Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics

Volume 2
De–Med

For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV

 General Editor
Rint Sybesma
(Leiden University)

Associate Editors
Wolfgang Behr
(University of Zurich)
Yueguo Gu
(Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
Zev Handel
(University of Washington)
C.-T. James Huang
(Harvard University)
James Myers
(National Chung Cheng University)

For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV

 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
CHINESE LANGUAGE
AND LINGUISTICS
Volume 2
De–Med

General Editor
Rint Sybesma

Associate Editors
Wolfgang Behr
Yueguo Gu
Zev Handel
C.-T. James Huang
James Myers

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2017

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13 děng 等 (division and rank)
Děng 等 (Division and Rank)
1. Int roduct io n
Děng 等 (‘division’, ‘rank’, or ‘grade’) is a key
term in Chinese historical phonology. The origi-
nal meaning of děng in → traditional Chinese
phonology is in reference to the four rows found
in early → rime tables; their correlation with
character pronunciations remains a matter of
uncertainty and debate. However, from the 17th
century onwards, scholars began to redefijine děng
as a classifijicatory feature of rimes in rime books
and, by extension, of the characters belonging
to those rimes. It is this later extended meaning
that modern linguists most frequently refer to
today, with the implication that this classifijica-
tory feature is related to the → Middle Chinese
(MC) pronunciation of syllable fijinals. The two
meanings of děng are thus related both notion-
ally and historically, but must be carefully distin-
guished. While the two meanings can be defijined
in terms of rime books, rime tables, and the
general framework of traditional Chinese pho-
nology, their interpretations and relationship to
pronunciation remain controversial today. The
fact that both meanings are represented by the
same Chinese term can be a source of confusion
for scholarly discussion and analysis.
Here, I follow Norman (2006) in using the Eng-
lish terms rank and division to distinguish the
original and extended meanings of děng, respec-
tively. (The English term grade is also used by
some scholars; see Branner 2006a:19–20 for more
details on English translation.) Rank (followed
by an Arabic numeral) refers to the row num-
ber on which a character appears in early rime
tables such as Yùnjìng 韻鏡, while division (fol-
lowed by a Roman numeral) refers to the type
of rime a certain character belongs to in early
rime books such as Qièyùn 切韻. For example,
the character 初 (chū ‘beginning’) belongs to
Rank 2 and Division III since it appears in the
second row in rime tables but is in a rime (the
Yú 魚 ‘fijish’ Rime) that has been categorized as
Division III (Figure 1). The reason for the discrep-
ancy will be explained below.
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2. R a n k i n E a r ly R i me T a b le s
2.1 Origin of děng
The term děng fijirst appears in one of the manu-
script fragments attributed to Shǒu Wēn 守溫
(dates unknown), excavated from Dūnhuáng
敦煌, and dated to the 9th or 10th century (Zhōu
Zǔmó 1966). The fragment is not a rime table
itself, but it does sort syllables into the four ranks
found in the later rime tables, and its basis for
this categorization is said to be the “lightness”
(qīng 輕) or “heaviness” (zhòng 重) of those syl-
lables. Unfortunately, no information is given
about the meaning of these notions, or how
the four ranks are derived from them (for more
details see Coblin 2006).
In the the early rime tables that survive from
the Sòng, syllables are arranged into four dif-
ferent rows, which are called děng (Figure 1).
Besides děng, several other names were used to
refer to these rows. For example, the term wèi
位 ‘place’ is found in the preface of Yùnjìng, and
each row was designated with a distinct name
in Shào Yōng’s 邵雍 (1011–1077) work Huángjí
jīngshì 皇極經世 (Lǐ Xīnkuí 1983:26–27). It is
clear that the distribution of characters across
the rows of rime tables was related to some
aspect of their pronunciation. However, it is
not easy to determine what that aspect might
be. Based on our limited knowledge of medi-
eval Chinese pronunciation, we can observe cor-
relations between row placement and various
features of pronunciation: vowel height, palatal-
ization, co-occurrence with certain types of ini-
tial consonants, and so on. But no single feature
or set of features neatly explains the complete
distribution pattern, and scholars difffer enor-
mously in their explanations.
Although it has been proposed that some
rime-table concepts and terminology may
have Indic origins (Yú 1984:411–412), to date
nobody has successfully identifijied a corre-
spondent to rank in Indic phonology. It may
be the case that the idea of rank is an innova-
tion by Chinese native speakers who had some
knowledge of Indian phonology through study
of Siddham.
 Děng 等 (Division and Rank) 14

Figure 1. Table 11 from Yùnjìng showing the character 初 of the Yú 魚 Rime (circled) in Rank 2 position. Characters
from two other rimes also appear on this table. For an explanation of the layout and content of the table, → Rime
Tables.

2.2 Děng, zìmǔ 字母, and rime table phonology
Děng is part of the more sophisticated appa-
ratus of Chinese phonological analysis that
arose with the rime tables. Prior to that, rime
books grouped character pronunciations into
homophone groups by tone and rime, and also
provided → fǎnqiè 反切 spellings that show an
ability to decompose syllables into initials and
fijinals. But they did not provide any analysis of
segmental elements or features such as place of
articulation and vowel position.
Děng and zìmǔ ‘(initial) consonants’ are two
classifijications absent from early rime books
that are regarded as precursors to the analytical
framework found in the Chinese rime tables.
In the Shǒu Wēn fragments where děng fijirst
appeared, 30 zìmǔ were listed. (Later rime tables
identify 36 zìmǔ.) Děng and zìmǔ are so closely
related that it has been suggested that the for-
mer concept may originate from the latter (Lǐ
Xīnkuí 1983:50). Not only do the terms arise
together in the development of the traditional
rime table apparatus, they also show a clear cor-
relation in terms of co-occurrence patterns. The
correlation between rank and zìmǔ is illustrated
by Table 1, which summarizes the relationship
between rank and the 36 zìmǔ (classifijied into
seven main categories, correlating with the
columnar divisions seen in Figure 1) in the early
rime table Yùnjìng.
For example, we can see from Table 1 that
within the chǐyīn 齒音 ‘tooth sounds’ (C) cat-
egory, characters whose initials are in the chǐtóu
齒頭 ‘tooth head’ sub-category (Ca, recon-
structed as dental stops) are placed only in
Ranks 1 and 4, while those whose initials are in
the zhèngchǐ 正齒 ‘proper tooth’ sub-category
(Cb, reconstructed as retroflex stops) are placed
only in Ranks 2 and 3.
Among the seven main categories of zìmǔ, four
of them (R, L, H, K) have no sub-categories and
are distributed across all four ranks, while two
of them (C, T) have two sub-categories which
are in complementary distribution by rank (Ca
and Ta co-occur with Ranks 1 and 4, and Cb and

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15 Děng 等 (Division and Rank)
Table 1. A summary table of the relationship between děng and zìmǔ in Yùnjìng. (The original Chinese designations
for zìmǔ classes are on the left; these are presented notationally on the right.)

舌音齒 喉音 齒音 牙音 舌音 唇音 RL H C K T P
1 半舌 喉 齒頭 牙 舌頭 唇 1 L H Ca K Ta Pa
2 (半舌) 喉 正齒 牙 舌上 唇 2 (L) H Cb K Tb Pa
3 半齒 半舌 喉 正齒 牙 舌上 唇輕/唇重 3 R L H Cb K Tb Pa/Pb
4 半舌 喉 齒頭 牙 舌頭 唇 4 L H Ca K Ta Pa

The zìmǔ categories and sub-categories are, from right to left:

P chúnyīn 唇音 ‘lip sounds’: Pa chúnzhòng 唇重 ‘heavy lip’, Pb chúnqīng 唇輕
‘light lip’;
T shéyīn 舌音 ‘tongue sounds’: Ta shétóu 舌頭 ‘tongue head’, Tb shéshàng 舌上
‘tongue top’;
K yáyīn 牙音 ‘molar sounds’;
C chǐyīn 齒音 ‘tooth sounds’: Ca chǐtóu 齒頭 ‘tooth head’, Cb zhèngchǐ 正齒
‘proper tooth’;
H hóuyīn 喉音 ‘throat sounds’;
L bàn shéyīn 半舌音 ‘half tongue sound’; and
R bàn chǐyīn 半齒音 ‘half tooth sound’.
(For phonetic interpretations of these terms, which underlie the capital-letter abbreviations used
here, → Middle Chinese Phonology).

Tb co-occur with Ranks 2 and 3). (For category
P in Rank 3, two diffferent sub-categories are
found, but they are in complementary distribu-
tion across rimes.) Whether the compilers of
early rime tables were aware of them or not, the
correlation patterns between děng and zìmǔ are
similar to the phonotactic constraints between
initials and rimes that are observed by a modern
linguist.
3. From Ran k to Di vi si on: Th e
Ext e nde d Me a ni ng of d ěng
When later scholars extended the concept of
děng (as row or rank) to classify features of rimes
in early rime books, the meaning of the term
děng was correspondingly modifijied.
3.1 Contributions by Jiāng Yǒng, Chén Lǐ, and
Bernhard Karlgren
Děng had always been a term referring to the
rows of rime tables until the Qīng scholar Jiāng
Yǒng 江永 (1681–1762) fijirst related the term děng
to the rimes in rime books. In Sìshēng Qièyùnbiǎo
四聲切韻表, he classifijied each rime according
to the distribution pattern of its characters in
the early rime tables (as seen below in Table
2). Later, another Qīng scholar, Chén Lǐ 陳澧
(1810–1882), made this relationship more explicit
in his work Qièyùnkǎo 切韻考 analyzing the
fǎnqiè spellings of Qièyùn. In his landmark stud-
ies on Chinese historical phonology (Karlgren
1915–1926), → Bernhard Karlgren (1889–1978)
applies a similar method as Chén Lǐ. In this
manner, děng was shifted from a number refer-
ring to rows of rime tables to a number used to
classify rime-book rimes according to how their
characters were distributed across the rows of
rime tables, as described below.
3.2 Emergence of division and its relation
to rank
The extended meaning of děng, or division,
emerges as scholars classify rimes (collections of
rhyming characters in early rime books) accord-
ing to their distribution in early rime tables,
as discovered by Jiāng Yǒng and others. If the
rime-table positions of characters belonging to a
single rime are analyzed, four basic distribution
patterns emerge, as illustrated in Table 2. These

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 Děng 等 (Division and Rank) 16

patterns correlate to a high degree with rank,
and it is on this basis that the rimes are assigned
a division number.
Rimes whose characters are placed exclusively
in rows 1, 2, or 4 are assigned Divisions I, II, and
IV, respectively. As an example, see Figure 2.
In these cases rank and division are identi-
cal. Rimes whose characters are placed mostly
in row 3 but also in rows 2 and 4 are assigned
Division III. Thus Division-III characters include
characters of Ranks 2, 3, and 4. An example is the
Yú rime seen in Figure 1. According to the fǎnqiè
spellings assigned to these characters in early
rime books, they all have the same Middle Chi-
nese fijinal. Calling them all “Division III” char-
acters thus reflects the assumption that děng
correlates with a feature of the fijinal. Recall the
earlier example of 初 (chū ‘beginning’), which
is found in the Cb column of row 2 as part of the
pattern labeled “Division III rime” in Table 2. It
is considered a Division III character in recogni-
tion of the fact that, despite its row 2 placement,
it has the same Middle Chinese fijinal as charac-
ters placed in row 3. What is of most interest
here is that, because of the correlation between
zìmǔ and rank seen in Table 1, the classifijication
of a rime-book rime into one of four divisions
could be made by observation of which initial
consonants occur in characters belonging to that
rime, without reference to the rime-table rank
of characters. For example, we could use the
criterion “all characters in the rime have initials
only of types H, Cb, K, Tb, Pa” to assign rimes
to Division II, even without knowledge of their
placement in row 2 of the rime tables. (The only
exception is that Division I and Division IV are
not distinguishable without reference to row
position in rime tables, as they share the same
occurrence pattern of initial consonants.) There-
fore, the category of děng as division, although
it originates from the concept of děng as rank,
is to some extent independent of it, and can be
defijined instead based on the phonotactic pat-
terns of rimes according to their relationship
with initials.
Also worth noting is that Table 2 is only a
simplifijied summary of the distribution of the
four divisions of rimes. In particular, if we look
at Division-III rimes in detail, we fijind that they
can be further divided into several subgroups
according to their combination patterns with
zìmǔ (see Zhōu Fǎgāo 1948; Lǐ Róng 1956; Huáng
1996 for further discussion). Figure 1 shows only
the simplest pattern for a Division-III rime.
As for why characters in the same rime that
share the same fijinal should be distributed across
three diffferent rows of the rime tables, as in
Figure 1, scholars have offfered diffferent explana-
tions for the discrepancy. It has been proposed
that early rime-table compilers were confused
or made mistakes; that the structure of the rime
tables (including the placement of more than

Table 2. Distribution patterns of the four divisions in Yùnjìng. (The letters represent the zìmǔ categories from
Table 1.)

1 L H Ca K Ta Pa 1 L H Ca K Ta Pa
2 (L) H Cb K Tb Pa 2 (L) H Cb K Tb Pa
3 R L H Cb K Tb Pa/Pb 3 R L H Cb K Tb Pa/Pb
4 L H Ca K Ta Pa 4 L H Ca K Ta Pa
Division I rime Division II rime

1 L H Ca K Ta Pa 1 L H Ca K Ta Pa
2 (L) H Cb K Tb Pa 2 (L) H Cb K Tb Pa
3 R L H Cb K Tb Pa/Pb 3 R L H Cb K Tb Pa/Pb
4 L H Ca K Ta Pa 4 L H Ca K Tb Pa
Division III rime Division IV rime

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17 Děng 等 (Division and Rank)

Figure 2. Table 3 from Yùnjìng showing the arrangement of characters in four second-division rimes.

one initial consonant in a single row) forced
compilers to systematically move some charac-
ters into the “wrong” row; and that diffferences
in dialect or time period account for the discrep-
ancy between rime-table placement and rime-
book rime groupings.
4. Re const ruc ti on of d ěng i n
Middle Ch in ese
In the late 19th century, the pioneering West-
ern scholars working on the reconstruction of
Middle Chinese phonology relied almost exclu-
sively on late rime tables in the → Kāngxī Zìdiǎn
康熙字典 (1716). Zenone Volpicelli (1856–1932)
and Simon Hartwich Schaank (1861–1935) are
two representative scholars of this period. Their
goal was to provide a phonetic interpretation
of rank.
Volpicelli (1896) used the dialect forms
contributed by E.H. Parker to Giles’s diction-
ary (Giles 1892) to compile a list of modern
correspondences to the characters in the rime
tables in order to test his theory that the four
ranks corresponded to the four vowels /o, a,
e, i/ (Pulleyblank 1995). In contrast, Schaank
(1897) proposed that Ranks 3 and 4 have medial
-i- while Ranks 1 and 2 do not. The diffference
between Ranks 1 and 4 on the one hand and
Ranks 2 and 3 on the other is that the latter two
have palatalized initials (Branner 2006b).
In his monumental work (Karlgren 1915–
1926), Karlgren not only provided a new recon-
struction of Middle Chinese, but also shifted the
focus of reconstruction from rank to division.
This was a result of his interest in reconstruct-
ing the earlier language underlying the Qièyùn
rime book, based on the assumption that the
rime tables were valuable only as an imperfect
reflection of rime book phonological categories.
According to this view, echoing a criticism ear-
lier made by Chén Lǐ, the placement of some
Division-III characters in rows 2 or 4 of the
rime tables was an erroneous practice. Henri
Maspero (1883–1945), though he disagreed with
many details of Karlgren’s reconstruction, also

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 Děng 等 (Division and Rank)
focused on the reconstruction of division rather
than rank (Maspero 1920).
Table 3. Reconstruction of MC values of rank and
division by pioneering scholars, using example syllables
with initial *k
Rank Volpicelli Schaank Division Karlgren
(1896) (1897) (1915–1926)
Rank 1 *ko- *ka- Division I *kɑ-
Rank 2 *ka- *kja- Division II *kja-
(> ka-)
Rank 3 *ke- *kjia- Division III *kjɛ-
Rank 4 *ki- *kia- Division IV *kie-
It was Pulleyblank (1970–1971) who re-established
the idea that the rime tables faithfully reflect a
synchronic system of a language independent
of the Middle Chinese that underlies Qièyùn.
He called this language Late Middle Chinese
(LMC), in opposition to the Qièyùn language
Early Middle Chinese (EMC). In this view, the
observed diffferences between division and rank
reflect diffferences in two phonological systems.
For example, the discrepancy between Division
III and Rank 2 for the character 初 (chū ‘begin-
ning’) is explained as a shift of that syllable’s
phonological features from Early Middle Chi-
nese to Late Middle Chinese. This view has been
accepted and developed by some scholars (Chan
2006; Mài 2008; among others), but rejected by
others (Pān Wénguó 1997, Norman 2006), who
believe that rank is a manifestation of co-occur-
rence relationships among initials and rimes,
and thus does not necessarily have any coherent
phonetic value. In other words, the placement of
初 (chū ‘beginning’) in the second row does not
mean that its fijinal has a diffferent phonological
feature from characters placed in row 3, only that
its placement is determined in part by its ini-
tial consonant. These two diffferent views on the
nature of rank are still a matter of debate today.
In comparison with the reconstructions by
the three pioneering scholars shown in Table 3,
many diffferent proposals have been made for
the reconstruction of Middle Chinese rank and
division. Much of the debate has focused on the
presence or absence of medial elements (vocalic
For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV
18
*-i- and glide *-j-). Maspero (1920) argued that
there was no such medial for Division II rimes,
a view accepted by Karlgren and later scholars.
Arisaka (1937) and Lù (1939) independently pro-
posed that there was no medial for Division IV
rimes. This view was followed by Lǐ Róng (1956),
Baxter (1992), Zhèngzhāng (2003), and many
others, while Lǐ Fāngguì (1981) and Dīng (2006)
follow Karlgren and Maspero in reconstructing
medial *-i- for Division IV rimes.
5. T h e O r i g i n o f t h e Fo ur D i v i s i o n s
i n O ld C h i n e s e
If divisions reflect actual phonotactic patterns of
Middle Chinese, it is natural to ask about their
origins in → Old Chinese (OC). The fact that the
divisions show cooccurrence restrictions with
both initials and rimes suggests that they arose
from some of the same Old Chinese condition-
ing factors that led to initial and rime splitting
from Old Chinese to Middle Chinese. From the
perspective of these diachronic developments,
the most fundamental distinction is between
Divisions I, II and IV (collectively Type A) on the
one hand and Division III (Type B) on the other.
Within Type A, there is now a general scholarly
consensus that Division IV arose from an OC
high front vowel (such as *i or *e), Division I
arose from vowels other than high front, and
Division II arose from OC medial *-r- (Yakhon-
tov 1960). There is, however, still no consensus
on the phonetic feature that distinguishes Type
B = Division III from Type A. A wide variety of
proposals have been made (Pulleyblank 1962,
1977–1978; Starostin 1989; Norman 1994; Sūn
2005; Schuessler 2006; Ferlus 2009; Pān Wùyún
2014). The fact that there seems to be no cor-
relate in other Sino-Tibetan languages to the
Type A/B distinction (Handel 2009) makes the
ultimate origin of the OC distinction still harder
to identify.
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 Derivation by Tone Change
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Ruiqing Shen
Derivation by Tone Change
translated by Annelous Stiggelbout
Derivation by tone change refers to a type of
word formation in which a new word is derived
by changing the tone of the original word. For
example, yī 衣 (MC *’jɨj, level tone) is a noun
meaning ‘clothing’. The changed-tone word yì
衣 (MC *’jɨjH, departing tone) is the derived verb
‘to wear (clothes), to clothe’. This type of deriva-
tion is systematic. For example, guān 冠 (MC
*kwan, level tone) is a noun meaning ‘cap’, and
the changed-tone word guàn 冠 (MC *kwanH,
departing tone) is a verb meaning ‘to wear
(a cap)’. (Middle Chinese reconstructions are
given in the system of Baxter 1992.)
Historically, derivation by tone change was
actually also related to changes in grammatical
meaning. For example, yǐn 飲 (MC *’imX, rising
tone) is an ordinary transitive verb meaning ‘to
drink’ (ex. yǐn jiǔ 飲酒 ‘to drink alcohol’). The
changed-tone word yìn 飲 (MC *’imH, departing
tone) is a causative verb (ex. Jìn hóu yìn Zhào
Dùn jiǔ 晉侯飲趙盾酒 ‘The duke of Jìn forced
Zhào Dùn to drink alcohol’, from the Zuǒ Zhuàn:
Xuān Gōng Èr Nián 左傳：宣公二年). Apart
from tone change, new words could also be
derived by changing the initial from voiceless
to voiced or vice versa, changing the fijinal, etc.
(→ Old Chinese Morphology). Later, with the
decline of overt morphology in Chinese, mor-
phologically diffferent forms of the same original
word were reanalyzed and considered separate
words. Since most examples of related word
For use by the Author only | © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV
20
pairs were distinguished by tone, this phenom-
enon was termed “derivation by tone change”.
The term remains prevalent even though many
scholars now believe that the morphological
processes originally involved segmental afffijixes
which only later engendered tonal distinctions.
Interest in this phenomenon has existed for a
long time. Suí dynasty scholar Lù Démíng 陸德
明 (556–627) was the fijirst to systematically col-
lect information on this in his Jīngdiǎn shìwén 經
典釋文 [Exegetic notes to the classical canon].
In this work, Lù annotated fourteen classical pre-
Qín books, consulting over 230 works by various
authors from the Hàn, Wèi, and Six Dynasties
periods to give → fǎnqiè 反切 annotations for
the pronunciation of over 70,000 words. Many
later works take their source material from this
book. Most notable of these is the Qún jīng
yīnbiàn 群經音辨 [Diffferentiation of the sounds
in the Classics] by the Northern Sòng scholar Jiǎ
Chāngcháo 賈昌朝 (997/8–1065). He set out to
sort and classify the variant character readings
found in the Jīngdiǎn shìwén, and provided an
explanation for the relationship between pro-
nunciation and meaning in almost a thousand
sets of such variants. His explanations in turn
became an invaluable resource for later genera-
tions of scholars. It should be noted that the pro-
nunciations collected in the Qún jīng yīnbiàn are
somewhat abbreviated. For example, the char-
acter fèng 奉 has three diffferent pronunciations,
namely MC *bwongX, *phwongX, and *bwongH,
but only the former two are included.
Some, like Qīng dynasty scholars Gù Yánwǔ
顧炎武, Qián Dàxīn 錢大昕, and Duàn Yùcái
段玉裁, questioned or disagreed with what the
materials on variant readings meant. Influenced
by Yán Zhītuī’s 顏之推 (531–591) Yán shì jiāxùn:
Yīn cí piān 顏氏家訓：音辭篇 [Teachings of
the Yán family: On sounds and words], they
were of the opinion that tone change was an
artifijicial distinction invented by teachers of the
Classics during the Six Dynasties period (Bran-
ner 2003:53–63). This point of view became very
influential, so that even today some people doubt
the veracity of sources on changed tones. How-
ever, modern research shows that variant read-
ings have existed in Chinese since ancient times,
and that not only there are regular patterns