Zeng Guangyuan (2 results)

8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. title-slip & stitching. [China]: s.d. A scarce edition of this tabular representation of the phonology of the famous dictionary Guangyun å»£é» [Expanded Rhymes, 1008 CE]. The history of the Chinese language is usually divided into three periods: Ancient, Middle, and Modern Chinese. Guangyun was for a long time the most well-known work that described the phonology of Middle Chinese. Our book rearranges the contents of Guangyun to make the phonological system represented in it apparent. "This book takes Guangyun's 206 rhymes and arranges them in 'Charts of Open and Closed Articulation in the Four Grades'. Each chart has four columns containing the characters of the Level, Rising, Departing, and Entering tones. Following the order of the rhymes in Guangyun, it lists a representative character for every homophonous group. Beneath each character, a syllabic spelling pair and the grade are given. The bottom row lists the 36 initials. This is a book dedicated to representing the phonology of Guangyun, it can serve as a reference for students of that book" (Xu, Chuantong yuyanxue cidian, 61). Zeng Guangyuan was a professor at China University (Zhongguo daxue) in Beijing in the Republican period (Xu, 559). Fine copy.

Two vols. 8vo, orig. printed wrappers, orig. stitching. [China]: Haishi bianyi ju æµ äºç è å±, 1929. First edition of this study of a phonological text by 18th-century thinker Dai Zhen æ é (1724-77, style name Dongyuan æ±å). "Dai Zhen began life as a nobody. But he nevertheless managed to seize the attention of Beijing's cognoscenti in 1755, and for over a decade he was the intellectual toast of the Lower Yangzi Delta" (Hu, China's Transition to Modernity). Dai Zhen died young, and several of his writings were posthumously published, including a phonological work called "Shenglei biao" è é¡è¡ ["Charts on the Categories of Sounds"]. Separately, the posthumous collection included a text called "Zhuanyu ershi zhang xu" è½èªäºåç«åº ["Preface to 20 paragraphs on turned words"]. Yet the text to which this Preface belonged was gone. It has not surfaced since, and it is unclear if it was ever written. Zeng Guangyuan, as told by his friend Zhou Zhaoyuan å' åæ in a Preface to our book, had one day been reading the "Charts on the Categories of Sounds" and exclaimed, "Dongyuan's [i.e., Dai Zhen] 'turned words', aren't they the 'Charts on the Categories of Sounds'?" Our book contains Zeng's understanding of what Dai could have meant by his "turned words." Zeng Guangyuan taught at China University ä å大å , a Republican-era private university that was closed down after the founding of the PRC. Zeng moreover published a work on rhyme table studies (Xu, Chuantong yuyanxue cidian, 559). Fine set. ⧠Fang Chaoying. "Tai Chên." Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644-1912). Vol. 2. Edited by Arthur W. Hummel. G.P.O, 1944. Hu, Minghui. China's Transition to Modernity: The New Classical Vision of Dai Zhen. University of Washington Press, 2015. Xu Jialu è® åç', ed. Chuantong yuyanxue cidian ä¼ç»è è å¦è¾å . Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1990.