Arime table orrhyme table (simplified Chinese:韵图;traditional Chinese:韻圖;pinyin:yùntú;Wade–Giles:yün-t'u) is a Chinesephonological model, tabulating thesyllables of the series ofrime dictionaries beginning with theQieyun (601) by theironsets,rhyme groups,tones and other properties. The method gave a significantly more precise and systematic account of the sounds of those dictionaries than the previously usedfǎnqiè analysis, but many of its details remain obscure. The phonological system that is implicit in the rime dictionaries and analysed in the rime tables is known asMiddle Chinese, and is the traditional starting point for efforts to recover the sounds of early forms of Chinese. Some authors distinguish the two layers as Early and Late Middle Chinese respectively.

The earliest rime tables are associated with ChineseBuddhist monks, who are believed to have been inspired by theSanskrit syllable charts in theSiddham script they used to study the language. The oldest extant rime tables are the 12th-centuryYunjing ('mirror of rhymes') andQiyin lüe ('summary of the seven sounds'), which are very similar, and believed to derive from a common prototype. Earlier fragmentary documents describing the analysis have been found atDunhuang, suggesting that the tradition may date back to the lateTang dynasty.

Some scholars, such as the Swedish linguistBernhard Karlgren, use the French spellingrime for the categories described in these works, to distinguish them from the concept of poetic rhyme.^[1]

TheQieyun, produced by Lu Fayan (陸法言;Lù Fǎyán) in 601, was arime dictionary, serving as a guide to the recitation of literary texts and an aid in the composition of verse. It quickly became popular during theTang dynasty, leading to a series of revised and expanded editions, the most important of which was theGuangyun (1008). In these dictionaries, characters were grouped first by thefour tones, and then into rhyme groups. Each rhyme group was subdivided into groups of homophonous characters, with the pronunciation of each given by afanqie formula, a pair of familiar characters indicating the sounds of the initial and final parts of a syllable respectively. The dictionaries typically used several characters for each initial or final.^[2]

The fanqie method of indicating pronunciation made the dictionaries awkward to use. Theděngyùnxué (等韻學 'study of classified rhymes') was a more sophisticated analysis of theQieyun pronunciations, initially developed by Chinese Buddhist monks who were studyingIndian linguistics. A tantalizing glimpse of this tradition is offered by fragments fromDunhuang. A fragment held by theBritish Library (Or.8210/S.512) simply lists 30 initial consonants.^[3] Another document includes three fragments attributed to a monk called Shǒuwēn (守溫), who may have lived as early as the 9th century. These fragments do not contain tables, but describe the phonological analysis that underlies them.^[4]

The oldest known rhyme tables are a version of theYunjing published with prefaces dated 1161 and 1203, and theQiyin lüe, which was included in the 1161 encyclopediaTongzhi. The two are very similar, and are believed to be derived from a single version pre-dating theSong dynasty.^[5] The tables were accompanied by a body of teachings known asménfǎ (門法 'school precepts'), including rules for placing fanqie spellings that did not conform to the system within the tables.^[6]

Later rhyme tables were more elaborate. TheSìshēng děngzǐ (四聲等子) was probably created during the Northern Song, and explicitly introduced broad rhyme classes (shè攝), which were previously implicit in the ordering of the tables.^[3] The preface of theQièyùn zhǐzhǎngtú (切韻指掌圖) is dated 1203, in the Southern Song.^[7] In this work the tables are restructured with separate columns for each of the 36 initials.^[8] TheJīng shǐ zhèng yīn Qièyùn zhǐnán (經史正音切韻指南), produced by Liú Jiàn (劉鑑) in 1336, was the basis for one of the two sets of rime tables at the front of theKangxi dictionary.^[3]

TheYunjing was lost in China for several centuries. TheQieyun zhizhangtu, incorrectly attributed to the 11th century scholarSima Guang, was believed to be the oldest of the rime tables, and was used in the earliest reconstruction efforts. However, in the 1880s several versions of theYunjing were discovered in Japan. Comparison with theQiyin lüe showed that they were based on a common model, of which the other rime tables were later refinements. All recent reconstruction work has been based on theYunjing. TheFù Sòng Yǒnglù (覆宋永禄) edition of 1564 is considered the most reliable, and is the basis of all reproductions in circulation.^[a][9]

In the medieval rime dictionaries, characters were organized into rhyme groups (韵yùn), with 193 groups in theQieyun, growing to 206 in theGuangyun. The order of the rhyme groups within each tone implies a correspondence between rhyme groups across thefour tones. Thus for each rhyme group with an -m, -n or -ng coda in the level tone there are typically corresponding rhyme groups with the same coda in the rising and departing tones, and a corresponding rhyme group in theentering tone with a -p, -t or -k coda respectively.^[b] In contrast, syllables with vocalic codas typically had corresponding rhyme groups only in the level, rising and departing tones. There were also four departing tone rhyme groups with -j codas that had no counterparts in the other tones.^[10]

The rime tables were solely concerned with the pronunciation of syllables of these rime dictionaries, and do not contain dictionary-like material such as definitions. Similarly, where a group of characters are recorded ashomophones in the rime dictionaries, typically only one will occur in a rime table.^[11] A rime table book presents these distinct syllables in a number of tabular charts, each devoted to one or more sets of parallel rhyme groups across the tones.

The preface toQieyun indicates that it represented a compromise between northern and southern reading pronunciations from the lateNorthern and Southern dynasties period.^[c] Most linguists now believe that no single dialect contained all the distinctions it recorded, but that each distinction did occur somewhere.^[2][12] The rime tables were compiled centuries later in the time of a new standard, and many of the distinctions in theQieyun would have been meaningless to the compilers.Edwin Pulleyblank has argued that the tables contain enough evidence to reconstruct the speech of that later period. He calls this language Late Middle Chinese (LMC) in contrast to the Early Middle Chinese of theQieyun, and argues that it was the standard speech of the imperial capitalChang'an in the lateTang dynasty. His reconstruction accounts for most of the distinctions in modern varieties of Chinese (exceptMin), as well as layers of Chinese loanwords, such as theKan-on layer ofSino-Japanese vocabulary.^[13][14][15]

Each chart of theYunjing is labelled as either "open" (開;kāi ) or "closed" (合;hé). The corresponding terms in theQiyin lüe are "heavy" (重;zhòng) and "light" (輕;qīng).^[16] The open/closed distinction is interpreted to indicate the absence or presence of lip rounding (often transcribed as -w- or -u-). SomeGuangyun rhyme groups include syllables of both kinds, and thus span two charts, while others are purely "open" or "closed", and thus fit within one chart. Charts are grouped together in broad rhyme classes (攝;shè), each characterized as either "inner" (內;nèi) or "outer" (外;wài), thought to be related to vowel heights, contrastingclose vowels andopen vowels respectively.^[17][18]

For example, the first of the 43 charts of theYùnjìng is shown below (the Arabic numerals are modern annotations):

The five big characters on the right-hand side readNèi zhuǎn dìyī kāi (內轉第一開). In theYùnjìng, each chart is calledazhuǎn (lit. 'turn'). The characters indicate that the chart is the first (第一) one in the book, and that the syllables of this chart are "inner" (內) and "open" (開).

The columns of each table classify syllables according to their initial consonant (shēngmǔ 聲母 lit. 'sound mother'), with syllables beginning with avowel considered to have a "zero initial". Initials are classified according to

• place of articulation:labials (chún 脣 'lip'),alveolars (shé 舌 'tongue'),velars (yá 牙 'back tooth'),affricates andsibilants (chǐ 齒 "front tooth"), and laryngeals (hóu 喉 'throat'). The values of the last category remain controversial.
• manner of articulation: voiceless (qīng 清 'clear'), voiceless aspirated (cìqīng 次清 'secondary clear'), voiced (zhuó 濁 'muddy') ornasal orliquid (qīngzhuó 清濁 'clear muddy').^[19]

The order of the places and manners roughly match that ofSanskrit, providing further evidence of inspiration from Indian phonology.^[20]

Each table had 16 rows, with a group of four rows for each of the four tones of theQieyun.The above chart covers four parallelGuangyun rhyme groups, the level-toned東dōng, the rising-toned董dǒng, the departing-toned送sòng, and the entering-toned屋wū (which in Middle Chinese ended in -k, the entering tone counterpart of -ng).

Within each tone group are four rows known asděng (等 'class', 'grade' or 'group'), whichBernhard Karlgren translated as "divisions" while other linguists prefer "grades". They are usually denoted by Roman numerals I to IV. Their meaning remains the most controversial aspect of rime table phonology, but is believed to indicatepalatalization (transcribed as the presence or absence of -j- or -i-),retroflex features,phonation, vowel quality (high vs. low or front vs. back) or some combination of these.^[17] Other scholars view them not as phonetic categories but formal devices exploiting distributional patterns in theQieyun to achieve a compact presentation.^[21]

The symbol○ indicates that that particular syllable does not occur.

Bernard Karlgren noticed that classes of finals from the rime dictionaries were placed in different rows of the rime tables. As three classes of final occurred in the first, second and fourth rows respectively, he named them finals of divisions I, II and IV. The remaining finals he called "division-III finals" because they occurred in the third row of the tables. Some of these (the "pure" division-III finals) occurred only in that row, while others (the "mixed" finals) could also occur in the second or fourth rows with some initials.^[22]

Later workers noted that in the so-calledchóngniǔ rhyme groups,支zhī,脂zhī,祭jì,宵xiāo,鹽yán,侵qīn,仙xiān and真zhēn, a consistent distinction within each rhyme group in the rime books is reflected in the rime tables by dividing the rhyme group between rows 2 and 4, often in adjacent tables.^[23]Li Rong, in a systematic comparison of the rhyme tables with a recently discovered early edition of theQieyun, identified seven classes of finals. The table below lists the combinations of initial and final classes that occur in theQieyun, with the row of the rime tables in which each combination was placed:^[24][25]

The mixed andchongniu finals, though designated as division-III finals, are spread across rows 2 and 4 as well as row 3 of the tables.To handle these cases, a distinction is made between the row that the homophone class is placed in and the "division" of its final. This article distinguishes rows byArabic numerals 1 2 3 4 and divisions byRoman numerals I II III IV.

In addition, division-II and division-IV finals occur only in "outer"shè.

This distribution is the foundation of the compact tabular presentation of rime dictionary syllables.For example, the dental and retroflex stop initials are combined in a single group in a rime table, with the rows distinguishing the differentQieyun initials, and the three groups of sibilant initials are similarly combined. In a similar fashion different finals may occupy different rows of the same chart.^[26]

TheGuangyun rhyme groups (here illustrated in the level tone, except where a group occurs only in the departing tone) are distributed across the 43 charts of theYunjing andQiyin lüe as follows:

In some cases, theGuangyun already reflected the open/closed distinction with separate rhyme groups, while in others they were included in the same group.

The earliest documentary records of the rime table tradition, the Dunhuang fragments, contain lists of 30 initials, each named after an exemplary character. This was later expanded to a standard set of 36 in the preface of theYunjing, the major addition being a series oflabiodental fricatives split from the labial series:^[3]

Tables of theYunjing have only 23 columns, with one group of columns each for labials, coronals and sibilants, with the different types placed in different rows of the tables.Some later tables such as theQieyun zhizhangtu have 36 columns, one for each of the 36 initials.^[8]

The 36 initials were so influential that it was not until 1842 that it was discovered (byChen Li) that the initials of theQieyun were slightly different.^[34]

There is some variation in the transcription of the initials影 and喻. The table above uses⟨ʔ⟩ and⟨ʜ⟩. Other conventions are⟨ʼ⟩ vs nothing,⟨ʼ⟩ vs⟨ʼʼ⟩, andmid dot⟨·⟩ (since Unicode 8.0,U+A78F ꞏLATIN LETTER SINOLOGICAL DOT is also available for this purpose) vs⟨ʼ⟩. These conventions carry over to other scripts of the Sinological tradition, such asʼPhags-pa andJurchen.

• Branner, David Prager (2000), "The rime-table system of formal Chinese phonology", in Auroux, Sylvain; Koerner, E. F. K.; Niederehe, Hans-Josef; Versteegh, Kees (eds.),History of the Language Sciences, Walter de Gruyter, pp. 46–55,ISBN 3-11-011103-9.
• ——— (2021), "Rime tables", in Chen, Jack W.; Detwyler, Anatoly; Liu, Xiao; Nugent, Christopher M. B.; Rusk, Bruce (eds.),Literary Information in China, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 65–77,ISBN 978-0-231-19552-2.

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EnglishWikisource has original text related to this article:

Qieyun zhizhangtu

EnglishWikisource has original text related to this article:

Qieyun zhizhangtu

• Fragments prefiguring the rime tables, found atMogao Caves,Dunhuang:
  • British Library Or.8210/S.512: 《歸三十字母例》"Guī sānshí zìmǔ lì" (30 initials), a fragment collected byAurel Stein.
  • Bibliothèque nationale de France Pelliot chinois 2012 (BNF link): a scroll containing theShouwen fragments (on the reverse side from the drawing) collected byPaul Pelliot.
• Scanned books at theInternet Archive:
  • Yunjing
  • parts 34–36 and37–38 of theTongzhi encyclopedia – theQiyin lüe comprises parts 36 and 37
  • Qieyun zhizhangtu
  • Preface of theKangxi dictionary, including rime tables
• Scanned books at theChinese Text Project:
  • Yunjing
  • Qieyun zhizhangtu
  • Qieyun zhinan
  • Kangxi dictionary (Tongwen Shuju edition), with rime tables in the preface
• Qieyun zhizhangtu at theNational Library of Australia
• Sisheng dengzi, scan at theChinese University of Hong Kong
• Rhyme Tables, Dylan W.H. Sung

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• Traditional Chinese phonology

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