A study of phonological issues in the text variants of Xiaochu and Dachu hexagrams, Zhouyi

Kun Ma (Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 17/1-2, 2019 - p.18-25

Abstract: This paper discusses some phonological issues with the Xiaochu (小畜) and Dachu (大畜) hexagrams by using text variants from three versions of the unearthed Zhouyi (周易). We point out that the reading of the character 輻 fú ‘spoke’, which rhymes with 目 mù ‘eye’ in the current version of Xiaochu, is the result of phonetic assimilation. We also propose that the phonetic 逐 zhú ‘pursue’ be assigned to the *-uk group instead of *-iwk in the Baxter-Sagart (2014) system.

Keywords: Old Chinese language, Zhouyi hexagrams, Chinese rhymes, phonological reconstruction

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