清 |
a href=http://Slack_voice.totallyexplained.com title="Slack voice - Totally Explained">Muddy
濁 |
either
清濁 |
lear
清 |
uddy
濁 |
Labials
脣 |
Bilabials | 幫 *[p] |
滂 *[pʰ] |
並 *[b̥] |
明 *[m] |
|
|
| Labio-dentals | 非 *[f] |
(敷 *[fʰ]) |
(奉 *[v̥]) |
|
|
Coronals
舌 |
Alveolar stops | 端 *[t] |
透 *[tʰ] |
定 *[d̥] |
泥 *[n] |
|
|
| Palatals | 知 *[tʲ] |
徹 *[tʲʰ] |
澄 *[d̥ʲ] |
娘 *[nʲ] |
|
|
Sibilants
齒 |
Alveolar | 精 *[ts] |
清 *[tsʰ] |
從 *[d̥z̥] |
|
心 *[s] |
邪 *[z̥]
|
| Palatal/Retroflex | 照 *[tɕ,tʂ] |
穿 *[tɕʰ,tʂʰ] |
牀 *[d̥ʑ̊,d̥ʐ̊] |
|
審 *[ɕ,ʂ] |
禪 *[ʑ̊,ʐ̊]
|
| Velars 牙 | 見 *[k] |
谿 *[kʰ] |
羣 *[ɡ̊] |
疑 *[ŋ] |
|
|
| Gutturals 喉 | 影 *[ʔ] |
|
|
喻 *[x] |
曉 *[ɣ̊] |
匣 *(null)
|
| "Semi-coronal" | |
|
|
來 *[l] |
|
|
| "Semi-sibilant" | |
|
|
日 *[ȷ̃] |
|
|
Further Information
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