ABSTRACT
It was during the Archaic period that what is known today as Classical Chinese (wényán 文言) was standardized. This language, playing a role like Latin in Europe, remained the main written language used in literary texts until the beginning of the twentieth century. The period for Classical Chinese par excellence refers more precisely to the language used by the philosophers and scholars of the Warring States period (475-221 bce) and it was probably not very different from the educated speech of the period. The gap between the written and the spoken language began to develop in Han times or Pre-Medieval Chinese (206 bce – ce 220) and increased considerably with time. It is essentially Classical Chinese, also called Late Archaic Chinese (hòu shànggǔ hànyǔ 后上古汉语), that will be discussed in this chapter. I will nevertheless make several digressions regarding the period prior to the fifth century bce, i.e. what is known as pre-Classical Chinese or Early Archaic Chinese (qián shànggǔ hànyǔ 前上古汉语), and about the Medieval period, especially in the phonological section.
