1998 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Research on the Chinese texts written by Uighur script in Tang, Sung and Yuan Dynasties
| Project/Area Number |
08610528
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
言語学・音声学
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| Research Institution | KYOTO UNIVERSITY |
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Principal Investigator |
SHOGAITO Masahiro KYOTO UNIVERSITY,Graduate School of Letters, Professor, 文学研究科, 教授 (60025088)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
FUJISHIRO Setsu Kobe City College of Nursing, Faculty of Nursing, Associate Professor, 看護学部, 助教授 (30249940)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1996 – 1998
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| Keywords | Russian Academy of Sciences / Uighur texts / Uighur script / Chinese Language / north-west dialect of Chinese / Japanese reading of Chinese characters / the Yuan Dynasty / Uighur reading of Chinese characters |
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| Research Abstract |
It has so far been noted that among old texts from Central Asia there exist some texts transcribed from Chinese characters into alphabetic scripts. For example, texts transcribed into Tibetan script or Brabmi script are well-known and such texts provide crucial information for the phonological study of the north-west dialect of Middle Chinese.
I visited the St.Petersberg Branch for Oriental Studies of Russian Academy of Sciences several times for these three years and found fifteen fragments of Chinese texts in Uighur script. All of these fragments have turned out to be Buddhist texts, which I identified as based on (sheng miao ji xiang zhen shi ming jing) and bi qiu jie ben).
I studied these newly identified fragments from the linguistic point of view. First, they are transliterated into the Roman alphabet, with their corresponding Chinese characters. Second, the pronunciation of the Chinese used there is discussed and reconstruction of the phonological system involved is attempted. The system has been recognized as similar to that which is utilized in the Chinese loan words appearing in the Uighur version of (Xuan-Zang-Biography). The Chinese phonological system of can be inferred to be that of north-west dialect of the late Tang Dynasty or the early Song Dynasty. I located the fragments dealt with among those written in the Yuan Dynasty and it is guessed that the Chinese pronunciation used in these fragments is an inherited pronunciation of Chinese characters. It can be surmised that, in Uighur at the Yuan Dynasty, Chinese Buddhist texts were generally recited in the pronunciation of Chinese characters but were generally read in the Uighur reading of Chinese characters as the Japanese reading of Chinese characters.
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