Chinese rime tables : linguistic philosophy and historical-comparative phonology, The

This book, the first in its field in a Western language, examines China's native phonological tool with regard to reconstruction, theory, and linguistic philosophy.After an introductory essay on the nature of the tables and the history of their interpretation, the book concentrates on three areas: application of rime table theory to reconstruction, the history of rime table theory, and the application of the tables to descriptive linguistics. An appendix details a number of 20th century systems for transcribing their phonology into Roman letters.Major topics include Altaic contact-influence on.