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9.57The first serious Western student of Chinese dialectology who was not a missionary was the brash Edward Harper Parker (), a British consular official. Most of Parker's data were never published except in sloppy second-hand by Herbert Giles and were long ago dismissed by Karlgren. Some of Parker's ideas are extremely important, although they have not been taken seriously by mod-ern dialectologists. This paper describes Parker's most original linguistic work, such as his deeply probing descriptive studies of colloquial dialect lexicon and comparative identifications of &charac-terless& dialect morphemes. Tables of Peking dialect material are appended, freshly elicited from some of Parker's notes, for the purpose of evaluating his work.Discover the world's research15+ million members118+ million publications700k+ research projects
THE LINGUISTIC IDEAS OF EDWARD HARPER PARKER DAVID PRAGER BRANNER NEW YORK CITY The first serious Western student of Chinese dialectology who was not a missionary was the brash Edward Harper Parker (),
a British consular official. Most of
Parker&s data were never published except in sloppy second-hand by Herbert Giles and were long ago dismissed by Karlgren. Some of Parker&s ideas are extremely important, although they have not been taken seriously by mod- ern dialectologists. This paper describes Parker&s most original linguistic
work, such as his
deeply probing descriptive studies of colloquial dialect lexicon and comparative identifications of &charac- terless& dialect morphemes. Tables of Peking dialect material are appended, freshly elicited from some of
Parker&s notes, for the purpose of evaluating his work. INTRODUCTION EDWARD HARPER PARKER ()
a remark- able scholar whose
now quite forgotten. He is best known as a British historian of
China from the era of
Herbert Giles
that is to say, from the last third of Queen Victoria&s reign to the period between the World Wars. Parker and Giles were easily the most influential writers of
their time in introducing Chinese culture to the English-speaking world. If
they were not properly historians according to
today&s fashion, they were at any rate history writers of great influence in their day. And even if that day was the zenith of
meddling by the European world in the political affairs of
East and South Asia, it would be foolish to condemn the leading men of that time automatically and without open-minded examination. Philip Marshall, evaluating the contribu- tions to Chinese history of both Parker and Giles, writes of an &unmistakably positive thrust in the works of Giles and Parker that played such an important role in the West&s appreciation of
China and the Chinese& (1984: 538). In his day, Parker was known to the foreign commu- nity in China as an indefatigable worker and one of the most knowledgeable of
non-Chinese about the Chinese language. A British consular official, he left a great many I am grateful to Jerry Norman, Paul W. Kroll, South Coblin, and Axel
Schuessler for comments on
earlier drafts of
this paper. A short version of
was read at the Western Branch Meeting of the American Oriental Society, on 26 October 1996, in Tempe, Arizona. books and articles on Chinese history, economics, and foreign relations. He read Chinese constantly, and seems to have had an insatiable appetite for miscellaneous facts. He took a number of
long trips in southern and western China and published travelogues about his experiences, which (since he apparently spoke excellent Chinese and was unquenchably curious about the details of the world around him) are still informative today. In the backs of certain journals one finds page after page crammed with his random jottings on every conceivable Chinese sub- ject-and
many of the early columns were evidently un- signed. In 1899 he remarked that he had been at this for &a full quarter century& (1899d: 92). He published notes on the Hmong and Loi languages (1892b and c), articles on the regional names of
various plants, a long review of Maa Jiannjong&s ,,%4I
Chinese gram- mar, lists of
Hakka sayings and popular songs (shan&ge 1 l X), and even a whole series of (not very good) rhymed English translations of
poetry. He
translated extensively from ancient and modern Chinese histories. But the most distinctive and least appreciated element of Parker&s frabjous intellectual life and personality was his research on Chinese dialectology, which is the subject of this paper. PARKER&S LIFE I
infor- mation about Parker&s life.
sources are Werner (1926)
and Who Was Who (1929).
Parker was from Liverpool. His
mother died when he was eleven. His
father was
a &surgeon&-in
parlance of
the day, a kind of manual tradesman, of considerably lower 12
BRANNER: The Linguistic Ideas of Edward Harper Parker standing than a &physician.& Parker studied just a year of Chinese in
London under the eminent James Summers (1828-91)
and then went, at the age of
twenty, to work in Peking as Student Interpreter for the British Consular Service in
1869. He lived
in China from then until his retirement in 1895, apart from stays in England and Can- ada in 1875-77
when he studied law, and in 1882 when he was called to the Bar. Over his several decades in the consular service in China he served in more than a dozen Chinese cities as well as in Korea, and was involved as an
Government
were apparently intelligence matters involving China. Parker must have enjoyed a fairly strenuous life: in addition to his travels, he lived in Szechwan for a
year, and in Hainan for two. According to one of
his obituaries he had a
Chinese wife-a
rare thing among China- hands
day. I have
to find no
information about her, though since
much Hakka ma- terial-popular
sayings, shan&ge (1881 a, 1882e, 1883b), family
histories-perhaps
Hakka, without
bound feet?
had a repu- tation
familiarity
linguistic
appointed Reader
University
additionally
at Victoria
University
Manchester.
had a daugh- ter,
or near him
in Liverpool
death. Edward
Werner remembered
stature, fairly
broad-chested,
with rather large
recreations
were listed
Who as travelling
and walking,
which I find
an explorer,
curiosity. Philip
photograph taken
indi- vidual& than the &naturally
combative&
525). He presented
a famously
cantankerous
but in that he was no different
from many other ferocious
schol- ars
and rolled-up
Karlgren (Coblin
Imperialism
energetic,
was out of
ebullience
that he chose
Juangtzyy&s
-4F sur- name
career (1886b:
51). Parker
with Giles.
after the publication
dictio- nary,
with notes on errata for it. Many of
these were submitted by Parker, but there are also
lengthy notes by Erwin von Zach ()
and by some of
Giles& original assis- tants. Parker&s criticisms, however, went far beyond those of
the others, and were the cause of
the falling out be- tween the two men. It was Parker who insisted on point- ing out ad nauseam the endless material that Giles had lifted wholesale from Williams& 1874 dictionary, not even correcting many of Williams& errors and omissions. And Parker&s errata, in particular, which appeared in his reg- ular column at the end of the bi-monthly China Review, were hardly offered in
the spirit of
correction. Marshall has not quite got the right word when he talks about Parker&s &vitriolic attacks on the works of his fel- low Sinologists& (1984: 525); it was not so much a mat- ter of
vitriol as of
ostentatious haughtiness and playful scorn, in the heady tradition of
the day. Here is a small sample of his winning style: It is easy, in surveying Giles& Dictionary, to indicate many of the books the authors have not
and indeed it would not be difficult to indicate those (not very many beyond the classics) they have read. (1894: 54) I observe that Mr. Giles has come to terrible grief over the character
The reason evidently is that he has confused it with
But he has gone further. He has suppressed all the dialect
sounds which I gave for the character X
and referred his readers to the totally differ- ent sound
This is another instance of how lexicog- raphers go on copying each other&s mistakes....
Mr. Giles has no excuse as Kang-hi is perfectly plain. () Since Mr. Giles has drawn attention to his
own many virtues, I have been giving him a fair chance, but I find there is no use my going to Giles[& dictionary] for any- thing new. () ...
A thorough knowledge of Chinese etymology (which Giles does not possess) is in any case necessary before K&ang-hi can be cited. (1898b: 173) Giles& Dictionary is the last place to look for any intel- ligent explanation of
176) I have a few remarks to make on some of
the Sir-Oracle utterances
soi-disant
Sinology.... (1899b: 280) [Giles] places me on
with himself, as an &ob- fuscator of
origins,& and a &suppressor of
evidences.& (1899c: 83) Mr. Giles, who catches at any straw in order to support his absurd theory about the forgery of
Lao-tsz&s classic and personal history, argues that....
the American
(1999) For
contemptuously
Parker&s linguistic
Translations
Parker& (1886)
Translator&
But nothing
match Parker&s droll badgering-his
eclipsed by his
the great days of
reads entertaining
more: Giles& Dictionary affords endless sport to the merry, and we may look forward to many a long year of
sparring yet. I find it quite a mental relief, after the serious stud- ies of
the day, to indulge in a little
Giles-baiting. It is all the more agreeable, in that I know it
can never do any
in pachydermatousness Mr. Giles would give points to a hippopotamus, if
not indeed to a
and there is not more danger of my fine shafts wounding his grizzly hide than there is of a dum-dum bullet pierc- ing the latter pachyderm&s skin. I
am glad to
&the boys& are waking up to the discussion. Mr. E. H. Fraser is not exactly a foeman worthy of my vainglorious steel, and in any case I can&t be bothered hunting up his refer- ences and arguing with
but I welcome him into the arena, if
only for the purpose of
airing views,
and put- ting some life
into sinology: moreover, I will
answer anything, the issues of
which are clearly defined, with- out referring me back to
previous issues.
old China is being badgered by shrimp-like nibbles at Kiao Chow, Kwang-chou Wan, Port Arthur, &c.,
indigestaque moles
Dictionary being mercilessly gnawed at by the pigmies of
such as myself.
the basis is Williams[& dictionary]; if
the dialects
and introduction are
are [George] Playfair[&]s [()];
and if the &author- ities& are Mr. E. H. Fraser, the question will arise during the next generation &did Mr. Giles
anything except purchase the paper and select the printing ink?& (1898a: 48) ...
grateful to
Mr. Giles...
would constitute himself
annotator and commentator in general . . .giving
a respectably prominent place in his Chamber of
Horrors, along with such excellent company as those murderers of
Chinese language [Samuel] Beal
[(1825-89)], [John] Chalmers [(1825-99)],
[James] Legge
[(1815- 97)], [Thomas] Watters [()],
&c. (1886b: 51) Stanislaus Julien [()]
and [Guilliaume] Pau- thier [(1801-73)]
made equal
themselves
by their bloodthirsty and
onslaughts upon each other, though every one can now see that Julien was the better sinological man of
the two. In the same way Giles has always cut a bad figure by the execrable taste of his attacks on Beal,
[Frederic] Bal[f]our,
[James] Lockhart [()],
and that is why I occa- sionally amuse myself by teasing him a little. As a mat- ter of fact, I am well aware that Giles, with all his faults, has a sneaking respect for me, in fact, he once wrote to me
to propose a truce, adding that he
together could stand against the whole
to which I replied &Just
it without your assistance.& Both Mr. Giles and Mr. Fraser would pull a wry face if I got them into a corner far away from dictionaries and &teachers,& and said &Now then, read that
pro- nounce every word correctly in any dialect you take of your own choosing, give me a literal written translation on the spot, and tell me where literary points originally hail from.& (1898b: 173) Giles&
Dictionary
of course, my part of
it). (1898b: 176) In order to read the classics, 24 histories, and in a word, all sane Chinese literature, only about 12,000 characters are required: the remaining 28,000
are practically rep- etitions,
duplicate forms, or rubbish. Now,
and Williams both give about 12,000; but (a big But) both of them give
1,000 useless ones, and fail to give 1,000 nec- essary ones.
I hope to reward patient students soon by giving a list of
&Giles& droppings,& or omitted words of universal value. (1899c:
but because
Parker&s rambunctious
personality
to understanding
linguistic
has suffered. PARKER&S
LINGUISTICS Parker&s
reputation
permanently
determined
the contemptuous drubbing
Karlgren-surely no
at the game
and predecessors-in
Introduction
Karlgren&s
Etudes: ...
descriptions incorrectes de
dialectes chinois
jusqu&ici,
pretentieuses
et, par consequent,
les plus fallacieuses,
sont celles
qu&a faites M. Parker pour douze dialects ...
plac6es sous les differents caracteres du
dictionnaire de
Giles. (1915-24:
13-14) This
Giles& dictionary,
today- several
the characters
The Linguistic Ideas of Edward Harper Parker some eight different dialects, as well
as the Sino-Xenic reading traditions. These readings were all
taken from Parker&s notes, though evidently with many typographi- cal errors. In the original 1892 edition of the dictionary, Parker&s contribution was acknowledged with praise in Giles& own preface, and Parker himself wrote a &Philo- logical Essay& of
thirty-three densely typeset pages on matters of historical phonology and comparative dialec- tology, and the interplay between them. That edition is much harder to find today than the corrected and en- larged 1912 edition, from which (after their feud) Giles cleanly expunged the &Philological Essay& and all ref- erences to P the dialect forms themselves, which were retained in largely uncorrected form, became anon- ymous. This body of
material represents Parker&s largest known corpus of
dialect data, but it is not at all easy to evaluate today because
have it in the cor- rected form that Parker intended. It is therefore natural for people to accept Karlgren&s assessment of Parker. The late Paul Yang went to the trouble, in one of his bibli- ographies, of
attributing the
Giles dialect
material to Parker, then immediately referred the reader to Karlgren &for evaluation and criticism& (1981: 38, no. 516). Karlgren had
complaints
about Parker&s work. First, he considered him a hack dialectologist, and listed example
after example in
which Parker&s forms were either wrong or improbable-and
no doubt many of
Parker himself
published correc- tions to
any number of
them in his
notes in the
late 1890s, often claiming that they were the result of
sloppy copying
Giles, even
though early on he
had said he
thought that &thanks to the
scrupulous care of the revisor
these misprints are comparatively rare& (). To be fair, Parker was not too proud to sug- gest that some of
the mistakes might have been his own (e.g.,
1896: 558).
Karlgren&s master, Pelliot, also noted this fact in his even-handed necrology of
Parker (1926: 303). Not only was Parker himself probably sloppier than a fieldworker can afford to be, but one sees today what poor sinological proofreading was
done at the Chinese printing houses of
the day. Karlgren, further, tore into
Parker&s system of
tran- scription on the grounds that it was naive and inconsis- tent. Parker had inherited from Samuel Wells Williams (1812-84)
the program of
working out a single
universal orthography for all Chinese dialects, based on empirical experience of individual dialects (see Bran- ner 1997). Apparently neither Williams nor Parker ever had much formal training in
phonetics,
had good ears, generally good sense, and unfailing enthusi- asm. Parker&s system of transcription, like Williams&, was continuously in flux, and it was generally presented as a table of
universal Chinese orthography that was up- dated with
each successive
dialect described. Parker&s actual dialect surveys were only published in brief, usu- ally as syllabaries (beginning in
1875 and followed
by 1880a-c,
and 1884b), but he always appended comparative tables of phonetics and also of tonal values. (Unfortunately, he did not try to describe the phonetic values
noted which dialects used the same contours for
which categories. Parker&s 1888 and 1889 essays offer more detailed views on tone in general, with reference to the relations be- tween the tonal systems of Chinese and of Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, and Shan.) His breezy approach to pho- netics seems to have enraged Karlgren, who took pride in his own finely machined phonetic representations and his knowledge of oral physiology. These
completely
different academic worlds-Karlgren
in the sophisticated French-speaking world
continental
rough-and- tumble British China, populated with missionaries, civil servants, and merchants. Parker had had only a year of higher education before leaving for China, and his law degree must have smacked of
tradesmanship. One can only guess how his marriage to a Chinese woman must have looked
to class-conscious
Europeans in his
day. Karlgren, who had already published scholarly works as a teenager, studied with Pelliot in Paris and went on to lead Sweden&s premier Asian research organization, hold- ing
a high place in
Parker ended up associated with
unprestigious universities in England&s industrial north (see Marshall 1984: 525 n. 24). Karlgren, a grave and dignified gentleman who once put on a false beard rather than appear in his own recognizable face to accept a prize for a pseudonymous novel, clearly could not bear Parker&s whole mode of
&pretentious& scholarship. And certainly Parker&s approach was at times haphazard. Parker&s &Philological Essay& was written in a far more casual tone than anything of
Karlgren&s-but
as a pop- ular description of
field it is
really quite a good job. In order to illustrate dialect differences and their relations to historical phonological categories, Parker took as his vehicle a short piece of text for trans- lation into a group of different dialects. Unlike Williams, who had used an imperial edict for this purpose, Parker began this essay with the &Song of
Sorrow& (the &Bei- chour Ge ,ji,
a simple Western Hann poem about the suffering of the Chinese princess Liou Shihjiun 1J,, t
in a foreign land. He wrote out this poem in fifteen different transcriptions: in a reconstructed ancient pro- nunciation (quite pretty and no doubt infinitely less pre- cise than Karlgren&s), in Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, Cantonese, Hakka, two varieties of Amoy (colloquial and 15
the American
(1999) literary), Foochow, Wenchow, Ningpo, two varieties of Sino-Japanese (kan&on and go&on), Pekingese, Hankow, and Yangchow. With each new translation of
the poem he pointed out special features of the dialect under dis- cussion,
and in a loose
described the progression from most to least linguistically conservative. He went on to discuss issues of Chinese orthography, dialect pho- netics, categories in historical phonology, and finally to present the
last published version of
comparative orthographic table. To Karlgren all this was pathetic- Parker&s &Song
Sorrow& was
pseudo- intellectual works of
the pre-Karlgrenian period that he dismissed as &arbitraires, peu m6thodiques et inadmissi- bles.& It was &un exemple charmant de ce dilettantisme sans valeur scientifique& (1915-24:
8). Parker has not been taken seriously as a linguist since Karlgren&s time. The purpose of
the remainder of
this paper is
to rehabilitate his
reputation, on
of two things: his ideas on dialectology and the accuracy of his fieldwork. IDEAS ON DIALECTOLOGY As for the first matter, Karlgren was
surely not able to
understand Parker&s ideas-his
great intellec- tual bequest
that the purpose of
dialect comparison in Chinese is
the creation
of a reconstruction, to
speculum in philological work. Parker&s ideas on dialectology were characteristically his
have favored comparativism for its own sake: that is, the web of
re- lations between dialects themselves rather than the in- dividual lines of
descent between each dialect and the philologically attested &ancestor& language. In the 1870s and
while Joseph Edkins was
advancing ever more elaborate theories
origin of Chinese and Aryan, and while
Albert-Etienne Terrien de Lacouperie (fl. 1867-94)
was claiming to show how Chinese was derived from Babylonian, Parker was wan- dering around China collecting data and evidently letting the data speak to him.
He did occasionally
dabble in some of
the long-range comparisons that were so popu- lar in his
instance, his
Sino-Aryan study of
1883a and his 1887 exposition of the &common origins& of
Chinese and Japanese), but in general he was very skeptical of
grand &Tower of
Babel& theories. (To- day the writings of
Edkins and Terrien are recognized models for how not to practice comparativism.) Parker even
impression-mistakenly,
believe-of having certain idealist, anti-scholarly leanings: There being
&dialect-fdhig& characters, and all native dictionaries having necessarily been orig- inally made from dialects, it is plain that 36,000 charac- ters are of
minimum value in any popular etymological
and therefore only 4,000
real value for comparative and historical purposes. The rest are merely the fancies of
native prigs and pedants, in many cases. It is
thus collecting living evidence that we
can procure a basis of
comparison on which to work in en- deavouring to trace back older sounds. Dr. Edkins has done much very illustrious work on living
but the whole of his &old sound& theory becomes absurd, on the simple reflection that, with all
our European appli- ances and home-knowledge, we cannot fit even our own language, with analogous &old sounds.& How much less Chinese, the very modern forms of
which we are only just beginning to discover. Besides that[,] his ideas on the subject of evidence, relevancy, and &issues& are most primitive.
Moreover, instead
from definite evidence,
Dr. Edkins
in effect starts with the assumption that Chinese dates back to the common lan- guage of the Tower of
Babel, and tries to force all facts to fit in with that theory. The idea appears to be that a Chinaman, having cleared the successive dangers of
the Tower and of
the Ark, trotted off with his carrying pole from Western Asia to Shen Si, carrying his wife in one basket and a stock of
Accadian myths and &old sounds& in the other. Having successfully run the gauntlet of
the Huns, he
settled and made things fairly lively
his wife, who soon covered Shen Si with a rabbit-like brood of
young Johns. Meanwhile John himself was actively sowing seed in the way of
Accadian myths, tones, aspi- rates, &c.,
all over Shen Si, the young fledged Johns and Joans working their way gradually into Shan Si and Ho Nan. The final Clown and Harlequin transformation occurs in
1898, when the
Russian Bear, British Lion, French Cock, American Eagle, and German Mailed Fist enter upon the stage. (1899c: 83-84) This
objections
&Old Sounds&
reconstructions,
a farci- cal
description
jab at Western
territorial
acquisitiveness
flippant that they greatly
the weight
Parker advocating
linguistic
exag- geratedly
unrealistic
about language,
for reconstruction.
historical linguistic
own language,
concentrating
compar- ison
Linguistic
Parker appearances,
weak-minded
strenu- ous
hard-nosed
argu- ment for comparativism
and for the
primacy of
verifiable evidence.
air, Parker&s argument can
Karlgren or
re- construction
[some] theory.& For
understanding
differ- ence
book-readings
the difference
evidence gathered
field and evidence
from prescrip- tive
philological
linguistics
the 1960s,
forgotten. He
whose accuracy
re- constructed
individual
informants.
completely
dif- ferent
information,
annoyed with Giles
for removing
the symbols
distinguishing
them: Wherever I give any dialect sound, I have had natives to give
it me: in no case do I accept any dictionary or other authority. All
my work is original and first-hand. (1899a: 222) Now, (as I suspect few persons read, and fewer under- stand, my Introduction to Giles), I must here repeat that I give no dialectforms
unless I have myself heard
compared them (with European dialect-authors such as Williams, Baldwin, &c.); and thoroughly checked them. Where I say &see ,%& I mean that all dialect forms are exactly as in the case of
or more usable characters which are be- yond the ken of dialect, I myself know most, and I know their algebraical value: i.e.,
I know what they ought to be in all my eight Chinese
but, as native dialect speakers are usually ignorant of
course I can- not know the actual dialect forms, for even a native has to accept the theoretical dictionary form. I therefore marked these with an
and it would have been very use- ful to students, taking me and my individual knowledge as a test or standard, to know precisely, negatively, what I did not know, and what therefore could not be found out by any one else except very slowly and gradually. In informing me, at the last moment, that he required an asterisk for his own use, Giles
promised me to
try and find me some other mark for the above
but (I now
from consultation in
Burma) he ultimately failed
Whatever his
motives, however, he has anyhow in fact failed to adopt my frank method, which, throughout, has been to furnish the pub- lic with all my own evidence, leaving it to draw its own conclusions. (1899c:
82-83) Again,
concretely: ...
The Yangchow form [of
H] is cts& the Foochow cch&a, cch&o; the Cantonese cts&o. I have no record of the Hakka and W6nchow forms. It must be remembered that no dialect forms for rare words are given unless a native has actually uttered them in my own hearing, and under- gone a cross-examination if necessary. (1895b: 349) Parker
traditional
Chinese (and
phonological
career. A pseudonymous
gave readings
the character
4iJ that were
incom- patible
Dictionary.
concluded: In each case the dictum of the Dictionaries, general and local, is
wholly or partly gainsaid. (1877:
times in his
career: It must be
remembered that I
recognise no
authority whatever. My sole evidence is natives, pronouncing in a natural way, subject to my cross-examination. Also,
in the examples
I recognize
no dictionary and no &scholar.& Unless I myself
find a phrase in the course of my own reading, and see from the context what it means, it
no permanent existence
remains in suspension until
it for myself.
attitude is Johnsonian pure and simple. (1899a: 229) [The reference is probably to Samuel Johnson&s Dictionary.] Students of
Chinese, who have accustomed themselves to the use of
K&ang Hi&s Dictionary, will
recall the fre- quent disappoints which have often followed
their at- tempts to
search out a Chinese character unknown to them. If the student has chosen the Pekingese dialect, he will be puzzled at finding the terminal vowel, (whether it be alone, or followed
by an n or an ng), different, in practice, from that which the printed example given in K&ang Hi would lead him to suppose it should be. Pre- cisely the same thing occurs to him in the case of the ini- tials,
whether vowels
or consonants....
Again, in the case of
the entering tone class, which in Pe- kingese
are distributed amongst the
rising, and falling tones, he finds that K&ang Hi is no guide what- ever....
With a student of
Cantonese, difficulties in the matter of
initials will
be found less
but the 17
the American
(1999) system of
K&ang Hi will prove quite inadequate to pro- duce the Cantonese finals k, p,
in their proper places, in the case of words of the entering tone class.... Further, the Dictionary of K&ang Hi is
useless to deter- mine the important &middle& entering tone of
the Can- tonese dialect, which, though as plain and as regular as either the upper or lower entering tones, has, apparently, been only
recently discovered....
Both with regard to Pekingese and Cantonese, the student will often be puz- zled
rising and falling
tones indicated by K&ang Hi at hopeless variance with established fact. The above remarks will apply no doubt, in general principle, to all other dialects. (1878a: 386-87) The
Dictionary
JfJJ sound
uncritically
older books.
Nevertheless,
consid- ered
evi- dence
they themselves
the source
of certain
Chao 1961 [1976]:
Here is another interesting
example: The character [mann] 4
an instance of how lexicog- raphers go blundering one after the other age after age. There is not a single
dialect in which it is
pronounced otherwise than as [mann] &I1 (whether sinking or even [i.e., chiuhsheng
orpyngsheng x{]),
and yet Giles& Dictionary imitates Williams in calling it as
[wann] M, simply because K&ang-hi started the mistake. K&ang-hi is not wrong in putting the initial as [wuu] A,
for it will be found that even with him this often represents a good m: his mistake lies in putting [wann] M instead of
[mann] &1,
and probably a Cantonese was responsible for it, for in
Cantonese there is
no difference in sound between [wann] X
and [mann] &I[. In the sense of
&creeper&, &to creep&, the character is
colloquial, and accordingly the Pekingese man& p&a-cho 4ITX
Hakka man2, the Ningpo maan,
the Yangchow maa& the Wenchow ma& the Foochow mang2 In not one single instance is there a sound corresponding to [wann] X.
True, Baldwin&s Foo- chow Dictionary gives
two sounds, but natives do not support him: it is a mere copied repetition of others& error. Fortunately in
Giles& Dictionary my
reference to
the char[a]cter [mann] has been faithfully preserved, and stu- dents will please remember that this character belongs, to the man (not mwan) class, and not to the wan class. In every dialect it corresponds in sound strictly with [mann] 1[. (1895b: 348) Actually,
underlying
guawall &tendril
and parwall
ten- drils&
attested only
diminutive
rhotacized
wrong about
particular
certain single
explanation epitomizes
evidence. Another
make details
informants
public: Giles has also omitted my carefully-elaborated acknowl- edgments to my Canton, Foochow, Ningpo, Wenchow, Yangchow, Hakka, and other native
my account of their individual
of their &records&; of
the way I went about it, &c., &c....
My desire was not to pose as a self-inspired dialect man, but to render permanent service to the
to explain precisely why I took up
what I owed to
how far each &other& could be
how I had checked him, and so forth. By eliminating my asterisk (frankly acknowl- edging, as that asterisk did, the limits of
my lore), and my
acknowledgments (frankly acknowledging as
they did my
indebtedness to natives, to Williams, Baldwin, &c.), Mr. Giles not only
destroys and leaves
in doubt respectively the extremely personal character and the origin of
my Introduction, (which ought to have borne my
name at the
head, or at the
end, or both); but he leaves the public in doubt as to how I got my informa- tion. (1899c: 83) Parker&s consciousness
the diversity
the postulated
uniformity
ancient system,
reconstructions.
wrote: The present existence
in China, despite the centralising nature of
the educational and official
the written character must have had and still has in the direction of unifying speech, renders it extremely
improbable that the Chinese ...
were [in ancient times] more uniform in their language than they are now. (1883a: 498) No
these enquiring times
can literally
accept the
of philology....
(1883a: 499) The
present writer is
means indifferent to
the meretricious charms of
the deductive method [i.e., re- construction], and having
thus had his
from the cathedra...
now proceeds to don the
handle the pipe, and to caper about with the pleasure-seekers of the period. (1883a: 502) He
Indo-European
clus- ters
corresponded
The Linguistic Ideas of Edward Harper Parker common Chinese aspirated dental stops or alveolar af- fricates, and appended a list
twenty-eight examples (1883a:
an interesting idea,
is wrong, at least it is thoroughly supported. If he was not much interested in reconstruction and &old sounds,& he nevertheless knew his
Chinese formal phonology,
and he was not lulled by the use of
romanization to
forget the
phonological rules
and correspon- dences that operated across the dialects. For example: It is difficult to understand why a certain number of yih [i.e., words of ruhsheng origin pronounced i in Manda- rin] are included by
under [the spelling]
i, whilst others fall
under [the spelling] yi.
is, there is only one principle, and that is the one followed by Williams: the true yih become [i.e., correspond to] yet, yik, yep,
and so on, in the S whilst the true i remain i and ei in the South. As Mr. Giles& version of Williams is based on Pekingese,
it is misleading to have two divisions: either all should be yi, or all
i, there being no practical distinction in
Peking. Mr. Giles has never got to the bottom-rock of Chinese etymology. (1897: 741) For reference to
the native Chinese
formal system he used mainly the Kangshi tzyhdean
and, espe- cially, the Peywen yunnfuu f
late date is nonetheless superior to the rime tables in that it assigns each and every character explicitly to a place in the formal system. Parker called this system the &theo- retical standard& of
Chinese, recognizing what he called the &algebraical& rather than the absolute phonetic value of
each character in the system-an
idea far in advance of
Karlgren&s Schleicher-inspired world-view, with its intense emphasis on phonetic realism and its rigid con- cept of genetic descent. We still know very little
about how Parker actually collected his data, or when or why he moved away from dialectology and devoted himself wholly to Central Asian and Chinese history. Dialectology occupied him mainly at the beginning of his career. His earliest signed essay was his 1875 notes on Hankow, and by 1884 he had pub- lished the last of
his Chinese syllabaries and began ex- ploring broader linguistic issues. It may be that after his marriage (the date of
which is unknown) he took to a more sedentary life, to which the reading of
history was better suited. Or it may be that he had had a limited pro- gram of dialect research and stopped when it was done. Or it may be
that he ceased his dialect work after the death in 1884 of Wells Williams, whose ideas on univer- sal spelling and the methodology of
dialect study evi- dently influenced him a good deal. Or it may be that his growing responsibilities in the Consulate precluded long field trips. As to how he collected his data, there are sug- gestions in the following announcement: The undersigned possesses copies of Sir Thomas Wade&s colloquial course [(1859)] done under his own superin- tendence by natives of each place in the dialect of Can- ton, Foochow, Wenchow, and Hakka. In the three first cases the copies are double, consisting of a first copy full of notes and memoranda, and a second of clean and improved version. As
not purpose to concern himself further with the study of
Chinese dialects, he is willing to present the above severally to any student of each respective dialect who shall make application, and who shall satisfy him that good use will be made of the work. In the event of there being many applications, the undersigned reserves a
choosing discretion to himself, and a decision will be given on the 1st of October, 1893. (1893b: 394) His method, then, included the study of grammar by the use of
a Mandarin textbook translated into dialect and then scrupulously corrected. (Why did he not have two copies of
the Hakka book-did
he keep the &clean and improved version& because it was his wife&s language?) It also appears from this passage that Parker&s work on Giles& dictionary (beginning in 1890, according to 1899a: 221) was his last project in dialectology, and evidently he had already ceased actual fieldwork well before this. Not
much is known about the collaboration, but there are stray remarks in
Parker&s writings.
seems clear that his survey list also included the four thousand or so
most common characters in the Peywen yunnfuu, as well as words and ideas that would elicit more collo- quial language. Early in his career Parker published a few papers on matters of
phonetics, among which should be mentioned his essay
on Foochow tone
sandhi (1878c) and discussion of
the phonetics of
the Peking finals [1] and [I] (1879a). Parker&s most important linguistic work, which to my knowledge has been almost completely neglected, is his notes on characterless words found across various dia- lects (1878d,
1880d, 1881b: 117-18).
Since these words had no known characters associated with them (no char- acters known
Parker and his
informants, anyway), their very identification as
words in Common Chinese could
done comparatively. This was
a major step in Chinese dialectology, and Parker was fifty or a hundred years ahead of his time, practicing real compar- ative dialectology of
unwritten languages. He wrote: The real points of interest in the comparison of dia- lects are two: the regular and systematic changes which 19
Journal of the American Oriental Society 119.1
(1999) words represented by characters have undergone in each
and the characterless words which are to be found in each. (1878d: 22) This is a profoundly modern view. As an illustration, in table 1 (at the end of this paper), I have selected exam- ples from Parker&s essays of
1880d and 1881b. I have limited my choices
to Cantonese and Hakka words, for which he provides the greatest number of parallel forms, and I have
alphabetized them roughly by
initial. His original tables also included Peking, Hankow, Foochow, and his eastern Szechwan notes. It should be noted that he identified at least one characterless word across all of his dialects: he recorded &to drain or strain off& as &pi&& in
Peking, Hankow, and Hakka, &pei&& in
Canton and Foochow, and &pi]& in &East Sz Ch&uan& (1881b:
117). The Szechwan form is
apparently not completely com- parable to the Hankow, Canton, Foochow, and Hakka forms,
form could be
comparable to either Szechwan alone or the others. There is a character bih[China]/bii[Taiwan] T
&to strain off& that can account for the Peking and Szechwan forms, and characters bih US and bih
EIL &to cover,
conceal& that can probably account for most of
the forms other than S but this does
not alter the fact that Parker discovered the form based purely on comparative principles. The same holds for the other correspondences given below- whether or not canonical or arguably etymological char- acters can be found for them, Parker discovered these correspondences as
correspondences, not as
character readings. It is clear that Parker did not yet understand how
to construct a full and rigorous correspondence
his equivalences are haphazard, and even those that are plausible today are not attested by all the necessary collateral evidence. Still,
the fact is unchangeable that he discovered each of
these correspondences as
corre- spondences, not
readings for characters that he had shown to his informants. This
is comparative dia- lectology of
a form still rarely practiced (or for that mat- ter even
understood) in Chinese, even
today. It was
a major intellectual advance in
field, and (with
the exception of a cautious but favorable review in 1879 by the
Foochow missionary Caleb Baldwin)
has been ignored until this day. THE
PARKER&S ACCURACY
FIELDWORKER I said that my purposes in this paper were to
reha- bilitate Parker&s ideas,
evaluate Karlgren&s charge that Parker was an incompetent fieldworker. Too much of
the Giles dialect material is
uncertain au- thenticity for
it for this
purpose. Parker noted a number of misprints in his dialect forms, but I suppose he must have found them the same way he found so
many misprints in
the rest of
Giles-haphazardly, through consulting Giles
reading. That means that we
really cannot consider Giles
reliable record of
Parker&s fieldwork at all. So
I have turned in- stead to
short collections
characterless words
Parker published
individual
dialects. These collections (1878d,
1879b, 1879c,
1880d, 1881b: 118) are remarkable for their sustained level of
attention to truly colloquial language. Few publications in Chinese dialectology, even
today, and fewer
in Karlgren&s day, show
anything like this level
attention to real, popular language. Of course, it goes without saying that real words are required for good comparative work, but this
was not at all
or to any of
suc- cessors in the field of
Chinese reconstruction. Chinese &philology& has always suffered from an egregious ne- glect of colloquial language in favor of the text. We can only guess how much conceptual awareness Parker had of
these ideas-possibly
the attention he paid to collo- quial reflects his own cranky attraction to details of
the real world. His distinctive personality comes through im- mediately in his headings: &Things not generally known in Pekingese&; &Waifs and strays in the Hankow dialect&; &Forgotten facts in Cantonese&; &Last pickings from the dialect of
Foochow& (1878d).
sections contains a list of
real words that he had recorded from native speakers but that he said were not found in the best
dictionaries
dialects. Since I have access to an excellent
and conservative Peking dialect informant, and since
Peking dialect
is probably the most familiar dialect
to readers at large, I
have chosen Parker&s Peking data as the
sample by which to evaluate the accuracy of
his transcription. And since I share Parker&s love of
data and of colloquial Chi- nese, along with the words I have elicited while attempt- ing to check his forms I have also included shie&howyeu Ci?
and other material that my informant provided during this
fieldwork. I
Mandarin-speaking reader will
browsing through this
collection
of rarely encountered colloquial matter. After working with my informant and consulting several Peking dialect dic- tionaries, I have divided Parker&s data into four groups: Table 2. Forms that are still attested in Peking dialect or in Mandarin or in Manchu, or whose principal morphemes are so attested. (127 items) Table 3.
Probable Typographical Errors. (3 items) Table 4.
Probable Transcriptional Errors. (12 items) Table 5.
Forms of Parker&s Unconfirmed. (36 items) 20
BRANNER: The Linguistic Ideas of Edward Harper Parker Note that in this tabulation I am most concerned with the phonetic accuracy of Parker&s transcription, since this is
what Karlgren attacks. As long
as the meanings of Parker&s forms are close to what is attested today, I see no reason to fault him. By adding the results of table 4 and table 5, and table 3
and table 2, it follows
that out of
a total of
178 entries (including many more individ- ual dialect words than that) there are 130 that should be counted as confirmed and 48 that should be counted as unconfirmed and possibly wrong. In other words, almost three-quarters of
the basic forms have clear correspon- dents in my informant&s speech or in available dictionaries of
Peking dialect and Manchu. Caleb Baldwin evaluated Parker&s Foochow material with the help of
two native teachers and, after correcting typographical errors, found that virtually all the material was legitimate and about two-thirds of
was completely unattested in existing Foochow dictionaries (1879: 58). As
for those of
Parker&s Peking words that I cannot identify, we have no way of knowing for sure at this late date what is
involved-was
he indeed wrong? or have these words disappeared during the past century or so? or was he working from a slightly different dialect? Most of
his words for birds and fish, and for the sex organs of
animals, are unknown to my informant in the forms Parker recorded. My informant lived
center of the city, at Shi.jymen, during the 1930s and 1940s. Pre- sumably at
Parker&s time,
Peking had more contact
animals, and went
countryside more often
than in my informant&s day. Again,
Parker does not have chingsheng
(neutral tone) in most of the places
my informant has it, other than
is this an error of
his or a change in Peking dialect? Parker knew about the neutral tone, so I am inclined to assume the latter. In any case, we cannot decide the issue based on
orthography-the
instance, ua.ku is always written
pronounced uakuu, does not mean that Parker&s uakuh is
and the fact that this written form
is read uakuu in the Manda- rin of
southern China, which is
heavily influenced by written forms, also does not prove anything. Apart from
question of
accuracy, what
comes through so strikingly to any wakeful reader is the kind of words Parker was after-real,
often earthy language. Parker said that these were all forms that had been omit- ted from Williams&
I would imagine that Giles (1892) included all of them, though I have not been able to check this. Among these words are some that today
would probably consider plain
Manda- rin-laa.ba
&horn,& for instance, and mhosuoo &to grope around,& but there are many others that are raw Peking dialect. Not
until the late-life
writings of
Chao does one see
the real Chinese language treated so seri- ously and with such obvious familiarity and love. The
three-fourths of
Parker&s highly colloquial Peking forms can be verified even to- day. He
made transcriptional errors, and he certainly does
to have been
a careful proof- reader. Still, Karlgren&s outright dismissal of his abilities as
a fieldworker will
stand, and his
on lin- guistic comparison and reconstruction predate the com- parable work of
Coblin, Norman, and others by at least half
a century. Loose
cannon though he
Edward Harper Parker was nevertheless a remarkable and origi- nal scholar who does not deserve his poor reputation. 21
the American
(1999) TABLES Table
1: Characterless
Corresponding
Hakka Canton
Meanings &tree& &to hatch& &thick& &sleep& & swish& &to
to ladle& &dive& &to close& &paste up& &approach& &pull& &a safe& &throw& & follow& (ch&it,) ctang
&on purpose for& &throw& &to prick& &splash, wet& &mat cover& &place& &to place, touch& &marred, spoiled& & lounge& & turn& & slit& & leak& &pumelo& &scald& &thorn& &pretty& &umbrella& &loosen, let loose& &to bore& &mix& &get& &to smooth, or stroke& &to smooth, or stroke& &a &crib&, or clandestine essay book& &soft& & scorn& &burn& &to dip& &yester& &penis& &cockroach& &choke& &great grandson& &miscellaneous& &bride& & destroy& &entirely& &to blow the nose& Canton
Meanings ,sa cch &en cseng sip. &sem shap, shaau& chong& &chem het, cch&i ch&aau& ch&ang& chong2 shit, kip. kuk, kaai& ckam &kung& ,k&ung ,k&eng kopockwaai ck&em k&ep, &k&em k&ek, kuui2 kwet, kuk, kem2 k&wai2 ok&wang -k&ei -lei ,ko haam& (lou2) chau chau cha hiu& cha ,ngen ngen& cngam nep, yongc -yem ok, yep, yap? cyai ipo an wen sa ,shin csiang siap, sem sap, &sa chong& Cchim ak, ch&i& ch&au& ,ch&ang ts&ong& shet, kiap, kuk, kai& ckam &kung Ck&ung ,k&iong kep, &kwai ck&em k&ep, Ck&em k&ak, k&at, k&ap, k&oi& k&ut, k&uk, Ck& &k&am ck&wai k&wang& ck&ei (lei (clen) cko ham& (lo&) cheu chau cha hiau& ck&a; cha
ngiem& &ngiong cngam ngiap, ngiong& yim& et, yap, cye ep, an wen& &saucy& &air& &tuck& &strew& &boil& &big teeth& &fight& &&segs&; hard skin in palm& &sneeze& &rummage& &daze& &crackers& (Canton form is &bastard& [changed] tone) &lose& &astringent& &enraged& &cut& &force& &rottle, creep& &bunch& &edge, brim& &toad& &toad& &cover& &cover& &catch, stick in, lock& &weary& &
stump& &cover
brew& &press
grab& &naughty& &gauze-like& &clean& &projection, warts& &yawn& &to watch,
to spy, peep at& &salacious& &pant& &cock up& & bully& &weak& &dandle leg& &exactly& &dinge& &to stuff& &
soak& &hiccough& &beckon& &bad& &fret, rub& &another& &pen& cP&o p&u& cp&un cP&Un fuen& fin& put,; wut, mi&
cmui ,miang
cmai cmang kap, man& ctang tiak, cP&o pou2 p&en fen& fing& fet, mei2 cmi cmaang cmaai cmang kap, man2 teng& teko (tek,)
cteng teng& tuk, tep, tato tato tet, Cte t&an ct&em la& laai2 luk, luk, lek, leng& long& let, cyou clou &lo liut lipc &lam cnem cnau nat &tsim ,ts&em ts&et, tsat, tsuk, sek, sep, csem ,saai saai seng jtang tuk, tuk, tap, tat, tat, tut, &tia ct& ct&ang ct&am la& lai& luk, luk, let, liang& long& lot, lui& jlau clo lot, lot, clam ,lem clau lat, &tsiam ts&am& ts&ot, ts&at, ts&uk, set, sap, csim ,sai sai& sen 22
BRANNER: The Linguistic
Parker Table
Confirmed Parker: pan4-la3
yiieh4-liang4
yuehlianq],
&half- moon& p&ang2-pa-la3&rh [parng.balaal],
&by the side of&. Present evidence: bannlaa yueh.liang &half-moon& parng.balaal &next to&. Parker: peng3-cho-lien [beengje.lian], &to look grave or angry&. Present evidence: beeng.je lean &to have no expression at all on one&s face, because of displeasure (bugaushinq)& (equivalent in meaning to guu.je leal, below). Parker: penl-to-mu4
[ben.demuh or
ben.duomuh], &a
wood- pecker&. [Parker indicates that he is uncertain about the first two syllables.] Present evidence: bendelmuh &woodpecker&. The first syllable is ben &to take a bite out of
with the beak (said of a bird)&. Parker: peng4 [benq], &to burst&. Present evidence: benq &to burst open&; &to rebound, bounce back&. Parker: pieh3 [biee], &concave&. Present evidence: biee &to go
flat (said of
a tire); to cave
in, become dented&. Parker: pi4-pi4-shui3-&rh [bihbihshoel],
&to drain or strain off the liquid or water&. Present evidence:
&to strain, especially
through the
fin- gers&. bihtz &a kind of strainer&. Parker: ch&a3 [chaa], &flat, as
in contradistinction to deep&. ch&a3-kou3 [charkoou], &funnel-shaped&. Present evidence: chaa &shallow (said of
a plate or pan)-i.e., spread out rather than deep&. chaa.je leang jy jeau &to spread one&s legs, to stand with the feet spread&. chaa ijeau shoei &to step in water&. Note: Informant rejects the form *charkoou, however. Parker: ch&en1 [chen], &to draw out, as elastic&. Present evidence: chen &to stretch, extend, pull out&. Parker: ch&enl-lien4 [chenliann], &to browbeat, as a barrister his
to question&. Present evidence: chen.lian &to train using harsh methods, to push (someone) in order to bring about improvement&. Note:
Informant confirms this
but rejects Parker&s specific definition, offering this analysis of the two syllables: chen to stretch} + liann {to train . Chern Gang supports in- formant (p. 33). Parker: ch&engl-tsz [chengtz], &a gridiron, a
bamboo cooking slat&. Present evidence: cheng &a kind of flat cooking pan, sometimes with a low rim&. chengtz &frame for holding open
while it is
being made&; &a cobbler&s last&. Parker: ch&i1 [chi ], &to hem&; probably the same as ch&i2 [chyi], &even&. Also &a slit, as in a
gown, or shirt&. &To sew with an up and down stitch&. [Parker indicates that the last defi- nition is uncertain.] Present evidence: chi &to sew as a sewing
machine does, with no
space visible
stitches&. The meaning
&slit& is not
cf. kaichiell &a slit in the side of a skirt&. Parker: ch&ien1 [chian], &to peck&. Present evidence: chian &to peck, as woodpecker or other bird&. Parker: ch&ien4 [chiann], &to drive in, as stakes or piles&. Prob- ably ch&ien4, &to inlay&. Present evidence: chiann &to drive in (a stake)&; &to inlay&. Parker: ch&iaol [chiau], &to geld&. Present evidence: chiau &to geld&. Parker: ch&ieh4-mao2-tsz [chiehmautz], &the scenery of
a the- atre, or the dresses, &c.&, probably for mo4 [moh], &a veil&. Present evidence: chieh.mau &large props or backdrop in the theatre& chieh.mau shih &drama with too many props& (con- sidered inferior in Peking drama-the
sound&s the thing). Parker: ch&ung4 [chonq], &strong, as tea or tobacco&. Present evidence: chonq &strong in smell, an affront to the nose (e.g., onion, tobacco, liquor)&. Parker: ch&ung4-cho
[chonq.je],
running against&. Present evidence: chonq.je X
.de mianntz &(to do
something) for X&s sake&. chonq ta shengchih &to get angry right in his/her face&. chonq.je woo shiaw &to smile directly at me&. chonq.je X shuohuah &to speak directly at&. Parker: ta2-lien2 [darlian], &a purse, pocket-book&. [Parker lists this under initial 1, showing that the second syllable is the one he is primarily interested in. He also indicates by use of an asterisk that he is uncertain about the second syllable.] Present evidence: da.lian or chyan da.lel &a kind of
flat change purse designed to be folded around one&s belt (it has a slit in it and so is
easy to get money from)&. Shyu Shyhrong has the form dalianl
590). Informant&s form da.lel sounds very much like English dollar. Parker: ta3-fei3-tsz [darfeeitz], &to snap or fillip the fingers&. Present evidence: darfeeitz &to snap the fingers&. 23
the American
(1999) Parker: ta3 hul lu& [daa hulhu], &to snore&. Probabl[y] hu&, &to call out&. Present evidence: daahu.lu, daahu, daahu.luel &to snore&. daahu.luel &to purr (said of a cat)&. Parker: tai3 [dae], &to catch, to trap&. Present evidence: dae &to capture, take captive&. Parker: ta4-kai4-ch&i2 [dahgaychyi ], &a sketch or outline&. Present evidence: dahgaychyi &It&s probably like that, roughly so&. Note: Informant rejects Parker&s particular definition. Shyu Shyhrong supports informant (p. 86). Parker: ta3-chieh3-tsz [darjieetz], &to tie a knot&. Present evidence: darjieetz &to tie a knot&. Note: Informant indicates that this form is rare but definitely known: daajye is more common. Parker: teng&-nie3-&rh [dengneal],
&a lamp wick&. Present evidence: dengneal &lamp wick&. lahneal &candle wick&. Parker: teng4 [denq], &to clarify, to filter&. Present evidence:
denq.idenq
(something
liquid) settle to the bottom&. Parker: til-liul-yiian2 [diliouyuan], &perfectly round&. [Parker indicates with an asterisk that this form is uncertain.] Present evidence: diliulyuan &completely round&. Parker: tung4-t&an4 [donqtann], &to move&. Possibly for t&an2. Present evidence: donq.tan &to
move (the body)&: &Jonqfeng yiihow
donq.tan.& &[Someone]
after having had a stroke&. Parker: toul [dou], &concave&. Present evidence: dou &pocket&. dou.je &to hold or carry in one&s garment, by lifting the hem outward&. Parker: tul-lul&rh [du&lul], &a bunch, as of
grapes or keys&. Present evidence: du.luel &[measure for clusters of
grapes]&. Parker: o3-hsinl [eeshin], & nausea&. Probably for 04. Present evidence: eeshin &nauseous,
disgusting&. Parker: o2-len4 [erlenn], &to run, as ink&. Present evidence: er.len or er.lian &a large faint stain left after the removal of
a small spot of
oil&. Parker: kal-lal-kalcha& [ga&lhagaja],
&dregs, stuffing, padding, rubbish&. Present evidence: ga.la gaja.de &rough, not smooth as expected&. Parker: kal-shal-hal
[gasha&ha],
&a rowdy&; probably a Manchu word. Also kal-shihl-hal
[gashy&ha]. Present evidence: ga.shy&hah &a low-ranking chaiyih (&gofer&) in a yamen& (felt by informant to be a Manchu word). Chern Gang
Shyhrong lack
word, though Chern Gang&s gashiha &protruding round bone on a sheep&s lower leg& might be related to the Mandarin paurtoei &gofer& (literally &running leg&). I have
been unable to identify a comparable Manchu form. Parker and my
informant, and also Chern Gang&s possible cognate, have different tones in the last syllable. Parker: kanl-lan2-cho [ganlanje],
&simply, merely&; probably kan&, &voluntary&. Also, &to snub&. Present evidence: ganlanje
&merely, just& as in the following examples: ganlan.je
don&t want
(something,
do something)&. ganlan.je .sh jehyanq &That&s just how it is.& or &The real problem is simply...& Note: Parker&s gloss
&to snub& is
not known to
informant, but
Chern Gang&s
unused]& suggests it (p. 87). Parker: kol& chan& &rh [gejal],
&a scab&. Present evidence: ge.jel, shiee gejel
&scab&. Parker:
ko4-te-huang& [geh.de&huang], &hard to sit on or lean against&. Present evidence:
discomfort (usually
the foot) by pressing against (as a stone in the shoe)&. geh.de.huang
discomfort
(as though there is something on one&s seat, for instance)&. Note:
suffix .de.huang
with verbs produces an adjective with the meaning &giving one the feeling of
. . .&. Parker: kwai3 [goai],
&eccentric&; probably a Tientsin word, or perhaps used for kuail. Present evidence: goai.gu &eccentric&. Parker: kung3 [goong], &to grub with the nose like a pig&. Present evidence: goong &to root underground with one&s snout (said of a pig)&. Parker: kung3 [goong], &to sew with a running stitch&. Present evidence: goong &to sew in a straight line after pinching the cloth into pleats, so that after stitching the thread is seen above and below the cloth, in alternation&. This morpheme and the preceding one, &to root& are presumably one. Parker: ku3-cho lie3-&rh [guu.je leal],
&to look severe&; proba- bly ku3, &to swell&. Present evidence: guu.je leal
&to have no expression at all on one&s face, because of displeasure (bugaushinq)& (equivalent in meaning to beeng.je lean, above). Parker: ku3-tsz [guutz], &a target&. Present evidence: guutz &a target&. Note: Informant feels
this word is quite rare, but neverthe- less known. 24
BRANNER: The Linguistic
Parker Parker: hal-la1 [ha.&ha], &a &surname&, a &family name&& Present evidence: Manchu hala &clan, family,
family name&. Unknown to Peking informant as *ha&lha. Parker: hal-lal-wei4
[ha&lhawey],
salt game&: both probably Manchu or Mongol words. Present evidence: ha.la
&rancid (said of
oil or oily foods such as peanuts)&. Parker: han1 [han], &thick and big, as, a stick, a bar, &c.& Present evidence: han &thick, as a stick or a rope& (antonym of shih) Parker: shanl-t&ao4 [shantaw], &a valley&. Present evidence: hertaw &the bend in a river, the land within the bend in a river&. This taw is clearly the same morpheme, even if
Parker&s specific compound is not attested. Parker: hsial
[shia], &a &boy,& a servant&. a1 hsia& [ashia], &a military tent-keeper&. Present evidence: Manchu hiya
[hia]. Unknown to Peking in- formant as *shia, *ashia. Parker: hwan2-lo-hsii2 [hwan.leshyu], &to
layman again&; used for su2. Present evidence: hwanshyu &to return to lay life after taking Buddhist orders&. Note:
hwanswu, but
hwanshyu is
also known. Parker: yi2-ch&a4-&rh [ichall],
&a moment of
time&. Present evidence: ichall
&a moment, an instant& (the same as ichahnah). Parker: yi2 ch&ung4 p&ai2 [ichonq pair], &a pack of
cards&. Present evidence: ichonq pair &a pack of cards&. Parker: han4 [hann],
hai4 [hay],
&with&; Mr. Wade uses
the character ho2. Present evidence:
Informant rejects both
*hay for general use, but offers the following special uses of
hann: &Jeh .sh shern.me hann shernmhe .ia!& &What a mess! What a snafu!& (= luanngao, luann chiba tzau). Literally, &What is being put with what here?!& &Tzarn.me leang.ge ren .sh sheir hann sheir.& &Who do you think you&re dealing with here?& (said in protest against ex- cessive politeness on the part of a friend). Literally, &Who and who are you taking the two of us to be?!& This is
the well-known form hann used for &and, with& in Taiwan Mandarin and written with her AF. It is thought by many people that this form is a misreading based on a typo- graphical error in National Phonetic Symbols (bopomofo). Parker&s data, from 1878d, clearly proves that this is a Peking or
Peking-area form and
Nationalist-era invention. Parker lists a variant hai4. Chern Gang gives a form han but not *hai. His gloss is &3f
mIR [and, with]& and he notes, &3M tETA&Sm
& ^IXM P^W
[No longer
usage limited to expressions such as shem.me hann shern.me, naal hann naal, sheir hann sheir]& (p. 106). Shyu Shyhrong not only lists sheir hann sheir but also gives an example of hann in the sense of
&and& (p. 168). Parker: yul-ch&i3-lai2 [iouchiilai],
&to lift&. yul-hui2-lai2 [iouhweilai],
&to rebound&. Present evidence: iou &to swing (oneself)
on a swing&. yueh iou yueh gau &to swing oneself higher and higher&. Parker: tsan3 [tzaan], &to sop up&. tsan3-kan& [tzaangan], &to sop dry&; also chan3. Present evidence: jaan
&to sop up&. Only the second of Parker&s forms is attested in informant&s speech. jaan.ijaan &to daub at&. Parker: chau3-ch&a2-&rh [jaocharl],
&to find fault with unneces- sarily&. Present
be unnecessarily or not)&. Note:
Informant offers
shie&howyeu: &Jidann.li
tiau gwu.tou-meicharl
jaocharl.& &To try to pick out bones in a chicken egg-to
find fault where there is
none&. Parker: chau&-pu4-hsia4 [jaubuhshiah], &will not contain&. Present evidence: jaujiah.bujuh &can&t resist (an attack)&. Parker: chiang3-tsz [jeangtz], &a hardened p[ie]ce of
skin, such as that produced on the hands by rowing&. Present evidence: jeangtz,
same as jeantz &callus&. Parker: chiao3 [jeau], &to cut with scissors&. Present evidence: jeau
&to cut with scissors&. Parker: chil-liao3-rh [jileaul],
&the katydid, or &scissors-grind- ing& cicada&. Present evidence: jileaul orjihneaul orjyleau &kind of
cicada&. Parker: chil-su4-tsz [jisuhtz], &a fowl&s crop&. Present evidence: jisuhtz &chicken&s crop&. Parker: chih4-tsz [jyhtz], &the stone used in exercises, or gym- nastics&. Present evidence: jyhtz &a standard of weight (or other measure)&. Parker: chih&-tsz [jytz], &a gridiron&. Probably chihl, &to prop up&. Present evidence: jytz &a grill&. jylu
&a kind of
round earthen grill with
a perforated top, used for cooking without
used especially for reheating cooked food&. kaojytz &a grill for roasting meat&. Parker: k&ol-lo&-su4 [kelhesuh or kelhuosuh], &Adam&s Apple&. [Parker indicates uncertainty about the syllable lol]. t&ou-chenl-k&o1 [.toujenke], &a stye (on the eye)&. [Parker has omitted the tone on the first syllable.] 25
the American
(1999) Present evidence: ke.lesuh &adam&s apple&. Note:
toujenyean
my informant for &stye&. Toujenyean is
name because it is the result of
&stealing a needle&. Parker: k&o2 [ker], &to catch, to get purchase, to be impeded&. Present evidence: kerjuh.le &to
get stuck (logically,
one&s argument)&. Parker: la3-pal
[laaba], &a trumpet&. [Parker indicates he
is uncertain about the pa syllable.] Present evidence: laa.ba &trumpet, horn&. Parker: la4 [lah], &to omit, drop, &c.& The same is 104. Present evidence: lah.shia.chiu &to lose (something)& (the same meaning as diou.shia.chiu). diousan lahsyh &careless in
things (said of a person)&. Parker: lao3-pang& [laobang], &simple, honest&. Present evidence:
&straightforward, plain-speaking& (equivalent to lao.cheng); also &mature, grown-up (said of a child)&. Distinguish laobangtz &old fart&. Parker: la2-tsz [latz], &an [!] bottle&. Present evidence: latz &a jar made from a bottle with the neck broken off and filed down&. Related to la, &to cut across&. Parker: leng4 [lenq], &owlish&. Present evidence:
&appearing as
unaware of
events around one& (adjectival use). Parker: t&ang& t&angl [tangtang], &bald&. Present evidence: lianqtangtang &very bright, very shiny&. Parker: liao4
[liaw], &to gather, as seams or
stitches&. Often read liao2. Present evidence:
the fingers. Note:
Informant does
Shyu Shyhrong lists only lido [liau]. Parker: liao2-tsz [liautz], &the male organ, whether of
men or animals&. Present evidence: liautz &penis&. Note:
Informant offers
shie&howyeu:
&Dah gu.niang
chyau liautz-renn
rennher ji.ba
budoong).& &An unmarried grown
woman seeing a penis-doesn&t
know a fucking thing.& Parker: mal-sal
[mhasa], &to pat&. Present evidence: mha.sa and mha.sou &to pet (an animal)&; &to flatten by patting with the hands (often done to a piece of
dampened cloth or clothing in place of ironing)&. Parker: ma3-cho [maa.je], &in a row&. Present evidence: maa &to set up neatly in a row&; usually maa ipair &to set up a row of
...& Note:
This form would appear to
related to
tsaymaal &dishes of food&, below. Parker: ma3-piehl [maabie], &a leech&: probably piehl, &a turtle&. Present evidence: maabie &leech& (one of
many words). Parker: t&eng& [teng], &vague&. man4 t&engl-t&eng& [manntengteng], vague. Present evidence: manntengteng &very slow&. Parker: mai4 [may], &to wade, to walk&. Probably mai4, &to progress&. Present evidence: mayguoh &to step across&. Parker: yi4-mo2 [imo], &a meal&. Or mo4 [. . . moh],. Present evidence:
Unknown to
informant as
*imo or *imoh. Chern Gang gives a measure word mor &,,
[measure word for number of
times done]& (p. 196). Parker: mo2 i4 [moyih], &to grind smooth&. Present evidence: moyih &to wear down&. Cf. yuh.le. Parker: meng3-kul-bol [meenggubo], &a Mongol tent&: proba- bly a Thibetan or Mongolian word. Present evidence:
Manchu moongoboo
&yurt&. Unknown to Peking informant as * informant knows only the Chinese form mengguubau for this. Parker: ni4-tsz [nihtz], &putty&. Present evidence: nihtz &putty&. Parker: p&ai&-tsz
[paitz], &a flail,
a sledge&; in the
latter case probably for p&ai2. Present evidence: paitz &ping-pong paddle, fly-swatter&. Parker: p&aio4-lo
[paiw.le],
&&plucked,&
unsuccessful student&. Present evidence: piaw.le &The opportunity has come to an end and one has obtained nothing&. Parker: sha& [sha], &to bind or tie&, see sha4. Present evidence: sha &to tie more tightly, to tighten a knot or binding&. shajiah &to haggle over prices&. Parker: sha4 [shah], &to
to snip or cut&. Present evidence: shah &to trim off a little&. shahkenn &in making a shirt or upper garment, to sew up the seam that runs from the armpit to the hem&. Parker: shao4 [shaw], &to back, (a horse and cart)&. Present evidence: shaw &to back up, make way (for someone in front)&. 26
The Linguistic
Parker Parker: hsil-lo4 [shileh or shiluoh], &to chaff&. Present evidence: shiluoh &to tease, satyrize&. Note:
Informant feels
shiaw.huo would be colloquial. Parker: hsiung2-p&u2 [shyongpwu], &the bosom&. Present evidence: shiongpwu &chest&. Note: I believe
the first tone
in Parker}