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

[Werner Sasse]

Dear Andrew,just a stray note, it is about 20 years ago that I studied some problems with tone in Chinese....I remember that tone in Chinese developed by loss of some final consonants which were morphemic consonant additions to the roots of words. And depending on which consonant was lost, different tones appeared. Initial consonant clusters, also based on morphological additions, may also have had their hand in the process. Therefore the distinction between the meaning of a Chinese character probably indeed reflects grammatical difference. Sinological studies on this process are many, or rather: were many some 20 years ago; I never followed up.
As for the tendency of (some?) Korean reciters not to bother about tones, it makes sense. Korean is not and never was a tone language, the Middle Korean "tone markers" have to do with pitch accent and - mostly not taken enough into consideration - length. The inventor(s) of Hunmin-jeongeum were blinded because they were sinologists. (To those who have some pretty worrysome arguments for the contrary opinion: please, don't beat me)As for children learning Hanja in a village school (greetings, Gary), what I heard when passing by in the late 60ies, there was just one way: rhythm. They would recite 새김 +pronunciation somewhat like di-di-bum, di-di-bum... (most 새김 are 2-syllabic, and 1-syllabic and 3-syllabic ones were squezed into this rhythm)Best,Werner SasseFrom: juliolee at gmail.com
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2012 18:29:26 -0400
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Subject: Re: [KS] reply to Gary Ledyard's useful comments - from Andrew Logie

Dear Andrew, 

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). 



Best,
Seunghun Lee



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


On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Andrew <zatouichi at gmail.com> wrote:


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 30운(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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