Article published In: Language and Linguistics
Vol. 26:1 (2025) ► pp.123–154
Foot-shift and disyllabification in the history of Chinese
With a revisit of syllabic structures of Old Chinese
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
Published online: 22 July 2024
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00173.zhu
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00173.zhu
Abstract
This paper argues that the Chinese language has undergone a foot-shift from the Old Chinese monosyllabic foot to a Modern
Chinese disyllabic foot. It will be shown that the natural simplification of Old Chinese syllables has caused the foot-shift, resulting in
disyllabification. The disappearance of bimoraic feet in Old Chinese has resulted from the loss of consonantal codas, including codas of
consonant clusters, which has led to the disappearance of heavy syllables, as well as super-heavy syllables. In other words, this foot-shift
can be explained as a compensatory transformation of a heavy Old Chinese dimoraic monosyllable to a pair of light monomoraic disyllables.
One way of understanding this evolution is that disyllabification of feet in Modern Chinese is a compensatory mechanism to maintain foot
complexity.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Prosodic properties of Old Chinese
- 2.1Syllabic structure of Old Chinese
- 2.1.1The Li Fang-kuei system
- 2.1.2Wang Li’s system
- 2.1.3The Zhengzhang-Pan system
- 2.2A prosodic view of Old Chinese syllable
- 2.1Syllabic structure of Old Chinese
- 3.Simplification of syllabic structures in the transition from Old Chinese to Middle Chinese, with foot-shift thus triggered
- 3.1Simplification of syllabic structures
- 3.1.1Coda reduction and loss
- 3.1.2Simplification of consonant clusters
- 3.1.3Simplification of Old Chinese syllabic structures
- 3.2Foot shift of Chinese
- 3.1Simplification of syllabic structures
- 4.Disyllabification: Consequence of foot-shift in the history of Chinese
- 4.1Vocabulary consequence of foot-shift
- 4.2Syntactic consequence of foot-shift
- 5.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- List of abbreviations
References
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