Dear Andrew, <br><br>As a linguist mostly working on tone, I just want to add some remarks to your fourth point. In fact, there are quite a few languages that utilize tone in order to distinguish parts of speech (noun vs. verb) or other grammatical properties (transitive vs. intransitive). <br>
<br>Best,<br>Seunghun Lee<br><br><br><br><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">4.) So you wonder how the
tones were originally attributed to the characters? Does it imply at
some early point in Ancient or Middle Chinese a tone could distinguish
between its use as a noun or verb? (I have to withdraw the 湯 example I
had given between transitive and intransitive because I misread the
entry, it was also between the nominal and verbal usages "boiling water"
and "to boil.")<br>
<br>知:<br></font><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">平(支) verb: to know, realise etc</font><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">去(寘치) noun: knowledge, wisdom etc<br><br>雨:<br>上(麌우) noun: rain</font></div>
<div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">去(遇) verb: to rain</font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div></div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Andrew <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:zatouichi@gmail.com" target="_blank">zatouichi@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><font style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12.800000190734863px" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Dear Professor Ledyard<br>
<br>Thank-you kindly for your response. I'm not sure whether to reply directly or through the mailing list, so will do both.</font><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12.800000190734863px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">
<font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12.800000190734863px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">My giving the tone for 水 as 去 was a careless mistake: sorry for creating any extra confusion. I recognize though that the rhyme scheme of hansi grouped the 上,去 and 入 tones together as 仄聲 which were contrasted against 平聲 (so you only had to know which characters were the 平 tone in order to compose a hansi).</font></div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12.800000190734863px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br>Certainly, I agree there is plenty of emotion and literary value to be found in hansi regardless of the tones and now "invisible" rhyme scheme. But equally it feels like something has been lost if you can't hear the rhyme of a poem! The aim of my enquiry is to try and understand in what manner Joseon poets appreciated hansi themselves (given how many they wrote!) and how much is still remembered.<br>
<br>I've recently been researching the Northern Learning scholar Yu Deuk-gong (유득공 1748-1897) and have made a translation of his poetry cycle 二十一都懷古詩 (The 21 Capital <i>hoegosi</i>). There are anecdotes of his children enjoying these poems and of them being recited. This work and others won him recognition in Beijing as well as Korea. When he was young and poor, there's another anecdote that he joked with his friends they could make money by offering to correct other people's poems in the Seoul neighbourhood where poetry contests were often held. Clearly he was confident of, and recognized for, his technical mastery of hansi and there was a culture of reciting them in some for or other.<br>
<br><br>1.) It seems the ability to pronounce tones when reading hansi had disappeared by the end of the Joseon period (if not much earlier?) However, I'm surprised that there was no melody or substitute for the tones at all. How were they recited when scholars went on picnics with gisaeng (or did they only enjoy sijo)? When yangban children studied hanmun at village schools, did they only chant in a monotonous tone? There must have been some technique to aid memorization: but if there was, it would be equally surprising that it could have been forgotten so entirely during the 20th century.</font></div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12.800000190734863px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12.800000190734863px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">
<font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">At least some memory remains as descriptions exist of how the four tones were pronounced. The brief definitions below were taken from the 민중서림 엣센스 국어사전:<br><b style="font-size:13.333333015441895px"><br>
</b></font></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12.800000190734863px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><b>平聲</b><span style="font-size:13.333333015441895px"> (</span><span style="font-size:13.333333015441895px" lang="EN-US">low):</span><span style="font-size:13.333333015441895px" lang="EN-US"> distinguishes between </span><span style="font-size:13.333333015441895px">上平聲</span><span style="font-size:13.333333015441895px" lang="EN-US"> and </span><span style="font-size:13.333333015441895px">下平聲 </span><span style="font-size:13.333333015441895px" lang="EN-US">low, but both are low and even (順平)</span><br>
</font><p style="margin:0px!important;padding:0px!important;font-size:13.333333015441895px"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><b>上聲</b> (<span lang="EN-US">high):</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span>높고 맹렬한 소리 "<span lang="EN-US">high and strong"</span></font></p>
<p style="margin:0px!important;padding:0px!important;font-size:13.333333015441895px"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><b>去聲</b><span lang="EN-US"> (</span><span lang="EN-US">high):</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span>슬픈 듯이 멀리 굽이치는 소리 "wind<span lang="EN-US">s sadly"</span></font></p>
<p style="margin:0px!important;padding:0px!important;font-size:13.333333015441895px"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><b>入聲</b> (<span lang="EN-US">high):</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span>짧고 빨리 거둬들이는 소리 "<span lang="EN-US">short and quickly ended"</span></font></p>
<font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br>2.) The information on the rhyme dictionaries is very interesting, thank-you.<br><br>3.) I've realised that the "representative characters" I mentioned appearing beside the 平,上,去,入 marker in my character dictionary (the 교학사 한자활용사전) correspond to the "106 韻字" which are described as follows in a Korean blog entry:<br>
</font><p><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">"한자의 사성은 예전에는 네가지가 아니고 무척 많았다고 한다<span lang="EN-US">. </span>그러나 지금은 네 가지만 남게 된 것이다<span lang="EN-US">. </span>통상 시<span lang="EN-US">(</span>詩<span lang="EN-US">)</span>에서 쓰는 시운<span lang="EN-US">(</span>詩韻<span lang="EN-US">)</span>은 <span lang="EN-US">106</span>운을 표준으로 하는 평수운<span lang="EN-US">(</span>平水韻<span lang="EN-US">)</span>을 따르고 있다<span lang="EN-US">.</span>평수운이란 중국 금<span lang="EN-US">(</span>金<span lang="EN-US">)</span>나라의 평수<span lang="EN-US">(</span>平水<span lang="EN-US">) </span>사람 유연 <span lang="EN-US">(</span>劉淵<span lang="EN-US">)</span>이 정리하였다고 해서 붙여진 이름이며 <span lang="EN-US">106</span>운으로 분류하고 있는데 옥편의 맨 끝장에 운자표<span lang="EN-US">(</span>韻字表<span lang="EN-US">)</span>로 표시되어 있다<span lang="EN-US">. </span>여기에 보면 평성 <span lang="EN-US">30</span>운<span lang="EN-US">(</span>상평성<span lang="EN-US">, </span>하평성 각 <span lang="EN-US">15</span>운<span lang="EN-US">), </span>상성 <span lang="EN-US">29</span>운<span lang="EN-US">, </span>거성 <span lang="EN-US">30</span>운<span lang="EN-US">, </span>입성 <span lang="EN-US">17</span>운<span lang="EN-US">, </span>합하여 <span lang="EN-US">106</span>운이다<span lang="EN-US">."</span></font></p>
<p><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="http://blog.daum.net/whatayun/6992326" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">http://blog.daum.net/whatayun/6992326</a> </font></p><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">So it seems they were used as one system for ordering character dictionaries, and are consequently included in the modern character dictionary for reference.</font></div>
<div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br><br>4.) So you wonder how the tones were originally attributed to the characters? Does it imply at some early point in Ancient or Middle Chinese a tone could distinguish between its use as a noun or verb? (I have to withdraw the 湯 example I had given between transitive and intransitive because I misread the entry, it was also between the nominal and verbal usages "boiling water" and "to boil.")<br>
<br>知:<br></font><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">平(支) verb: to know, realise etc</font><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">去(寘치) noun: knowledge, wisdom etc<br><br>雨:<br>上(麌우) noun: rain</font></div>
<div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">去(遇) verb: to rain</font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br>Thanks again to you and anyone else for any further comments.<br><br>sincerely<br>Andrew Logie</font></div>
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