[KS] reply to Gary Ledyard's useful comments - from Andrew Logie

[Andrew]

Dear Professor Ledyard

Thank-you kindly for your response.  I'm not sure whether to reply directly
or through the mailing list, so will do both.

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).

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.

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 *hoegosi*).  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.


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.

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:
*
*
*平聲* (low): distinguishes between 上平聲 and 下平聲 low, but both are low and
even (順平)

*上聲* (high): 높고 맹렬한 소리 "high and strong"

*去聲* (high): 슬픈 듯이 멀리 굽이치는 소리 "winds sadly"

*入聲* (high): 짧고 빨리 거둬들이는 소리 "short and quickly ended"

2.)  The information on the rhyme dictionaries is very interesting,
thank-you.

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:

"한자의 사성은 예전에는 네가지가 아니고 무척 많았다고 한다. 그러나 지금은 네 가지만 남게 된 것이다. 통상 시(詩)에서 쓰는 시운(
詩韻)은 106운을 표준으로 하는 평수운(平水韻)을 따르고 있다.평수운이란 중국 금(金)나라의 평수(平水) 사람 유연 (劉淵)이
정리하였다고 해서 붙여진 이름이며 106운으로 분류하고 있는데 옥편의 맨 끝장에 운자표(韻字表)로 표시되어 있다. 여기에 보면 평성 30
운(상평성, 하평성 각 15운), 상성 29운, 거성 30운, 입성 17운, 합하여 106운이다."

http://blog.daum.net/whatayun/6992326
So it seems they were used as one system for ordering character
dictionaries, and are consequently included in the modern character
dictionary for reference.


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.")

知:
平(支)  verb: to know, realise etc
去(寘치) noun: knowledge, wisdom etc

雨:
上(麌우) noun: rain
去(遇) verb: to rain

Thanks again to you and anyone else for any further comments.

sincerely
Andrew Logie
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