A Sample of eighteenth century spoken Mandarin from North ...merovech/voynich/voynich_manchu...A Sample of eighteenth century spoken Mandarin from North China In: Cahiers de linguistique

South W. Coblin

A Sample of eighteenth century spoken Mandarin from NorthChinaIn: Cahiers de linguistique - Asie orientale, vol. 32 n°2, 2003. pp. 195-244.

RésuméLes dialogues chinois du Qïngwén qïmeng, manuel mandchou destiné à des lecteurs chinois, offrent un large aperçu dumandarin parlé de Chine du nord au milieu du dix-huitième siècle. Dans la version du texte qui est ici examinée, une transcriptionmandchoue est adjointe au texte chinois. On étudiera ici certains traits phonologiques, lexicaux et syntaxiques inhérents au textechinois. Une attention particulière est portée au développement du mandarin du nord en tant que koinè ainsi qu'à la relation decette koinè à son pendant plus prestigieux, le mandarin méridional de la région de Nankin, L'article se termine par quelquesréflexions sur la voie de propagation que le mandarin du nord a suivie en s'imposant comme variété de koinè dominante au dix-huitième siècle.

AbstractThe Chinese dialogues in the Qïngwén qïméng, a Manchu textbook for Chinese readers, provide an extended sample of spokennorthern Guânhuà from the mid- eighteenth century. And one version of this text, to be examined here, adds Manchutranscriptional forms for the Chinese text. In the present paper certain phonological, lexical and syntactic features of the form ofChinese underlying the text are examined with specific reference to the development of northern Guânhuà as a koine and to therelationship of this koine to its more prestigious counterpart, the southern Guânhuà of the Nanking area. The paper ends withsome thoughts about the route followed by northern Guânhuà as it became the dominant koine variety during the nineteenthcentury.

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Coblin South W. A Sample of eighteenth century spoken Mandarin from North China. In: Cahiers de linguistique - Asie orientale,vol. 32 n°2, 2003. pp. 195-244.

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A sample of eighteenth century spoken Mandarin from North China

South W. COBLIN

The Chinese dialogues in the Qïngwén qïméng, a Manchu textbook for Chinese readers, provide an extended sample of spoken northern Guânhuà from the mid- eighteenth century. And one version of this text, to be examined here, adds Manchu transcriptional forms for the Chinese text. In the present paper certain phonological, lexical and syntactic features of the form of Chinese underlying the text are examined with specific reference to the development of northern Guânhuà as a koine and to the relationship of this koine to its more prestigious counterpart, the southern Guânhuà of the Nanking area. The paper ends with some thoughts about the route followed by northern Guânhuà as it became the dominant koine variety during the nineteenth century.

Key words : Qïngwén qimeng, Mandarin, phonology, grammar, lexicon, Northern Guânhuà, Southern Guânhuà.

Les dialogues chinois du Qïngwén qïmeng, manuel mandchou destiné à des lecteurs chinois, offrent un large aperçu du mandarin parlé de Chine du nord au milieu du dix-huitième siècle. Dans la version du texte qui est ici examinée, une transcription mandchoue est adjointe au texte chinois. On étudiera ici certains traits phonologiques, lexicaux et syntaxiques inhérents au texte chinois. Une attention particulière est portée au développement du mandarin du nord en tant que koinè ainsi qu'à la relation de cette koinè à son pendant plus prestigieux, le mandarin méridional de la région de Nankin, L'article se termine par quelques réflexions sur la voie de propagation que le mandarin du nord a suivie en s'imposant comme variété de koinè dominante au dix-huitième siècle.

Mots-clés : Qïngwén qimeng, mandarin, phonologie, grammaire, lexique, Guânhuà du nord, Guânhuà du sud.

Cahiers de Linguistique - Asie Orientale 32(2): 195-244 (2003) © CRLAO-EHESS 54, Bd Raspail 75006 Paris 0153-3320/2003/032-195

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1. INTRODUCTION

The eighteenth century was a particularly significant period in the history of standard language in China. Throughout the Ming and QTng dynasties the national Chinese koine was called Guânhuà ИПп§, and for much of this period the form of Guânhuà which had the highest prestige was rooted in the Yangtze watershed, centered on the city of Nanking. Standard Guânhuà of this time was not simply the Nankingese dialect, as is sometimes averred; but it does seem to have had a Jiâng-Huai-like base, especially as regards its sound system.

A variety of the Guânhuà koine was of course also spoken in north China, where the city of Peking had been the political capital of the country since 1421. Particularly after the founding of Qïng dynasty in 1644 its cultural influence also steadily increased along with its political importance. At the beginning of the eighteenth century foreign missionaries, though taking some note of northern-type Guânhuà, had little interest in learning it. For them it was a less prestigious way of speaking the standard language. If one wished to study that language, they felt it was the so-called "Nankingese" variety which had to be learned. But by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the situation had changed significantly. According to Robert Morrison (1782-1834), in his day the northern realization of Guânhuà was the preferred one not only in the Manchu court but also among an increasing number of officials outside the court itself, and even beyond the capital. He observed, "A Tartar-Chinese Dialect is now gradually gaining ground, and if the Dynasty continues long, will finally prevail" (1815-23, Part I, Vol. 1: x). And Morrison was right, for by ca. 1860 northern Guânhuà had triumphed as the preferred form of standard Chinese, and in the following decades the southern variety literally disappeared, so thoroughly in fact that until recent decades its very existence was forgotten by the sinological world (Coblin 1997; 2000).

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We now know quite a bit about both the sound system and the grammar of southern or "Nankingese" Guânhuà, for European missionaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries described it in considerable detail in a series of grammars, dictionaries, and chrestomathies. And its terminal stages have been chronicled in similar works of the nineteenth century. But the phonology and grammar of the contemporaneous northern Guânhuà is not nearly so well recorded. The Europeans, probably reflecting native Chinese bias,1 dismissed it as a "Tartar Chinese"; and the Chinese themselves had no alphabetic means to record it, nor apparently any interest in doing so. Nonetheless, samples of it do survive. For example, aspects of its pronunciation appear to be reflected in certain Korean transcriptional materials from the eighteenth century (Kim 1991, Chap. 5). A far more striking example, however is the text to be discussed in the present paper.

The work in question is a bilingual Manchu-Chinese text, entitled Giyan man han ioi manjeo tao huwa cing wen ki meng ШШ ШШШ')МШШШЗСЩШ, dated 1761 and held by the Тбуб Bunko.2 It consists of colloquial dialogues in Manchu and Chinese, the Chinese part being given first in Manchu alphabetic transcription and then in interlineated Chinese characters. The Chinese material, with Manchu transcriptions fully romanized, has been published by Morikazu (1989), whose article furnishes the data used here.3 It runs

1 Regarding central and southern Chinese attitudes towards northern Guânhuà, see in particular Hirata (2000). 2 1 am particularly grateful to Professor Jerry Norman for drawing my attention to this text and also for his advice on Manchu matters in general. The present paper would not have been possible without his help. Needless to say, all remaining errors and weaknesses are entirely my own responsibility. 3 In the present paper Morikazu's Manchu romanizations are adopted without change. They generally agree with the Mollendorff transliteration system (Mollendorff 1892) and with that used by Norman (1978). Exceptions which are significant here arejhi and chi for Chinese syllables such as zhl ~£_ and chï P£, and dz, tss, ss for syllables such as zi ^, ci ^ and si Щ. Our numbering system for pages of the original text is also that of Morikazu's article.

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to 79 traditional style folio pages and is essentially identical with the Manchu-Chinese dialogue section of the famous Manchu language

textbook, Mân-Hànzi Qïngwén qiméng Ш^ШЗС^ШШ, commonly known by its shorter title, Qïngwén qiméng. The earliest version of this text was published in 1730 and was followed by a number of reprints. 4 The Manchu-Chinese dialogue section seems to be

virtually the same in the various recensions, but it is only our text that adds the phonetic transcriptions of the Chinese (Morikazu 1989: 68). The original intent of the dialogues was to teach Chinese readers to speak Manchu. If Morikazu is correct, in our version that goal was amplified, so that the text could also be used by Manchus to determine how the Chinese version of the text was pronounced (1989: 69). He further suggests (loc. cit.) that the language represented in the dialogues derives from 18th century Peking. Whether or not this is true remains to be demonstrated. But we can be fairly confident that it is an exemplar of standard northern-style Guànhuà of this period. And as such it is a priceless record, not only as an alphabetic rendering of pre-modern spoken Chinese but also because it affords a window on the crucial and hitherto virtually hidden stage during which northern Guànhuà was assuming the dominant position it had attained in the mid-nineteenth century, when European Sinologists recorded it in grammars, dictionaries, and other language teaching materials.

In the present study we intend to examine the language reflected in the 1761 text from the standpoints of phonology, grammar, and lexicon, to determine to what degree it resembles or differs from 1) the standard form of spoken "Nankingese" Guànhuà reflected in the European missionary records and 2) the standard Pekingese-based Guànhuà of the mid to late nineteenth century, as represented in the European grammars and dictionaries of that

4 The entire Manchu version of the text has been reproduced and translated as "Book II: the Manchu Preceptor" of Wylie's 1855 complete translation of the Qïngwén qiméng.

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period. Our goal will be to focus on the transition in standard language base which appears to have occurred during the eighteenth century. The source materials consulted here may be arranged according to the two Guânhuà types they reflect:

Southern Guànhuà

a) Varo (1703), cited here after Coblin and Levi (2000), is a grammar of southern Guânhuà. Varo (Ms.) is a dictionary of the same language, dating from the 1670.

b) Prémare (ca. 1730) is a grammar of southern Guânhuà.

c) Morrison (1815-23) is a dictionary of late southern Guânhuà.

Northern Guânhuà

a) Edkins (1864a) is a grammar of Pekingese Guânhuà. It also contains numerous observations on Peking dialect and on the difference between the two language types. Edkins (1864b) is a textbook and practical manual for Pekingese Guânhuà. It contains numerous sample sentences and phrases, vocabulary lists, etc.

b) Wade (1867) is a textbook for spoken Pekingese Guânhuà. It includes numerous spoken text samples, dialogues, etc.

c) The dialect pronunciation lists of Edward H. Parker (1849-1926) are included as marginalia in Giles (1892). Parker's material dates from ca. 1870, and Peking is one of the points covered in his lists. Parker was meticulous in recording actually spoken forms and was especially interested in variant pronunciations of the same morpheme.

d) Stent (1877) is ostensibly a dictionary of Pekingese dialect. In fact, it probably also contains forms from the Guânhuà koiné of the city.

2. PHONOLOGY

In this section we shall attempt to isolate phonological features in our 1761 text which are specifically akin to the southern

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or "Nankingese" Guànhuà (hereafter: GH) as recorded in European language materials of the seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. Then we shall in turn look for features which are typical of northern or "Pekingese" type GH of the nineteenth century foreign

grammarians. The object will be to determine whether and to what extent a shift to identifiably northern features can be detected.

2.1. Syllable initials

2.1.1. The syllables zhëng Щ, zhài Щ, chu $], shëng %., shï Bijí and shi Щ

The Edkins and Parker materials show that these syllables had retroflex initials, i.e., [ts], [ts], and [s] in nineteenth century Peking. On the other hand, the records of Varo, Prémare, etc. indicate that the southern system, which also had an independent retroflex series, read these items with dental sibilant initials, i.e.,

[ts], [ts1] and [s]: çhëng [tserj] Ф, çhë [tse?] Щ, çh'u [ts'u] Ш sëng [sen] :§£, çû [s] Bffi, and çu [s] lpí.5 The corresponding Manchu transcriptions in our text are as follows: dzeng ^, dze Щ, tsu $], seng ^Ë, 55 Êfj], and ss Щ, with the exception that in a number of cases the common syllable shi Щ is also transcribed as 5/. Thus, our eighteenth century text follows the southern readings almost exclusively in these cases. The appearance of retroflexes in northern GH in the following century cannot be a case of regular sound change, for there would be no conditioning factors for it. Instead, it appears to be the result of substitution, where a more northerly pronunciation has been adopted in place of a southern one. What this suggests is that in these instances the northern GH variety began with a southern-based norm but then departed from that norm in favor of northern usage at some point between ca. 1760 and 1860. Vacillation in the case of shi Щ may indicate that the northern substitution was already beginning in this word.

5 Varo's orthographic forms are adopted in these examples.

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2.1.2. The syllable rang Щ

In modern standard Mandarin the syllable rang Щ begins with a retroflex initial, which is variously interpreted as an approximant [i] or a fricative [zj. In Parker's Peking data, variant readings yung2 and jung2 are given for this syllable, the first of which begins with a palatal glide or semivowel. The same doublet is given by Wade and Stent. Edkins writes only yung2 and does not mention jung2 as a possible variant. Varo and Prémare give iûng and iông respectively, which represent the standard southern GH pronunciation. Morrison gives a corresponding yung for the late southern form. Our Manchu transcription consistently writes yung. From this we draw the following conclusions. The southern GH reading for rang Щ- was always [iurj]. In mid to late nineteenth century Peking there were competing pronunciations in [iurj] and fcurj]. It is the latter which survives today in modern standard Chinese and which perhaps represents a native Pekingese dialect reading. The presence of doublets in the nineteenth century may be due either to sound change in progress in the Peking area or to ongoing replacement of the older GH form [iurj] by the already extant local Pekingese dialect reading. If the latter is the case, then it may be that the pronunciation [iurj] in 1761 was a case where a southern GH reading was still preferred over a local northern one when speaking the koine. We cannot be certain of this until we are able to establish precisely when the reading [zjirj] arose in the local vernaculars of the north.

2.1.3. The syllable chún Щ

Chún [ts'uan] "lip" is spelled ch'un2 in Stenťs Pekingese lexicon. Parker gives no Pekingese reading. Giles1 general reading is ch'un2. The word does not occur at all in Edkins' materials. The affricate initial reading was probably old in the north, since it was already heard there by the Korean transcriber, Chwe Sej in ШШ& (14787-1543), in the early 1500's (Kim 1991: 204). Varo has xûn

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[sun], while Prémare has variants, chuên [suen] and chûn [sun].6 Morrison's later southern GH form is shim [sun]. The Manchu transcription has sun. Here it seems likely that our 1761 sample deliberately hews to southern usage. A century later the fricative form had been replaced by the native Pekingese affricate initial reading.

2.1.4. Initial zero versus initial y-

Mid and low vowel final onset syllables take initial zero in

the 1761 material, e.g., о ffi, ai §£, e Ш- Corresponding readings in southern GH always have initial y-, e.g., Varo go |%, gái ̂ , gó Ш and Prémare ngô, ngái, ngó (where g- and ng- both represent phonetic [rj]). Stenťs Pekingese material agrees with the 1761 text in completely lacking initial y-, and Wade concurs in this. Parker gives double readings in 0- and y- in most but not all cases, e.g., wo $£, ai ~ ngai f=£, wo ~ ngo Ш- Edkins, always quite observant in such matters, remarks that in the Peking of his day one could actually hear three different realizations, i.e., zero, y- and what he calls a "guttural g", by which he perhaps means the uvular fricative [к] (1 864a: 35). The Edkins and Parker data indicate that there were competing pronunciations in the Peking of their day. The Korean transcriber Sin Sukchu ф $£$-(1417-1475) already heard zero initial forms in spoken north Chinese in the fifteenth century (Kim 1991: Chap. 4, section 4.2 passim).7 The Manchu transcription is somewhat ambiguous. Initial [rj] does not occur in Manchu, and there is accordingly no initial form of the letter ng in the script. It is therefore possible that the Manchu transcriber heard [rj] in words such as wo $c and ai ̂ but had no way to transcribe it. On the other hand, the Manchus were in no way averse to creating new letters and graphic combinations to represent unfamiliar Chinese sounds (cf. Li 2000: 26). Perhaps there is no initial letter in these forms because the

6 Following French orthographic convention, Prémare's ch- represents [s]. 7 These occur in Sin's Popular Reading (i.e., súyín) material.

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transcriber heard no consonant there. The matter remains problematic. If the orthographic forms really do indicate initial zero, then this would probably point to a decision by GH speakers in favor of the local northern dialect pronunciation of that period.

2.1.5. Palatalization

Modern standard Chinese has a palatal series of initials, tç-, tç'-, and (?-, which occurs exclusively before high front vowels and glides. These initials are believed to have resulted from a merger of earlier gutturals, £-, k'- and x-, and sibilants, /5-, ts -, and s-. And, in fact, the southern variety of Ming/Qïng GH retains these very two initial types in syllables where the modern standard palatals are found. Parker, Stent, and Wade all show a configuration of the modern northern type, i.e., a single palatal series. Edkins (1864a: 35) has the following to say about this matter: "In Peking pronunciation and also in the western provinces, ts and k, and s and h, are in certain instances undistinguishable, but this does not affect the number of initials, because it takes place only before the vowels i and w....Dr. Morrison long since pointed out this peculiarity of the northern dialects, but without mentioning the coalescing of the consonants. The first of these northern consonants may be written ts к or ch, the latter h or s, or as Mr. Wade propose[s:] hs. It is difficult to say which orthography best represents them. There can be little doubt that a distinct ch and a distinct sh will become ultimately the sound of these initials." These comments suggest that 1) the two series were no longer distinct in Pekingese and 2) that to Edkins1 keen ear they were in a state of phonetic instability or flux. For he predicts that they will "ultimately" become a single, clearly defined palatal series, rather than that this is already the case.8 The

8 A similar observation occurs in (1864b: iv): "The sound thus formed may be written k, ts, or ch. It is not plainly defined, and is constantly hovering between these various phonetic values. After a further period of change, it will probably determine itself finally as a distinct ch."

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allusion to Morrison is to his dictionary (1815-23, Part I, Vol. 1: 18), where he says that the Pekingese pronunciation of GH in his day differs from the southern variety in the following two ways:

i) "In changing к before e and /, into ch, and sometimes into is. Thus king becomes ching and keang becomes cheang or tseang."

ii) "//before e and / is turned into sh or s. Thus heang is turned into sheang, and heô into sheô or seo"

As Edkins points out, though Morrison was clearly describing palatalization of velars here, he never actually said in so many words that the earlier gutturals and sibilants had merged. Whether this was an oversight, or, alternatively, indicates lack of true merger in the northern speech he heard, remains uncertain.

Moving backward to the late eighteenth century we have Korean transcriptions dating from 1765 and ca. 1795 (Kim 1991: Chap. 5). In these materials the earlier sibilants are still spelled as such. But for the velars Kim gives a list of thirty-two syllables where earlier velars are rendered as palatals. Opposite this is a longer list where velars are still spelled as such. And we find even more such examples passim in this chapter of Kim's study. Kim's conclusion (pp. 267-68) is that palatalization was still in progress and was spreading lexically rather than phonological ly, with the process being caught in progress by his sources. This is a possible interpretation of the data. A somewhat different one would be as follows: palatalization had already occurred in the regional vernaculars of the northern area represented by the texts. The underlying language reflected in those texts was in fact a koine, i.e., northern GH. Speakers of this language, probably reading aloud for their Korean transcribers from character lists, were aiming at velar realization of the initials. In a majority of cases they successfully produced the target sounds. But in a smaller number they slipped into their native pronunciations and produced palatals. Such

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phenomena are common in diglossia. For example, in standard Mandarin of Taipei the word "to go" is to be pronounced [tc'y51]. And this is the form most often heard in slow or careful speech. But in certain circumstances Min or Hakka speakers may pronounce this word as [tç'i51], reflecting the lack of the vowel [y] in their native dialects. We should not discount the possibility that such a scenario underlies the Korean transcriptional data here.

We now arrive at our 1761 text, where the Manchu rendering of the old GH velar and sibilant series syllables is complex and enigmatic. We shall separate the data into earlier velar and sibilant types, whereupon they are then sorted according to their Manchu spellings.

2.1.5.1. Southern GH velar initial syllables

i) Spelled by Manchu velars

GH initial k-\ gi &, IB, Й, B; gin Ш, M, 4*; gin, ging II; gio X, ff ; gioi, gui Ш gioi Щ, ^p/, £H; giowei Щ; giya Щ., M^JP, Ш', giyai Щ. Ш; giyan Щ, f$, Ш, Ш; giyang Ш, Ш\ giyao 3C; giyao, giyoo 0l|; giyao, giyoo, (also: keo) Ш; giye fp; giyo %\ giyoo Щ,

GH initial к'-: ki Щ, Щ, Ш, IS, if, Ш, king jg; kio i^\ kioi kiowan, kiow(j)an Щ}; kiowei ^; kiyun ft|; kiyang ^; kiyo kiyoo Pj

GH initial х-: hi Щ, ^r; hing ff; hiong 5E; hiowan 0£; hiya hiyan Щ,, Щ; hiyao ^; hiyei, hiyai Ш\ hiyo Щ

ii) Spelled by Manchu palatals

GH initial k-\ji Ш, Ш, St, IB, Ш, ̂ , Ж, of 'Jin Ш, Ж,луап Ш,

GH initial к '-: ci Ш, *£, ^, jji; cing |f; ciyan Ш

iii) Spelled by Manchu sibilants

GH initial дк si {%; sioi Й, ÏÏf'> siyan Ш, Ш', siyang Щ, [oj

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iv) Mixed spellings

GH initial &-: gí, y /,fê, В

GH initial k'~: ki, ci ffî

GH initial je-: hiyan, siyan Щ, ÏJ|; hin, sin ^

2.1.5.2. Southern GH sibilant initial syllables

i) Spelled by Manchu sibilants

GH initial s-: si Ш, !!> Щ', siioan j?l; sin /£,s sing Й; sio Щ\ sioi Щ, Ж, Ш', siyun ip; siyan %;, siyang Ш, Щ, %.\ siyao /Jn; siyun Ш

ii) Spelled by Manchu palatals

GH initial ts-\ji ^;ji Щ-Jin M'Jin Ш, Шлуап Ш',Луе Ш

GH initial ts'< ci Щ\ cing Щ , Щ; ciyan Ш, Ш\ dye &, $]

iii) Spelled by Manchu velars

GH initial ts-\ gio Щ, Ш; giyao Щ; giye f|f, Ш, Ш; giyei Ш

GH initial ts '-: kioi M, Ш, kiyoo Щ

GH initial 5-: hin f§; hiyao ^; hiye ^, &, %

iv) Mixed spelling

GH initial ts'-: ciowan, kiwan ̂

Beginning with the GH velar material, we find that it is divided into two types in our text, i.e., velars transcribed by Manchu gutturals and velars rendered by Manchu palatals or sibilants, with a small number of cases where alternate spellings

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occur. This basic division recalls the one observed by Kim (1991) in his contemporaneous Korean transcriptional data. However, there appears to be no real correlation between the paired sets in the Korean and Manchu material. Nevertheless, we could, as Kim has done, suppose that the split into Manchu guttural and non-guttural spelling types reflects sound change in progress or, alternatively, a mixture of competing dialect and koine readings. However, both possibilities are vitiated by what we find in our second major type of material.

As a rule the GH sibilant affricates ts- and ts'- are spelled by Manchu palatals. The fricative s- is spelled by Manchu s~. But in addition to this pattern, all three GH sibilants can also be spelled with Manchu gutturals! Now, whatever peculiarities these Chinese initials may have had, they cannot have been gutturals in this period. They must have been either dental or palatal sounds. And this point in turn suggests that the Manchu letters in question had some quality or characteristic which enabled them to transcribe Chinese palatals and/or sibilants. This being the case, our simplest hypothesis is that earlier Chinese velars had palatalized in the underlying language of our text. For this would explain why the Manchu guttural letters could freely transcribe earlier velar and sibilant types. But it also raises two further questions. The first concerns the Manchu pronunciation of the letters g-, к-, and h- before the vowel /. How were they pronounced by our Manchu transcriber? By the latter half of the eighteenth century standard spoken Manchu of Peking and other urban areas was becoming moribund, a victim of advancing Chinese-Manchu bilingualism among ethnic Manchus (Wang 1991; Л 1993). The result was erosion of Manchu on all fronts, i.e. in phonology, syntax, and lexicon. For example, in the area of phonology, the Qiánlóng ^РЙ Emperor said in 1774 of the Manchu pronunciation of certain individuals who appeared before him that "the sounds were mixed up" ^ШШШ and "the pronunciation approached the nuances of Chinese" "ШШ-ШХШШ (Ji 1993: 44). There are hints that this sort

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of "sinified Manchu" pronunciation survived into the nineteenth

century. For example, Gorelova (2002: 77) has the following to say in connection with efforts to determine the pronunciation of Manchu at the time it was originally reduced to writing: "The investigation of the Manchu sound system has not been successful in every respect up to now because the phonation which became known to us in the past century from Chinese and European transcriptions, do [sic] not reproduce the real phonetic value of the graphemes. These transcriptions were mastered and made widespread by the Peking (Beijing) Manchus whose pronunciation was influenced to a large degree by the Northern dialect of the Chinese language." Now, as regards the question which interests us, the usual view today is that the Manchu letters transcribed as g, k, and h represented uvulars before the letters a, o, and п and velars before e, u, and /. However, concerning the nineteenth century assessment of the major Russian Manchuists, Ligeti (1952: 248) says, "La différence entre les deux séries de consonnes q (V, X) ~ к (g, x) a été désignée comme vélaire ~ palatale déjà par les mandchouisants russes qui connaissaient fort bien la prononciation du mandchou vivant." And the peculiar feature of palatality alluded

to here was described by Wylie (1855: 12, fn.) as follows: "the tip of the tongue is directed downwards, and the root upwards."

Whatever these consonants were, then, they were not simply velars. And it may well have been such peculiar sounds which were in play in our 1761 text.

Our second question is, how, if palatalization had already occurred in the underlying form of Chinese, could a Manchu transcriber have maintained guttural spellings for a preponderance of southern GH velar initial syllables? Here we may note that phenomena of this sort in alphabetic records often reflect a clash between a received orthographic tradition and competing phonetic reality. The orthographic tradition is more or less well maintained, depending on the schooling and attentiveness of the transcriber. Where his training or stamina fails, phonetic reality seeps in. And in

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this connection we may note that in eighteenth century Manchu handbooks for the transcription of Chinese, such as the Qîngwénjiàn ШЗСШ of 1708 and the Yuányin zhèngkào IBiiíIE^ of 1743, the distinction between the earlier GH velar and sibilant series was rigorously maintained (cf., for example, Nakajima 1994 and Yáng and Wang 2003). It is therefore possible that the spelling conventions found in such earlier works have left their mark on our text in the present instance.

In the end, then, it seems very probable that velars had palatalized in the underlying language of our text. And one may also suspect that this had occurred for the sibilants, resulting in merger between the two older series of initials. If this is correct, then the underlying language had apparently opted for a northern- based system here, rather than attempting to maintain the southern GH distinction.

2.1.6. Some anomalies

The syllables shl Щ, shén Щ, and zhï Д have retro flex initials in both southern GH of all periods and the nineteenth century GH of the Western grammarians. But in the 1761 text they are frequently spelled as Manchu si Щ, sen Щ, and dz Д. These pronunciations do not reflect either standard form of GH and apparently derive from some other source.

2.2. Syllable finals

2.2.1. The syllables bái Ě, bai "g", and zhâi Щ

These syllables are consistently spelled as Manchu be EÉ3, be "§", and dze Щ in our text. Their southern GH forms as spelled by Varo are pě JÉ3 , pě "Ě-f , and çhë Щ . They are represented in nineteenth century sources as follows:

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Edkins

Wade

Parker

Stent

В

pai2,

pai2,

pai2,

vai2.

po4

PO',

po2,

DO2

po2

pe3

1"

pai2,

pai3,

pai3,

Dai2.

po4

po2

pe2, pe3

DO2

chai3

chai3,

chai3,

chai3

tse4

tse3

For "white" (И) Stent gives a number of compounds using the reading pai2. For po2 he cites no compounds at all and gives a cross reference to pai2. For "hundred" ("§") he pronounces ordinary compounds, such as numerals, as pai2. He gives two literary compounds with po2 and then refers the reader back to pai2. It is thus clear that for Stent -ai was the real Pekingese dialect reading in these syllables. Edkins (1864a: 53) states that in Pekingese GH one could hear -ei, -ai, -e, or -o for both "white" and "hundred", though he lists only two of these, -ai and -o, as significant for learners of the language.9 What are we to conclude from all this? The Manchu transcriptions in -e agree with southern GH as regards vocalism. The type of GH they represent had not adopted the local northern dialect pronunciations here. But by the mid-nineteenth century this native dialectal -ai had become dominant in the northern koine. The old reading in -e was still to be heard in Parker's time. Wade also knew it for "narrow" (Щ). There was in addition a literary reading in -o for "white" and "hundred"; and in Parker's GH, at least, this -o competed with -e. What is of interest to us is that in our 1761 language the native Pekingese -ai was not heard at all. At that time southern usage was still followed in these cases. It was only later that the shift to -ai took place.

9 It is interesting to note that Morrison (1815-23, Part II, Vol. 2: 667) identified pei as the syllabic form for "white" and "hundred" in the Peking dialect of his day. He also indicated that this type of pronunciation had become current in northern GH by that time (1815-23, Part I, Vol. 1: 18).

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2.2.2. Negative méi tx

In our text the existential negative is written as mu ^ or mu io ÝxW- There is no diphthongal form comparable to modern standard Chinese méi. The southern GH reading was mo [mu?] in Varo's language. Morrison wrote muh [mu?]. Edkins spells the existential negative syllable as mei2. Wade gives in this sense mu2, mu4, mei2 and mo4. He says regarding these (1867: Pt. Ill, p. 7), "mo, mu, not; mei there is not; mei being a corruption of mo yu." Parker gives mei2, mo4 and mu4. Stent has mei2, mo2, and mu2. Wade's observation seems to confirm Norman's suggestion that méi was formed by contamination from the initial glide in the following syllable, you Щ (1988: 126). Norman remarks (1988: 269, n. 15): "The tone of the Peking form is irregular; from a rii tone word with a sonorant initial one should expect a modern qù (fourth) tone reading." To this we can now respond that the said contamination must have occurred on a syllable like Wade's mu2 or Stenťs mo2. But how these second tone readings arose of course remains a problem. What we can say is that in mid-nineteenth century Peking there were competing second and fourth tone readings of these syllables, perhaps due to dialect interference of some sort. In the end, we cannot determine when the contamination occurred. If the reading méi already existed in the late eighteenth century, then the reading mu in our Manchu transcription is probably a retention of the southern GH form. But it is also possible that the contaminated form did not yet exist anywhere. The matter remains indeterminate.

2.2.3. The syllables báo/bó Щ and zháo/zhuó/zhe ~Щ

The syllable báo/bó Щ is transcribed as Manchu bo in our text. Varo writes po for the southern GH form. In our later materials we find: Edkins, Wade, Stent: pao2 (or: pau2), po2; Parker: pao2,po2, po4. Pao2 is probably the native Pekingese form, while po2 appears

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to be a loan from southern GH. The Pekingese form was not yet present in the koine as reflected in 1761.

The syllable zháo/zhuó/zhe ~ zhi ~Щ has various uses in our text. It serves, for example, as a durative suffix and also in certain related polysyllabic forms, such as the sentential finals ...jo ni ЩЩ and ...lai jo ~$0jE; and the deictic adverbial je men jo xSÍPI^É" "so, thusly". It also serves as a verbal complement as in peng jo liyoo ss cing ШШТШ'Ш "when you have encountered a certain affair."

Finally it appears as a constituent syllable in certain compounds, e.g. jo gi ШШ- In all such cases it is consistently spelled jo in the text. This parallels the situation in southern GH, where this syllable has only one form in all its uses, e.g., Varo: chó [tso?]. Edkins normally represents Щ with the orthographic form choh. For its actual pronunciations in Pekingese he gives two forms, cho2 and chau2, without specifying where these are to be used (1864a: 57). In one instance he actually writes chair in an example, i.e. chau1 puh chair t'a' Щ^Шй "I cannot find him" (p. 1 8 1 ).10 For the durative suffix, Edkins remarks: "In the colloquial of Shantung ;£. chi is placed after many verbs... This is a colloquialism not authorized by books, nor is it correct mandarin. Perhaps it is a corruption from choh, which is the form used by correct speakers" (p. 192). From this we may conclude that the modern pronunciations zhe ~ zhi for the durative marker were viewed in the mid-eighteen hundreds as colloquial and dialectal. Wade considered cho to be the correct reading for the durative suffix in Pekingese GH (1867: Pt. Ill, p. 9). He lists che as a possible reading in his syllabary, but he never uses it in examples. He spells ЩШ as chao2 chi2 (Pt. Ill, p. 83), and he also writes the verbal complement as chao2 (ibid, p. 104). Parker gives cho1, cho2, chao1, and chao2 as readings for Щ. He gives no pronunciation che or chi. Stent reads chao2 -chi2 ~ЩШ, but then,

surprisingly, chaď-cho2 liao3 ffiMT and chao4-cho2 ШШ "according

10 This chau' buh chau2 obviously corresponds to modern standard zháobuzháo ^Ш, though the tone of the root verb "to find" does not agree.

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to". What we see in all this is that southern GH and the 1761 text agree in showing a single reading for ~Щ in all its uses. What our nineteenth century northern GH sources have in common is that they break this unanimity in various ways by assigning different readings for specific uses of the etymon Щ. The reading chao2 is likely to have been a local northern dialect form, and chï is specifically said by Edkins to be dialectal. What is significant for us is that no such dialectal readings were adopted in the 1761 text.

2.2.4. The syllablesyïê Щ and xiè Ш

These syllables are represented as giyai Щ and hiyai, hiyei Щ in our text. The final -iyai in these forms parallels that found in southern GH, e.g., Varo kiáy ^ and May Щ. Edkins writes this final as -iai but then remarks that "in northern mandarin [it] coalesces with -ie" (1864a: 47, footnote). Wade and Stent have cMeh' Ш and hsieh1 Щ here. For Ш Parker writes hsie, but for Щ he has variant readings, chie and kai. The latter appears to be of southern origin. With it we can compare j iè #£, which in our 1761 text is spelled as g 'ai, rather than as the expected giyai (cf. Varo kiáy). In any case, it seems clear that in mid-nineteenth century Peking the finals in words of this type were pronounced as -ie, both in standard GH and in the local vernacular. If -ie was the local dialect form in the late eighteenth century, then the pronunciation of our 1761 text was following the southern GH pronunciation here. It is possible, however, that the standard northern GH pronunciation in this period was really -iei. This is the form recorded for it by Korean transcribers in the late eighteenth century (Kim 1991: 272).

2.2.5. The syllables rén J\., rěn ^, etc.

Syllables of this type are transcribed as Manchu žin [z^in], agreeing with their treatment in southern GH, e.g., Varo: fin [zjn] A. All our nineteenth century sources spell these words as jen or jên, showing a mid vowel final which was probably the same as or similar

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to that of the modern standard Chinese forms. After retroflex initials other that [zj, the Manchu text writes the historically parallel Chinese final as -en. For example, we find jen M, sen j^, etc., where Varo's southern GH has chin [tsin], xin [sin], etc. It is possible that what we see here in words like rén A is a retention in favor of southern usage. However, there is also the chance that in the north generally a -in > -en sound change was in progress and that it had not yet affected words beginning in %. Interestingly, Kim's Korean materials show no such vowel shift after any retroflexes for late eighteenth century northern pronunciation (1991: 271). Our 1761 sound system is clearly much further advanced than that. There must have been some variation here in the pronunciation of northern GH during this period.

2.2.6. Syllables of type zhu i, chu $g, shu Щ and rú $Q

These syllables are spelled in our text as ум 5Ё, си |Ц, šu Щ, and žu $fj. In southern GH they had as nuclear vowel not [u] but another sound, probably [uj, which can be interpreted as an allophone of the phoneme /y/, e.g., Varo: chit [tsq] 2Ё, ch'it [tsq] |Ц, хп [sq] Щ andyw fcq] $Q. Prémare (1730 [1893], p. 15) specifically noted that the substitution of [u] for this special vowel was a defect of Pekingese pronunciation in his time. And this same [u] is the vowel found in all our nineteenth century northern GH sources. Had /y/ been present here in our 1761 text, we would expect it to be transcribed as Manchu -ioi, as is done in words such as ioi -J1» kioi Щ and 5/0/ Ш- The use of Manchu -u in these syllables suggests that northerners eschewed the southern vowel here in favor of their own [u] when speaking the koine in the late eighteenth century.

2.2.7. The syllables./^ Ц andjeng Щ

These syllables had rounded vowels throughout the history of southern GH, e.g., Varo: Jung Щ and Jung Щ. In our 1761 text they are transcribed asjeng and Jung respectively, while contemporary Korean sources still show rounding in all such forms for the late eighteenth

215


century (Kim 1991: 269). Edkins writes them asfung but remarks (p. 69) that Peking dialect speakers in his time said feng in "some words", a pronunciation which he viewed as a "fault". All our later nineteenth century sources write such words sis feng, and Stent clearly considered this to be the local Pekingese dialect pronunciation. How old was this unrounded reading in the northern vernaculars? If it already existed in the late eighteenth century, then what we see in our Manchu transcription of feng Щ may be a shift towards northern vernacular usage of the sort about which Edkins complained.

2.2.8. The syllables gë Щ, kě nj and é Щ

These are spelled ge Щ, ke Rj and é Щ in the Manchu transcription. They had rounded vowels in southern GH, e.g., Varo ко Щ, k'ô Řj and gô Щ. In the nineteenth century sources they are consistently written with final -o. However, Edkins says regarding this, "The final o, in many parts north of the Yellow River is sounded U, and is like the first vowel in the diphthong of words such as cow, how" (1864a: 51). The diphthong in question may have been [ли] or [эй] in Edkin's pronunciation of English (Prins 1974: 122, 129-30), and the Chinese vowel in question may have been [э] or [y]. This may also be what is transcribed by Manchu e in our text. If so, this would indicate that a northern realization had been substituted for a southern rounded vowel in syllables of this type.

2.2.9. Syllables of the type zhàn fô, shàn Щ and rán $£

These syllables are spelled in our text as Manchu jan {£, šan Щ and žan $$. They also have final -an in all of our nineteenth century northern GH sources. In southern GH they ended in -en, e.g., Varo: chén {&, xén Цр and j en Ш- Morrison's orthography still wrote -en here, which he said was to be pronounced "as in [English] men, but rather longer (1815-23, Part II, Vol. II: 50). Edkins (1864a: 50) notes Morrison's view but states that in his time the general

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Mandarin pronunciation was "a as in father." It seems likely that in the underlying pronunciation of our 1761 text, -an had been substituted for -en on the basis of northern vernacular usage.

2.2.10. The syllable man Щ

This syllable can represent for us an entire class of words, such as bán Ш and ban í£, the rest of which do not happen to occur in our text. It is transcribed as Manchu man. In southern GH this syllable was read muôn [muon] until the mid-eighteenth century, whereupon it shifted to [muan]. Morrison writes it as mwan. In our nineteenth century Pekingese GH sources it is spelled man3. Edkins remarks regarding the final in question, "I prefer to spell [it] without medial w, for though heard in provincial dialects, natives of the mandarin-speaking cities do not make use of that sound" (1864a: 50). It seems likely that northern urban dialectal -an has been substituted for -uan in the language underlying our 1761 text.

2.2. 1 1 . Syllables of the type zhèng IE, chéng f$í and shèng Ц?

These syllables are spelledyewg IE, ceng $1, and Seng Щ in our text. In southern GH they had final -irj down through Morrison's

time, e.g., Varo: ching IE, ch'îng )з£ and xing Щ. In the nineteenth century northern GH sources their final is always spelled -eng. This situation parallels that seen in section 2.2.5. above, where northern GH pronounced the syllables zhën Ц and shën ^ as chen' and shen1, while the southern koine had final -in. Regarding this situation Edkins observed that such -in final readings could occur in the south, but "in all such words, the vowel E is used in place of/ in the provinces where mandarin is spoken" (1864a: 49). It seems likely that this general substitution of e for i was a case where the koine pronunciation was adjusted to agree with the speech patterns of the northern vernaculars and that our 1761 text reflects this change.

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2.2.12. Some anomalies

In both southern and northern GH the codas in the finals - in/-ing and -en/-eng were theoretically to be distinguished. But in our text there is a noticeable tendency to confuse the two, e.g., jen/jeng Л, gin/ging Ш, jin Ц; (where jing is expected), jeng Щ (where jen is expected), etc. This cannot be due to favoring either northern or southern standard GH usage. It must reflect dialectal interference of some sort.

2.3. Tones

Tones are not indicated in the Manchu transcription. Nor is there any mechanism in the script for distinguishing checked (i.e., glottal stop final) syllables from open ones. Morrison (1815- 23, Part I, Vol. 1: 18) specifically noted failure to distinguish checked syllables as a flaw of northern or "Tartar" Chinese in his time. Whether it characterized the language of our text remains uncertain.

3. GRAMMATICAL PATTERNS AND FUNCTORS

3.1. Sentence final elements

A particularly noticeable characteristic of our text is its wealth of sentence final particles and sequences of juxtaposed particles. A number of these syllables or syllable groups are not found at all in the southern GH material. The following are examples:11

11 The translations given here are those appended to the parallel Manchu passages by Wylie (1855). For Wylie's sample exegesis of the opening lines of our text, in which he glosses the Manchu version word by word and shows how he arrives at his English rendering, see p. lxxiii of his introduction.

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i) . . Jo ni ЩЩ

( 1 ) ta dzai giya lii dengjo ni

тшшттт [55a] "He is waiting at home."12 [Wylie 94]

ii) ...ЬаЩ

(2) o suwanjijo ni. siyang ši wang o men giya Hi lai liyao ba

щ "Thinking of you, I certainly thought you would call at my house." [Wylie 38-9]

(3) bu gioi dzen mo yang de da giya dzo hiya chi ba /yungje Hi king dzo ši mo

ъшш&эщ&тщ ' mmmnmfm [39b-40a] "When all are sitting eating together in common, why use this ceremony?" [Wylie 77]

iii) ...liye Щ

(4) age o kioi liye

HWn^m [55a] "Very well. I am going, brother." [Wylie 94]

(5) o dz he liyoo ijung gio tsui liye

ШЩТ—ШШШШ [60b] "I have only drunk one cup, and am quite tipsy."

[Wylie 100]

12 In this example уоЦ and тЩ appear to function in tandem to signal a durative or continuative sense, as is common in modern standard Chinese. The Manchu sentence reads: i boode aliyahabi (he/house + locative/wait + imperfective). Thus, literally, "He has waited at home." In southern GH, sentence final ni Djg occurs only in Prémare's grammar. No continuative sense is identified for chô Щ by the European grammarians of southern GH. The collocation of Щ and fljg does note occur in southern GH texts.

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iv) ...ba liye ЩЩ

(6) dzung ši ni men ye de ting dijiyan di a. he bi mang ba liye

"You yourself will also hear. Why are you so impatient? [Wylie 36]

bujhi dza men so h'ao / in Un k'anjiyan mu io bu ai di. na tsai ke i šo de ki ši h'ao dung si ba liye

(7)

щ "It is not only what we call good; but everyone who sees it admires it; that then may be called a good article."

[Wylie 45]

In modern standard Chinese the sentence final compound -bale ШТ corresponds in use to our ba liye ЩЩ- It is therefore interesting to note that ba liyao ЩТ ш our text is limited to its older use as a full verbal expression meaning "that's it, so much for that," etc. The following are examples:

(8) žo ši i o diju i. ta bu wangjo ni kai keu siyun ba liyao

(9)

"If you follow my advice; when he does not ask it from you with his own mouth, take no notice."

[Wylie 47]

ni dzen moje yang bujhi dzu. du siyang ni ye ba liyao a шштшъш. • WÊmwkim [24a] "Why can you not thus make yourself contented? If all were like you, they would do."

[Wylie 59]

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v) ...laijo '^Щ

( 1 0) ni dzai na lii laijo

ИиШШЯШ [3b] "Where have you been?"13 [Wylie 35]

(11) žo ši tingjiyan. g' ai dang hu hi kioi / laijo

"If I had heard of it; I should have come to congratulate you." [Wylie 37]

vi) ...laijo ba liye %ЖШШ

(12) je i ge ye giyoo o. na i ge ye sioun o. yuwan boo/ liyoo ni men. ši h'ao sin laijo ba liye

ШШШ [78a-b] "This one is calling me; that one is seeking me. I became security for you at first; merely from kindness of heart."14

[Wylie 119]

Most, if not all, of these final elements occur in the novel

Hónglóumeng %VÊ:W (published 1791 but probably dating from ca. 1760). Edkins (1864a: 97) stated that this work, along with two others, could serve as exemplars of the "purest Mandarin" of his

13 The Manchu reads: si aibide bihe (you/where + locative/exist + perfective). In the Chinese sentence, dzai ^E corresponds directly to Manchu bi- "exist". Laijo 3fc Щ renders the perfective ending -he. 14 The final phrase of the Manchu version reads: sain mujilen bihe dabala (good/heart/copula + perfective/ final particle), thus, literally, "It was merely [my] good heart." Here, laijo1^^ corresponds to the perfective ending -he, while ba liye ШШ renders the restrictive final particle dabala "merely".

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time and was written in Pekingese GH.15 Since the particles we have reviewed here are not found in southern GH, it seems likely that they entered the northern variety of the koine from the regional vernaculars of the north.

3.2. The intensifier hěn Ш (now written fj|)

The word hen Щ is the usual intensifier for stative and certain other verbs in our text and is quite common there. It was not used at all in southern GH, where various other words, such as xin Й and Ш Щ, were employed instead. In our text sen |£ does occur but is rather rare as in (XX).

(13) yen šijung žin di ss. sen nan

"Being the business of everyone, it becomes very difficult." [Wylie 40]

It would appear that hěn, which was already current in Yuan times in the north, had been imported into the GH koine from northern speech types and was on the verge of crowding out such words as shèn ^ by the time of our text. Edkins (1864a: 97) states that these other forms were considered "less colloquial" in his time.

3.3. Negation

The prohibitive construction in our text is Ыуе Щ + verb. This configuration does not appear in the southern GH materials. Instead, one finds there po iáo ^Ш + verb and piě iáo йУИ + verb, together with various literary importations such as то Ц + verb. Edkins recognizes all three colloquial expressions as valid for the

15 The other two texts mentioned by Edkins were the vernacular version of the "Sacred Edict" of the Kângxï emperor (Shèngyù guângxùn zhíjiě ШШШШ1ШШ) and a recently published popular novel entitled Pinhuà bâojiàn щ^сШШ-

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northern GH of his day. Wade uses bié Ш in his texts but mentions buyào ^Ш as a possible form. Stent gives both bié and buyào as Pekingese dialect forms. He knows nothing of biéyào. What we seem to see here is that in the Qïng period buyào was a general GH prohibitive form. Biéyào was probably basically a southern form, while bié was its northern equivalent. By the latter half of the nineteenth century the purely southern GH form had been abandoned in standard GH. The general form buyào and the purely northern form bié were retained and survive in modern standard Chinese today.

In our text the perfective negative is mlu fô or mu io fêjfë, which is identical in form with the existential negative. This agreement in form is a general feature of Mandarin dialects today and is probably quite old. In southern GH there were three equally current forms, i.e. mô ièu ixW> M* çh'êng т^Ц" and pô çh'êng ̂ Ц". In our 1761 text there is a single occurrence

(14) ni wei ši mo bu hiyo majiyan. yen wei mu io ma bu tseng hiyo fàMtttiPf&Mffi • ЙЛ&Ш^#£ [45а] "Why do you not learn horse archery? I have not learnt, because I have no horse." [Wylie 83]

Edkins and Stent again give bùcéng and wèicéng as valid forms alongside méiyóu, but only the last has remained current in spoken modern standard Chinese. What would seem to have happened is that the two southern GH forms, bùcéng and wèicéng, have gradually lost ground to northern méiyóu in the northern variety of the koine. It is interesting that our 1761 text seems to presage this development, while the accounts of the nineteenth century grammarians give the benefit of a doubt to the southern forms.

3.4. The suffix ér 5â

In our text the suffix el fâ is exceedingly common. The following are examples:

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"I have never yet really seen you go."

о Ну an ing el ye mu de tingjiyan ШЖВШШ ИМ [4b] "I never heard anything about it."

[Wylie 34]

[Wylie 37]

tang žo wangjo ta kioi šang liyang i giyan sinfu di ss el. dz šifeo miyan pi el di da ing. [#z]o siyang/ na yang di. io ši mo kioi el

(15) dzung mujiyan ni i dzau eljeng kioi

(16)

(17)

ft • ШШ1Ш ' [5b-6a] "...yet if one goes to consult them on an affair which occupies his heart; they do not interest themselves beyond what the mere rules of politeness claim. What is the advantage of such kind of conduct?" [Wylie 3 8]

In southern GH the corresponding suffix ûl (Prémare: eûl) is also present but occurs far less frequently. And the word el has functions in our text which are not found for ûl in the southern material. For example, it occurs in an adverbial formative pattern — el di, as in the following example:

( 1 8) mufa el kiyangja dzengjo g'ang g'ang el di h'ao liyoo

"In that weak state, I exerted myself; and am restored to convalescence." [Wylie 74]

This type of adverbial pattern yields in modern standard Chinese such expressions such as mànmànrde |Л'[||5а%> but it was totally absent from southern GH. Varo says of ér 5â, "This ûl is very common in the provinces of the north, and they use it as a sort of refrain at the end of clauses or expressions" (Coblin and Levi 2000: 71).

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Somewhat more than a century later Morrison was to characterize it as "a Particle of mere sound, much employed by the Northern and Tartar people" (1815-23, Part П, Vol. II: 137). Its high frequency of occurrence in our 1761 text probably reflects the influence of northern dialects on the grammatical structure of the northern koine.

A matter of some interest here is the morphophonemics of ér 5E- It seems clear that the language of our text agreed entirely with southern GH in maintaining this suffix as a discrete syllable. Moving downward to the nineteenth century materials we find a different situation. Wade (1867: Pt. II, p. 85, n. 9) gives a rule for the complete fusion of ér with the preceding syllable, yielding a subsyllabic suffix -rh, and all transcribed compounds in his text show this fusion, except for the following one: i-'hui-erh — "É"5E (Pt. I, p. 290). Edkins is more equivocal. He says, for example (1864a: 19): "When 5â ri follows a word as a suffix, it is often heard as a final r forming a part of the preceding word. Its tone is then lost in that of the word to which it is joined." What the word "often" here seems to indicate is that variant pronunciations existed in the koine. Both fused and unfused forms were heard in this period. And we may wonder if the fusion in question was in fact a feature of the vernaculars of the north in the mid-nineteenth century. Further statements by Edkins throw light on this. He says, for example, "5E rï ...is appended at discretion to almost all substantives in the northern provinces and sounded like err or a single R" (1864a: 107). And again, "In the North the finals N and NG are often lost when the affix 5£ follows. The syllables pan, fang, fen, pien,feng, yin, ting, ti, etc. become par, far, fer, ier, fur, yir, tir, etc. retaining their original tone" (1864a: 49). And finally, "The suffix 5â ri, attached to the substantives and other words very extensively in the north, is frequently absorbed into the word to which it is attached. The final letters n, ng, and the vowels are then exchanged for r, while the tone of the word is kept and that of the suffix is lost" (1864b: 101). From these passages two points emerge.

First, the fusion of the suffix ér into the preceding syllable was a feature of northern vernaculars in Edkins' time; and, secondly, the vacillation

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between fused and unfused forms was also a characteristic of these local speech forms. Thus, we may suspect that both fusion and vacillation in Pekingese GH were reflections of the configurations found in the dialects. How early had this phenomenon begun in the northern dialects? Was it contemporaneous with our 1761 text, or did it postdate that text? The question remains open.

4. LEXICON

Our text offers a rich corpus for comparison with the lexicon of southern GH. In the present paper we shall limit ourselves to a small selection of lexical items.

4.1. The wo

In modern standard Chinese the common word for "to give" is gěi |p . This word can occur pre-verbally in serial verb constructions as a type of dative or benefactive element. It also occurs post- verbally, where it is sometimes said to function as a verbal complement. In southern GH the word for "to give" was iîi Щ (= modern standard yiï), and this word also had pre-verbal and post-verbal functions paralleling those of gěi in modern standard Chinese. Gěi as such was not used at all in southern GH. In our 1761 text two different words share the functions covered by modern standard gěi. The first of these, which is the more common, is ji/gi $p. The second is ioi -f~. As argued in section 2.1.5. above, the pronunciation of ji/gi must have been [tçi] in the underlying language, regardless of how it was spelled. And it is noteworthy that no reading of the shape gei, etc. occurs for this word in our text. The word ioi -f~ is in fact the same as the just mentioned уй |5|, but is always written as -J1 here. The graph Щ does not occur in our text.

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In fact, even the word ioi "and, together with" is written -p here.16 The following are examples of both ji/gi and ioi in their various uses:

a. "to give"

(19) ni he ta šo. dao di gi bu gi. žo ši šoji. žin ye jhi wangjo siyang de

"Say to him. Now then, will you give it or not? If you wish to give it; others will think they may expect to obtain."

[Wylie 50]

b. pre-verbal use

(20) ta di huwa šo ši i de hin. ji ni sung kioi gio wan liyao

"He said, if he should obtain information, he would send it to you; that was all." [Wylie 40]

с post- verbal use

(21) žu ši na men yang. mei îi lai liyao du giyooji ni men ši mo huwa

tiummm > шпжттшш^тш [34a] "That being the case; coming to see you every day, what kind of instruction does he give you?" [Wylie 71]

ii) ioi =f-

a. "to give": no examples

16 An example is: 76a: oši ioi ta king dzeog'o di ШШ^ШТхМШ^ ° Wylie 1 16: "Since I have been in his company..."

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b. post- verbal use

(22) de liyoo ši žin sung ioi ni kioi

"If I get any, I will send a man to you with them." [Wylie 93]

c. pre-verbal and post-verbal use

(23) a ge ni io manjeo šu. giye ioiji ben. о сао liyoo niyan. wan liyoo gio ioi ni sung hui lai

Щ$Ц [54а] "If you have any Manchu books; pray lend me a few volumes; that I may copy them. When I have done, I will bring them back to you."17 [Wylie 93]

From this material we see that, while ji/gi can serve both as a full verb "to give" and as a preverbal or postverbal case marker, ioi does not function as a full verb. It has only case marking functions in this text.

Edkins gives both gěi and уй in all three functions for Pekingese GH of his time. For the standard pronunciation of gěi he gives tsi3 (i.e. [tçi]). He says the Pekingese colloquial pronunciation is kei3 (1864a: 56, 57), and it is this that he seems to prefer in his examples. Wade gives only gěi |p, about which he says, "kei, properly chi, to give, hence, to or for" (1867: Pt. HI, p. 15). Stent, like Wade, uses gěi rather than уй Щ.™ Не transcribes gěi as kei3. He gives chi3 as an alternate pronunciation but does not use it in actual entries in his dictionary.

17 Both the Manchu and Chinese versions of this line say, "that I may, having copied them, read them..." Wylie ignores the word "to read" in both versions. 18 Stent does cite one rather odd example of уй in the sense of "to give": yu3-jên2- wu4 Щ;Х.Щ "to give a person anything" (p. 629). This appears to be a literary phrase of some sort.

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From all this we draw the following conclusions. In the northern GH of our 1761 text, the word gěi #д, actually pronounced [tçi], was the preferred etymon for expressing both the sense "to give" and its associated case markers. The southern GH word yii Щ (written -f- in our text) was also in use but was clearly the less preferred form and was restricted to case-marking functions. By the mid-nineteenth century, yv. was falling out of use in actual speech in the northern koine, having been effectively supplanted by gěi. However, the previously standard pronunciation of this word as [tçi] had in turn been supplanted by a Pekingese dialect form [kei], which survives as the usual reading in modern standard Chinese today. The reading [tçi] was still remembered as the "proper" koine form in the time of Edkins and Wade, but it was not used in actual speech. Today it exists only as a literary reading in the sense "to supply".

4.2. The substitution forms dôu fft, Mi M, le ~J and та Ш~ Щ

Our suggestion here will be that the modern standard words for which these graphs are used are in fact the result of substitutions, where northern dialect words have replaced earlier koine forms. In each case, the graph used to write the koine form in Chinese has been retained to represent the substituted ones.

i) Dôu ffl "all". The word for "all" in our text is du Ц5. This corresponds directly to southern GH Ш i$ . Edkins gives the standard GH word for "all" as tu'; but he says that the Pekingese dialect form is teu', which he views as a "fault" of that dialect (1864a: 69), i.e., he feels that the use of it in speaking GH is not acceptable. Wade and Parker, on the other hand, give tu' and tou' as alternate forms of the word for "all", with no comment on acceptability. Stent gives only tu1 as the acceptable form. Giles

(1892) identifies the reading tou1 as a northern dialect form. In summary, the standard southern GH form for "all" was [tu]

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throughout Ming and QTng times. This word was also used in our 1761 text. By the mid-nineteenth century a second and competing form, [tou], was present in the koine. This form was identified by Edkins and Giles as a northern dialect word. It has subsequently supplanted [tu] as the word for "all" in modern standard Chinese. Though the two words [tu] and [tou] have traditionally been written with the same Chinese graph, it is not possible to explain the Pekingese dialect word [tou] as a direct phonological derivative of an earlier [tu] in this period, for no such development of finals is known in northern Mandarin dialects. The Pekingese form [tou], though perhaps etymologically related to southern [tu], must have had a more complex history than that. It deserves further study.

ii) Hái Ш "still, yet". In our text the word for "still" is huwan, written in Chinese as Щ.. This agrees with the comparable word huân Ht "still" in southern GH. However, by at least the sixteenth century there existed in north China another word for "still" which was said by Chwe Sej in to have been a homophone of the word hái Ш "child" (Kim 1991: 218, n. 1). Edkins (1864a: 206) gives hwan2 and hai2 as forms for "still" and identifies the latter as "colloquial". Elsewhere (1864b: 66) he gives three different forms, i.e., hwan2, han2 and hai2. Wade (1867: Pt. Ill, p. 13) gives only han2 and hai2 for "still", reserving huan2 for the sense "return, repay". Stent gives huan2 and hai2 for "still". To summarize, [xuan] was the word for "still" in southern GH throughout its history. And this was also the word used exclusively in our 1761 northern GH text. But in the north there was also a very old dialect word [xai] "still", and by the mid-nineteenth century this had been introduced into standard northern GH. It survives as the modern standard Chinese word and has completely displaced [xuan]. In addition to these two, there was in mid-nineteenth century northern GH a third word, [xan], which meant "still". We know very little about this word. Was it a dialectal cognate of [xuan], a northern GH mispronunciation or blend of southern standard [xuan] and northern [xai], or some other

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sort of word? It is in any case no longer in use today in modern standard Chinese. All three of these words were written with the graph Щ. This fact in no way establishes an etymological link between them. Their histories remain to be elucidated.

iii) Verbal and Sentential le ~J . In our text a syllable spelled liyao or liyoo in Manchu and written in Chinese as T functions as both a verbal and sentential particle. The following are examples:

(24) biye di i dzung ss sang yao kioi. io kung pa ni lai. hen tsao liyao sin liyao %№-ЖЩ±Ш£ ' ЗШа [fW Ж ' ШТ'ЪТ [6b] "I had other business I wished to attend to; but I was afraid you would come. I was very vexed at heart."

[Wylie 39]

(25) so i zin [sic] jo i el dzeo. tsai hiyo yan liyao. ceng liyao i ge bujangjin di žin liyao

[19a-b] "Acting according to his own mind; he is for ever learning; thus he is a man who makes no advance."

[Wylie 53-4]

This particle is paralleled in southern GH by leào T, which is also used both verbally and sententially. Edkins and Stent agree with our text, for they have only liao3 ~J in both positions and speak of no alternate readings for the written form. However, Edkins does recognize the existence of two other sentence final particles, la1 He and lo1 Щ in Pekingese, which he nonetheless treats as unrelated to his liao3 T( 1864a: 217). Wade takes a new tack. He says (1867: Pt. Ill, pp. 7 and 85) that in sentence final position the character ~J is "very often" pronounced la or lo. For the verbal particle he still reads liao3. Parker gives variant readings Паи and le but does not

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indicate where they are used. He cites these variants not only for Pekingese but for other Mandarin dialects as well. By ca. 1900 Western textbooks of standard GH were giving lo or le for the written particle T in all positions. We do not know precisely how old the particle le as such is or how it arose. It may be some sort of reduction of Hâo T, or it may have a separate origin, as has been suggested by Chao (1968: 246). It seems likely that it is in origin a northern dialect form. The northern GH koine of our 1761 text does not use it. Edkins seems to know it as a Peking localism but does not write it as T. Stent ignores it. Wade makes clear that it was present and in actual use in sentence final position in standard Pekingese GH of the 1860's, Edkins and Stent notwithstanding. And Parker's material supports this. At some point later on it also appeared after verbs - whether as a contamination from the final particle or as a direct importation from Pekingese and other vernaculars, we do not know. In any case, in modern standard Chinese it has replaced older Hâo in actual speech, though Hâo can still be heard in certain operatic genres, etc.

iv) Interrogative ma/то Jfč. The final interrogative то Ш of our text is paralleled by mo jfř in southern GH. Edkins normally also uses то' Ш as the the final interrogative. However, he tells us (1864a: 218) that there was also another word, ma3, which had the same function. He says that this was actually an "old sound" and that it was "frequently heard in colloquial usage." And he adds that a new character, Щ, had been invented specifically to write this competing form. Wade writes f$£ for the interrogative particle. He normally roman izes it as mo' but gives mď as an alternate reading in his syllabary. He lists Щ, romanized as mď in the syllabary but does not actually use it in texts. Stent gives mo' and ma' as variant readings for JfP. Parker gives mo' and ma. It seems clear that we have to do here with two different words for the sentential interrogative particle. Mo was the standard form in southern GH and also in our 1761 text. But in the mid-nineteenth century a

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competing form in ma was also present in the standard language; and if Edkins is right, this is an old word. It may for quite a long time have been the usual northern dialect form for this particle, but we have no proof for this. All we can say is that it had begun to penetrate standard northern GH by the 1860's but was still avoided in our 1761 text. The graph Щ, which Edkins says was specifically created to represent ma, is attested in the Hónglóumeng, a text which was contemporaneous with our Manchu material.

4.3. Deictic manner- words

The language of our text has a full set of what Y.-R. Chao (1968: 658-59) characterized as "pro-adverbs", i.e. manner words of the "so, such, in such a way" type, which are formed on the near and far demonstrative pronouns. The members of this set are as follows:

je yang ШШ je men jliH je men yang ifffjfjl je men jo ШР'Ш nayangMW. патепЩ^ па men yang Ш$*Ш па men jo Щ^Ш

Southern GH had a different system:

ché iáng ШШ ché tèng ШЩ19 ché tèng iáng шЩЩ ché mû iáng Щ.ШШ ná iáng fflfë ná tèng ЩЩ ná tèng iáng ЩЩЩ.

The following set of forms is found in Edkins1 works:

che4 то1 ШШ che4 yang4 ШШ che4 mo3 yang4 Щ.ШШ che4 mo1 cho' ЩЩЩ

~ tsen4 mo1 cho1 na4 mo1 yang4

19 Note that the syllable děng Щ in compounds such as this is not simply a plural marker, as is found in literary and early vernacular written Chinese. Instead, the behavior of these forms parallels exactly that of je men and na men in our 1761 text. For example: ye men mang jl/ÍPItt "so busy"/ ché tèng tá ШЩУ^. "so big".

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Regarding forms of this type Edkins observes (1864a: 204, note): "In Peking, ff^ men2 is often used for fjj% mo3 as in Ш{П^ che4 men1 kau', so high. This is an irregularity and is one of the instances where the Peking dialect differs from standard mandarin, wo3 chï1 tau4 shf che4 men' cho1 [Ш^аШШШ^Щ] I know that it is so."

The following set of forms has been gleaned from the colloquial dialogue sections of Wade's grammar:

ШШ Ш.ШШ

шт ЙИПЙ

Wade comments on such forms as follows (1867: Pt. VI, p, 85): "The mo is sometimes written men; but this is then pronounced mo" In the light of Edkins' contemporaneous remarks Wade's statement seems to mean that the use of the syllable men in such expressions as these was a Pekingese dialectalism and therefore should be avoided in standard GH. Hence, even when ff^ appeared in a written form of this type, it should be pronounced as if it were Ш-

Finally, we give the comparable set of forms from Stent's dictionary:

che4 -то1 твШ che4-teng3 îgl

che4-yang4 Ш.Ш che4-mo'-yang4^MW. che4 -mo1 -cho2

na4-yang4 na4 -mo4 -yang4

Both the "-mo forms" and the "-men forms" in this material were present in vernacular texts from at least Yuan times (Lii 1985: 268-69; Ota 1987: 286-87), and it seems probable that both derived from spoken northern vernaculars of some sort. Our nineteenth century sources tell us that in the 1860's the "-men forms" were

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considered to be dialectal Pekingese, while the corresponding "-mo forms" represented standard northern GH. Neither type was current

in southern GH of Ming and Qïng times. Interestingly, the variety of GH underlying our 1761 text has adopted the northern dialect forms, rather than the southern GH forms or those which 100 years later were considered standard in Pekingese GH.

4.4. The inclusive pronoun záměn PjiifFI

The pronoun dza men PEÍPI "we (inclusive)" is common in

our text. Morrison early on identified this word as a peculiarly northern lexeme (1815-23, Part II, Vol. II: 862). Edkins says it was used in Pekingese and the dialects of Zhill ШШ (i-e., Modern Héběi), and also in Shandong (1864a: 99). A further discussion of it elsewhere (p. 158) suggests that it was acceptable in standard Pekingese GH, though it had a dialectal flavor. Wade introduces it without comment as a standard GH inclusive pronoun (1867: Pt. Ill, p. 7). Stent does likewise. Here we can see that our 1761 text has freely availed itself of a northern dialect form, without regard to its complete absence from standard southern GH.

There is one occurrence in our text of a form, dza di Of=jâtJ, which appears to be a singular pronoun corresponding dza men P^jf ̂:

(26) o ši ši di bujhi dao a. žo šijhi dao gio g'ao su/ ni ba dza di. bing bujhi dao. giyao о g'ao su ši то

Ш ; ЩШШ1ТЩ [4а] "Indeed I know nothing about it. If I knew, I would tell you. As I have no knowledge of it, what do you wish me to tell you?" [Wylie 36]

Wang and Zheng (1999: Vol. 3, p. 4100) list a form zánde

PÉâiJ which they identify as a Peking dialect word for modern standard záměn PfifP^. No singular sense of zánde is mentioned. The

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same compound, in various phonetic garbs, is also cited for several other north Chinese dialects, but all in plural uses. Our example may be the only currently known case of a singular application.

4.5. The word zhâo $£ "to look for, search"

There are two words for "to search, look for" in our text. One of these, siyun Щ-, is common, while the other, jao ££ occurs only a few times. In southern GH the word xún Щ, read sin [sin], çh'în [ts'in], and rarely also siûn [syn], was the usual word for "to look for". Zhâo fjc is attested there only very late, in Morrison's dictionary, and then only in the specialized sense of "to supply". Wade and Stent give both hsiin2 ~ hsin2 Щ and chao3 fjc for "to look for". Stent also adds for zhâo the sense "to supply what is deficient". Zhâo is the general word for "search" in the modern northern dialects and may be a basically northern form whose oldest semantic range was "to supply, provide in order to make up a difference or lack, etc." From there it apparently evolved to mean "supply by dint of effort, look for, etc." The modern sense "to make change (in monetary transactions)" would seem to be a specialized survival of the old sense "to supply in order to make up a difference". The word is attested in written sources by at least Ming times. Our 1761 text suggests that by the late eighteenth century zhâo had come into competition with xún in the northern GH koine. Both existed there until at least the late nineteenth century, while in the twentieth only zhâo survived in spoken usage.

4.6. The word hë Щ "to drink"

Our text uses two words in the sense "to drink", i.e., he Щ /Щ and yen $X- Of these two, he Щ/Щ appears considerably more frequently and in a wider range of constructions, while yen tfc is of more limited occurrence. However, yen ffi is by no means restricted to literary compounds and expressions. It was clearly a

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free and viable alternative to he ПЦ/РпГ in the underlying language. In southern GH only in ffi. was used in the sense of "to drink". Stent lists both ho1 Щ and yin3 Ш- He seems to have viewed them as co

equal synonyms meaning "to drink". But Edkins and Wade limit themselves to ho1 Щ in actual speech examples. He Щ is the general word for "to drink" in modern north Chinese dialects. It is

attested in texts from at least Yuan times, probably reflecting general use in northern lingua francas, rather than merely in the regional vernaculars. In the language of our 1761 text, it was clearly already preferred over yin Ш, the southern koine form. Later hë completely displaced yïn as a free form in speech. Here we may have a case where the southern word never really gained a firm foothold in northern GH. It may be that the northern koine favored northern usage from the beginning, assigning the southern word to a peripheral position and eventually abandoning it.

4.7. The word "thing"

The word for "physical thing" in our text is dung si ШШ- The usual words in southern GH were vuě Щ or vuě kién Щ{$. Varo lists twig sï ЖШ after these two in his dictionary but does not use it in phrases or in his grammar. It was apparently not really current in the southern koine. Stent gives all three forms. But Edkins and Wade use only dôngxi in their spoken examples. Thus, in recent centuries at least, it would appear that the southern GH forms for "thing" had little if any currency in the spoken northern koiné. Dôngxi ЖШ was the word for "thing" there and retains its position today.

4.8. Words for "place"

In our text the concept "place" is generally rendered by compounds containing the bound morpheme chu |Ц "place", e.g., biye chu ШШ "other places", kioi chu ^Ш "destination", etc. This

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type of compound also occurs in southern GH, but the language also has a free form so chái Я/ТЙ: which means "place". Varo also lists the noun ti fang ШУ5, but this word has for him a specialized meaning, "territory," rather than the general sense "place". The compound ďifang tf&jý occurs in the Hónglóumeng in the sense "place", so the word must have been current in the north by at least the mid-eighteenth century. But our text does not use it. Stent gives both ďifang and suôzài ЯЯЙ: in his dictionary. Edkins and Wade use only the former form in their example sentences. Here, then, we have a case where our 1761 variety of northern GH agreed with the southern koine in not using the compound ďifang in the sense "place". A century later ďifang had apparently become the standard northern word, probably through the influence of the northern vernaculars.

5. CONCLUSIONS

Edkins (1864a: 8, 99, 218) tells us that in the Peking of his day two different languages were spoken. One of these was the local vernacular of the city, i.e. Pekingese dialect. This language was usually called jïnghuà Jř fj§ "the speech of the capital". Another name for it was sïhuà ^Lïb "private language". The latter term specifically distinguished this speech form from the "public" one, i.e., the standard koine. This standard language was of course called GH, or, more specifically, Beijing guânhuà ^t^^lS of which there were two sub-varieties of it. The ordinary spoken type was called zhën guànhuà Ш'ШШ "true GH". In addition to this there was also a highly ornate, allusive literary variety, used in formal or ceremonial settings. This was called wénhuà SlWi

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"cultured speech".20 Wénhuà was to be distinguished from Щ, the formal written language of the time, which is now often called literary Chinese in English. Edkins1 grammar and textbook (1864a, 1864b) attempt to describe and teach what he considered to be typical or "pure" Beijing guânhuà, with primary focus on zhën guânhuà. But he is careful to tell us that southern or southernized varieties of the koine were also to be heard in the city, spoken even by people who had lived there for generations. He says (1864a: 279): "Many men from Kiangnan reside in Peking, especially of the class of scholars. They retain many peculiarities of the southern pronunciation, even after the lapse of three or four generations. In such cases the tones of Peking are sometimes used in conjunction with the initials and finals of Nanking." Clearly, then, the sociolinguistic picture in Peking ca 1 860 was quite complex, even if one speaks exclusively of the GH koine. What, then, can we conclude about the situation a century earlier, when the language underlying our Manchu transcriptional text was spoken?

Let us start our assessment by considering what this underlying language was not. Clearly, it was not simply the

southern, Nankingese-like GH variety described by the Western missionaries of late Ming and early Qïng times. Phonologically, lexically, and grammatically, it differed from this language in a number of particulars. Nor was it simply a northern vernacular, such as Pekingese dialect, for we have found in it non-northern features at all linguistic levels. It was, on the contrary, some sort of blend of these two. However, it was not only that, for, in addition to both southern koine and northern dialect features, we have also found in it elements which had already been attested centuries earlier in what were probably northern-based texts such as Yuan plays, popular novels, etc. For this reason, in probing the formative

20 The homophonous compound wénhuà 3tffc "culture, edification", which is of literary origin, was probably not current in actual speech during this period. It is not found in Stent or in Giles (1892), though both of these duly list wénhuà 3£fë.

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process of our 1761 language, we must envisage at least three different sources, i.e., standard southern Ming/Qïng GH, received northern koine varieties, and local northern dialects of the capital area.

How might these three sources have interacted to produce the language of our text? We can assume that, when the Ming capital was moved from Nanking to Peking in 1421, the imperial court carried with it the standard koine that it had used before the move. This, it is now generally thought, was an early form of what we have characterized here as southern GH. What the exact sociolinguistic situation was at Peking in 1421 is uncertain. Was there a two-layered structure, consisting of a local Pekingese dialect and a more general northern lingua franca? And if so, how much did they differ? Or was there essentially one Pekingese language which served as both local dialect and regional standard? This we do not know. In any case, the southern GH koine of the court was superimposed on what already existed in the city, and it remained intact and independent, as an ideal at least, for a surprisingly long period. For example, when Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) lived in Peking, he continued to use in his own work the form of southern GH he had learned in central China. Whatever departures from this standard were to be heard in Peking in late Ming times were of no interest to him and his confrères. And there can be little doubt that such departures were present in this period, because they are occasionally mentioned in the immediately following one. We have seen references to them by Prémare in section 2.2.5 above. And in the 1793 manuscript revision of Varo (1703) we find the comment that, while standard GH was spoken well in various places other than Nanking, "The languages of Pe kin [4tM] and of Xan tung [\i\ 3f(], however, differ a bit [from the standard]" (Coblin and Levi 2000: 255). Nevertheless, Varo himself felt that GH was spoken "well" in Peking (ibid. p. 31). What we may suppose here is that, during the seventeenth century, Pekingese GH (as opposed to any local dialect spoken in the city) agreed reasonably well with

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standard southern GH. It had its peculiarities of pronunciation, which showed encroaching northern influence, and it probably also had special lexical and grammatical features, either carried over from earlier northern lingua francas or borrowed from the local dialect. However, it was still considered to be a form of "general" GH. By the late eighteenth century there had been further evolution.

Peking GH had, for example, undergone the same sweeping palatalization of velars and sibilants experienced by the local northern dialects. And it was continuing to adopt lexical items from those dialects, almost always at the expense of southern lexical counterparts. These trends continued after the time of our text. Throughout this period the general prestige of the northern koine was growing, to the point that in the 1820's Morrison was able to foresee its ultimate triumph. This prediction had been realized by the time of Edkins and Wade. They clearly viewed Peking GH as central, and southern GH as peripheral. And the general drift towards northern usage did not stop with them. It continued throughout late Qing times and into the Republican period, as Peking GH became first Guóyú ЩЩ and then, finally, modern Putônghuà USIŽ. In the end, then, what we have today in modern standard Chinese is not simply Pekingese, if by that we mean the dialect of the city of Peking. It is, on the contrary a complex

tapestry of phonological, lexical, and grammatical features, woven from strands taken from southern GH, received northern standards, and the local northern dialects. The language of our 1761 text represents a single stage in this long process, which has yielded what today we know as modern standard Chinese.

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A Sample of eighteenth century spoken Mandarin from North ...merovech/voynich/voynich_manchu...A Sample of eighteenth century spoken Mandarin from North China In: Cahiers de linguistique