Introduction

This website is devoted to the organization of the workshop on "Old Chinese and Friends: Advances in the Reconstruction of Old Chinese Phonology" which took place on April 26-27, 2018, organized by the CALC research project.

The full outline of the conference call (in Chinese and English) can be found here.

More information on the proceedings of the conference, which we plan to publish in early 2019 will appear on this website as well.

If you have questions which cannot be answered by this website, please contact Johann-Mattis List or Yunfan Lai with your questions.

Outline

The reconstruction of the phonology of Old Chinese has greatly advanced during the last decades. As a result, reconstruction systems which were proposed independently by different scholars, such as Baxter and Sagart (2014), Starostin (1989), and Zhèngzhāng (2003) resemble each other much more than earlier reconstructions (Wáng 1980, Li 1971, Karlgren 1957). With the increased consensus among scholars, Old Chinese has also begun to resemble Tibete-Burman languages much closer, which has lead to an increased research and debate about the position of Chinese within the Sino-Tibetan (or Trans-Himalayan) language family (Behr 1999, Jacques 2015).

The goal of the workshop is to bring together experts on Sino-Tibetan linguistics, Ancient Chinese, Old Chinese reconstruction, and Chinese paleography to discuss future directions of research on Old Chinese phonology in the broader context of the genetic affiliation of Chinese as well as the history of the writing system with a special focus on newly excavated documents.

概述

数十年来，上古汉语音系的构拟取得了重大进展。因此，近期不同学者独立构拟的音系（如白一平-沙加尔2014、斯塔罗斯金1989以及郑张尚芳2003）比起王力（1980）、李方桂（1971）以及高本汉（1957），互相之间更为相似。也正因为学者们共识的增加，如今的上古汉语与藏缅语言更加接近，同时也启发了人们对汉语在汉藏语系（或跨喜马拉雅语系）中的地位（Behr 1999，Jacques 2015）。

本次工作坊旨在让汉藏语系、上古音、上古文献文字专家齐聚一堂，共同讨论上古音研究的未来方向，包括汉语的系属问题以及最新出土文献中所揭示的书写系统的历史研究。

Call for Abstracts

We invite interested scholars to submit abstracts on Old Chinese phonology, Chinese paleography, or the position of Chinese within the Sino-Tibetan language family. Abstract in form of PDF which does not disclose your identity, not exceeding one page (not counting references and figures) should be directly sent to both list@shh.mpg.de and lai@shh.mpg.de. Please state your affiliation and contact information in the email body text. To make it easier for us to sort emails with abstracts, we further ask you to add “[OCAF submission]“ to the header of your email (including the brackets). Limited funding for travel will be available, but we cannot promise to be able to cover the funding of all participants. In case you need funding, we ask you to indicate this in the email accompanying your abstract. The deadline for sending abstracts is January 15.

会议通知

我们欢迎有关上古汉语音系、汉语古文字学、汉语在汉藏语系中系属的论文摘要。摘要应为完全匿名、不超过一页（不包含参考文献和图片）的PDF文件，发送至list@shh.mpg.de并抄送lai@shh.mpg.de。请在邮件正文中写明作者的单位以及联系方式。为了方便我们为邮件归类，请作者在邮件标题的开头标注“[OCAF submission]”（包含方括号）。我们可以为与会者提供有限的旅行经费，但我们不能保证每一位与会者都能获得补助。如果您需要经费支持，请您在邮件正文中提及。稿件截止日期是2018年1月15日。

Schedule

Day 1: April 26, 2018, 9:15 -- 19:30, MPI-SHH, Room V14

Day 2: April 27, 2018, 9:15 -- 19:30, MPI-SHH, Room V14

Location

Information

Structure of the Workshop

The workshop will consist of short talks (20 minutes with 10 minutes discussion) from different speakers covering different aspects of the reconstruction of Old Chinese Phonology (OC phonology, OC reconstruction, MC phonology, Chinese lexicon, Chinese writing). Our goal is to cover as many different aspects as possible in order to allow for a very broad view on the complexity of the field. In addition, we will organize open discussions, where we hope that we cannot only reflect the diversity of approaches to the reconstruction of Old Chinese phonology, but also the diversity of opinions.

Structure of the Open Discussions

We plan to structure the discussions by preparing a pool of questions from which we will select -- depending on the time -- three to five per discussion session and then ask different scholars to reply. In order to keep the discussions focused, we will restrict replies to 5 minutes per person. We will further try to protocol the discussions and offer all participants to take them as a starting point for a common paper.

Code of Conduct

Given the diversity of backgrounds of the scholars participating in our conference, and the plurality of opinions they reflect, we consider it as important to maintain an open environment in which discussions focus on the topics and not the person. Given the at times hostile tone in discussions and journal articles that are published in the field of Sino-Tibetan linguistics, we want to express our hope that all members will avoid a discussion style that contradicts the obvious etiquette of proper scientific conversations, such as any kind of polemics or arguments ad hominem.

We think that it is self-evidend that, in accordance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, we do not tolerate any form of discrimination (as outlined in Article 21 of the Charter), with §1 repeated below:

Any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited.

In case of conflict, we ask you to turn to the workshop organizers (Johann-Mattis List or Yunfan Lai) or the administrator of our department for Linguistic and Cultural Evolution (Kerstin Schück).