Languages, scripts, and Chinese texts in East Asia
Title | Languages, scripts, and Chinese texts in East Asia PDF eBook |
Author | Peter Francis Kornicki |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | 416 |
Release | 2018-01-19 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0192518690 |
Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia is a wide-ranging study of vernacularization in East Asia - not only China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, but also societies that no longer exist, such as the Tangut and Khitan empires. Peter Kornicki takes the reader from the early centuries of the common era, when the Chinese script was the only form of writing and Chinese Buddhist, Confucian, and medical texts spread throughout East Asia, through the centuries when vernacular scripts evolved, right up to the end of the nineteenth century when nationalism created new roles for vernacular languages and vernacular scripts. Through an examination of oral approaches to Chinese texts, it shows how highly-valued Chinese texts came to be read through the prism of the vernaculars and ultimately to be translated. This long process has some parallels with vernacularization in Europe, but a crucial difference is that literary Chinese was, unlike Latin, not a spoken language. As a consequence, people who spoke different East Asian vernaculars had no means of communicating in speech, but they could communicate silently by means of written conversation in literary Chinese; a further consequence is that within each society Chinese texts assumed vernacular garb: in classes and lectures, Chinese texts were read and declaimed in the vernaculars. What happened in the nineteenth century and why are there still so many different scripts in East Asia? How and why were Chinese texts dethroned, and what replaced them? These are some of the questions addressed in Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia.
Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia
Title | Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia PDF eBook |
Author | Peter Francis Kornicki |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | 424 |
Release | 2018 |
Genre | FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDY |
ISBN | 0198797826 |
This is a wide-ranging study of vernacularization in East Asia, examining Chinese script of the early common era, the spread of Chinese Buddhist, Confucian, and medical texts throughout East Asia, all the way to the end of the nineteenth century when nationalism created new roles for vernacular languages and vernacular scripts.
Rethinking East Asian Languages, Vernaculars, and Literacies, 1000–1919
Title | Rethinking East Asian Languages, Vernaculars, and Literacies, 1000–1919 PDF eBook |
Author | |
Publisher | BRILL |
Total Pages | 334 |
Release | 2014-08-21 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 900427927X |
The authors consider new views of the classical versus vernacular dichotomy that are especially central to the new historiography of China and East Asian languages. Based on recent debates initiated by Sheldon Pollock’s findings for South Asia, we examine alternative frameworks for understanding East Asian languages between 1000 and 1919. Using new sources, making new connections, and re-examining old assumptions, we have asked whether and why East and SE Asian languages (e.g., Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian, Jurchen, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese) should be analysed in light of a Eurocentric dichotomy of Latin versus vernaculars. This discussion has encouraged us to explore whether European modernity is an appropriate standard at all for East Asia. Individually and collectively, we have sought to establish linkages between societies without making a priori assumptions about the countries’ internal structures or the genealogy of their connections. Contributors include: Benjamin Elman; Peter Kornicki; John Phan; Wei Shang; Haruo Shirane; Mårten Söderblom Saarela; Daniel Trambaiolo; Atsuko Ueda; Sixiang Wang.
Language Change in East Asia
Title | Language Change in East Asia PDF eBook |
Author | T. E. McAuley |
Publisher | Routledge |
Total Pages | 315 |
Release | 2013-10-11 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1136844619 |
This book adopts a wide focus on the range of East Asian languages, in both their pre-modern and modern forms, within the specific topic area of language change. It contains sections on dialect studies, contact linguistics, socio-linguistics and syntax/phonology and deals with all three major languages of East Asia: Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Individual chapters cover pre-Sino-Japanese phonology, nominalizers in Chinese, Japanese and Korean; Japanese loanwords in Taiwan Mandarin; changes in Korean honorifics; the tense and aspect system of Japanese; and language policy in Japan. The book will be of interest to linguists working on East Asian languages, and will be of value to a range of general linguists working in comparative or historical linguistics, socio-linguistics, language typology and language contact.
Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script
Title | Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script PDF eBook |
Author | Zev Handel |
Publisher | BRILL |
Total Pages | 383 |
Release | 2019-05-07 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 9004352228 |
In Sinography, Zev Handel provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of the ways in which the Chinese-character script evolved as it was adapted to write other languages of Asia, including Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Zhuang, Khitan, and Jurchen.
Literary Sinitic and East Asia
Title | Literary Sinitic and East Asia PDF eBook |
Author | Bunkyo Kin |
Publisher | BRILL |
Total Pages | 290 |
Release | 2021-04-06 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 9004437304 |
In Literary Sinitic and East Asia: A Cultural Sphere of Vernacular Reading, Professor Kin Bunkyō surveys the ‘vernacular reading’ technologies used to read Literary Sinitic through a wide variety of vernacular languages across diverse premodern literary cultures in East Asia.
Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese
Title | Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese PDF eBook |
Author | Insup Taylor |
Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing |
Total Pages | 428 |
Release | 1995-01-01 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 9027217947 |
Chinese, Japanese, South (and North) Koreans in East Asia have a long, intertwined and distinguished cultural history and have achieved, or are in the process of achieving, spectacular economic success. Together, these three peoples make up one quarter of the world population.They use a variety of unique and fascinating writing systems: logographic Chinese characters of ancient origin, as well as phonetic systems of syllabaries and alphabets. The book describes, often in comparison with English, how the Chinese, Korean and Japanese writing systems originated and developed; how each relates to its spoken language; how it is learned or taught; how it can be computerized; and how it relates to the past and present literacy, education, and culture of its users.Intimately familiar with the three East Asian cultures, Insup Taylor with the assistance of Martin Taylor, has written an accessible and highly readable book. Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese is intended for academic readers (students in East Asian Studies, linguistics, education, psychology) as well as for the general public (parents, business, government). Readers of the book will learn about the interrelated cultural histories of China, Korea and Japan, but mainly about the various writing systems, some exotic, some familar, some simple, some complex, but all fascinating.