ABSTRACT
Archaic Chinese is the best-known period from both the phonetic and the grammatical perspective. However, the term itself has different meanings in phonetics and grammar. Phonetically, it indicates pronunciation arbitrarily dated to ca. 600 BC, a date fixed by Bernhard Karlgren, the author of the most widely accepted phonetic reconstructions. The the term “Archaic Chinese” has quite different meanings in phonetics and in grammar. This is a vital distinction, because strictly speaking AC pronunciation should not be applied to Late Archaic Chinese, which ex definitione came much later. The chapter explains some select achievements of outstanding scholars. Karlgren says that one of these tones corresponded to pingsheng, the second to shangsheng, the third to qusheng, while the fourth called rusheng appeared in syllables ending with final plosive consonants. Over the course of the long evolution of the syntax of the Chinese language, word order changes were certainly not the most important development.
