1957 Volume 1957 Issue 31 Pages 8-21
In recent years, there have appeared new interpretations of the Ancient Chinese from the phonemic point of view, e.g. The Phonemes of Ancient Chinese (Supplement to the JAOS No.16 1953) by Samuel E. MARTIN, “Setsuin no imbo o kaishaku -suru”(in the Okayama Daigaku Hobungakubu Kiyo 3, 1954) by Fumio KUSAKABE, and “Chtigokugo no Shiteki-on'inron”(in the Nihon Cita gokugakkai Kaiho 6, 1954) by Akiyasu TODO One of the most controversial problems is how to solve the isolated final in the rhyme The author assumes this final as *aun just as FORREST reconstructed in his The Chinese Language (London 1948), and pushing this assumption to the whole system of finals, he attempts a tentative solution of the system of finals in the Ancient Chinese (represented by the Ts'ie-Yün) as shown on p.16. The apparent self-consistency of the system, however, does not necessarily mean that the Ts'ie-Yün was compiled basing on one dialect as assumed by B. KARLGREN and CHOU Fakao. The author follows the opinion that the Ts'ie-Yün had the characteristics of the Northern standard language reflecting partially the system of prcedent times and also of another dialects. The different usage of fan-ts'ie in Hsiian-Ying's Yi-ts'ie Ching Yin-yi shows that the system of the Ts'se-Yuuml;n had been followed as a norm at that period.