Early Cantonese

There have been three main views for the development of the Cantonese language. One view stated that Chinese troops in southern China mixed with the native Yue people and the two languages converged, which explained the reason for similarities between Cantonese and the modern Zhuang and Yao languages, during the Qin and Han Dynasties. A second view placed the dating after the Tang Dynasty when the region was cut off from the rest of China which would have lent to a separate linguistic tradition being formed. And the third view, pushed the time period further, in the Song Dynasty. This view stated that immigrants during the dynasty added to the linguistic differences already present, but argued that most of the features of modern Cantonese stemmed from this immigration. Although there is no way to know for certain which view is correct, by the Qing Dynasty, Cantonese was sufficiently different as to warrant a special program that would instruct candidates looking to be government officials in the ‘correct’ pronunciation of Chinese. Once the language branched off, it was only a matter of time until the script changed as well. In order to understand the origins of the Cantonese vernacular script, it is important to look at the origins of other vernacular scripts in China. Victor Mair argued that many of the languages of China owe their vernacular scripts to Buddhism, which put an emphasis on the oral tradition. The only way to accurately record selections of speech was through the use of a vernacular script. Many of the first Cantonese vernacular script texts are Buddhist in nature, with an emphasis on singing and chanting.[1] Although early attempts were made at using a Cantonese script, nothing remotely standardized. Most of the characters used were known by the creators and few others.

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[1] Snow, Donald Bruce. Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004.

The Link

From the Shang Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese script continued to evolve to eventually produce 楷書 (Kai Shu)—the standard script. The same factors that governed the creation and standardization of earlier scripts is mirrored in the creation of the vernacular Cantonese script. This paper offers to address the differing developmental stages of the script within the historical context, to further shed light on the evolutionary process. This is completed first by explaining the narrative history surrounding the script and second by analyzing sources written in the script. Then, by setting this framework, current Hong Kong vernacular Cantonese script sources are used to show that the script’s characters are created using the same processes. The Cantonese script, like previous Chinese scripts, continues to evolve. This paper will conclude by elucidating the unstandardized nature of the Cantonese vernacular script, and explore, using the ancient Chinese sources, possible outcomes of the script. This will be done by comparing the evolution of early Chinese scripts to the evolution of the Cantonese script and projecting the outcomes of the Chinese script on the vernacular Cantonese script.

Character Simplification

Zhou Youguang. The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2003.
Summary

The character system is inherently difficult. Zhou identifies, what he calls, the "four difficulties:" complicated stroke patterns, large number of characters, chaotic pronunciation, and understanding the meaning is difficult. To counter these he shows how these difficulties have been managed in the past by listing four stabilizing features that have remedied these problems: stabilize the shapes,  stabilize the amount, stabilize pronunciation, and stabilize the sequence.

 Stabilizing the shape deals with the number of strokes that it takes to write a character, many characters have been written in many variant forms, depending on the time period and the script at use during that time. This is often done naturally as the script is written more often by more people. After the Qin reunification the seal script became too inconvenient to be written quickly so the clerical script was created. The clerical script drastically reduced the number of strokes to write characters and also standardized the strokes used. Later as the clerical script was used more and more, it merged with the semi-cursive script to create the standard script. This trend has continued to the present, with many of the common abbreviations of characters have become the official characters in public use. Zhou argues against the popular theory that character scripts get more and more complicated as time progressing by explaining the difference between "compounding" and "complexity." Most characters are compounds of simpler distinguishable features,which to the untrained eye have the appearance of complexity, but in reality go to distinguish important phonetic and semantic qualities. Another way that the shape has been simplified was through "assimilation." Assimilation, if done correctly, can reduce component parts without creating vagueness. An example of this is using the 月 which means "moon" to be the radical to represent 肉 or "meat." Although the 月 character itself is common enough, it is rarely used as a radical meaning "moon" which makes it a great target for assimilation.

Stabilizing the amount of characters not only includes the overall count, but also the amount that is to be used at different levels of education: professional vs grade school. There have been several attempts at this, but they have mostly failed. One example was in 1921 where Lu Feikui called for a 2,000 character limit for common usage. Although an overall cap on the number of characters has never come about the modern answer to this question limits the number used at each level. Elementary school students need to know 2,500, 3,500 for junior high, and 7,000 characters for general usage. The important thing to remember about these numbers is that they act as a cap on the number to be used and do not necessarily represent the common number used.

Stabilization of pronunciation has come about due to the inability of the phonetic element of the character to accurately express the full phonetic value of the character. According to Zhou 81% of Chinese characters have these phonetic elements. This number is misleading in the fact that these phonetic radicals play a number of different roles. With 35% of the number, the correct initial and final sounds can be determined but not the tone. With 48%, some aspect (initial, final, or tone) of the pronunciation can be determined by the phonetic element. And with 17% of the characters, the phonetic element is actually misleading in knowing the pronunciation.  

Continued simplification throughout history

Zhou Youguang. The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2003.

Summary

Most of the current list of official simplified characters in use by the PRC today have ancient origins. Out of the 2,235 characters on the list 521 are directly from ancient sources, and most of the others are derived from them. These different derived forms were in use during the height of the standard script, but used mostly in the cursive form for faster writing. Many of these simplification have become standardized over history thus making characters easier to write and remember. As a general rule with characters, they should not possess more than seven strokes for left to right  and more than eight from top to bottom. This rule allows for the clear rioting of characters at any size being legible (some of the more complicated characters need to be written larger in order to distinguish the many individual strokes found within). Simplified characters add another advantage to reading, the simplified characters have clearer radicals and are therefore much easier to classify.

Although the advantages are many, there are equally as many disadvantages to this process of simplification. As the meanings of characters are combined and reduced, the number of look-alike characters is increased. An example of this is 巳,已, and 己. This is just one of the long list of look-alike characters that need to be carefully identified due to simplification. A second disadvantage is that some of these characters are created without thinking of the flow of the brush (classically), but just with how they look. This causes characters to be formed awkwardly as the strokes do not blend together as they should. Also many of these same characters (such as 长，为) contain no clear radical and are therefore harder to distinguish and order. The third problem with these simplifications is that previously they were not standardized. The standard script filled books, while these simplifications filled notes. With the Founding of the PRC and the official simplification of the character script, many books have been cast off as essentially being written in a foreign language.

Of the current PRC characters in use about 1/3 are simplifications with the majority still being in their transitional format. 

There had been a move to simplify the characters two times previously by the communist government but each timed failed. It was not until the government replaced the typeset that the simplification caught on. Once the typeset was changed, then all typed material had to use the simplified characters and now longer had a choice between the two scripts. As the majority of the works were then published in simplified characters the population just became used to reading and eventually writing it. Many people thought that this simplification would adversely affect the calligraphic tradition so prevalent in China. At first there was not any backlash as only a 1/3 of the characters actually changed, but as more and more calligraphers used them they realized that a good number of the characters do not lend themselves to calligraphy (for the reasons noted above). 

The Evolution from Clerical to Standard

Qiu Xigui. Chinese Writing. New Haven, CT: Birdtrack Press, 2000.
Summary

Just like other evolutionary scripts, the clerical script was not supplanted by the standard script overnight. The Eastern and Western Han Dynasty is when the clerical script was the primary style. As the script became more used a cursive style emerged. Also at this time a simpler-to-write version of the clerical script emerged called the neo-clerical script. This neo-clerical script merged with the cursive script to create standard script. Near the end of the life of the clerical it looked very similar to the standard script. The standard script did not become the primary script until around two hundred years later.

One theory for why the standard script became the most popular script was that a calligraphic master named Zhōng Yóu created it for his calligraphy. Later the renowned Eastern Jin calligrapher Wang Xizhi and his son built on the script to standardize it even more and to even out the strokes making it even "more pleasing to the eye." Even though the script had come into existence well before this time, it was mostly just used by men of letters. The average person used either the neo-clerical script or a variation of a semi-cursive script.

The meaning of the character "楷" is pattern, this meant that this style should serve as a guide or standard. By this early stage it had completely become separate from the other semi-cursive scripts but it had hardly become the model or standard script. Also during this early stage the quality of the script would change dramatically depending on who was writing it. If the script was written quickly it would look much more like the modern cursive, and if written with more car then it would be closer to the standard. It was not until the Song Dynasty that the specific script started to be called Kai Shu, before that time Kai Shu referred to any of the semi-cursive scripts that had become the standard of time.

The period when the clerical script stopped being used and the standard script became the primary script is hard to pinpoint. Most scholars place the date of the last official clerical script use was during the Wei-Jin period. This period was more than likely the transition stage between the two scripts. After the script was adopted the characters continued to be standardized and simplified, while the style that the characters when written in changed very little. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties period has been accepted to be the first use of the script by the majority of people. 

What made the standard script so popular that it moved from just a script used by the literary elite to being the script of the masses? The script was able to make the leap due to (1) its relation to the clerical script with similar stroke orders (popular at the time), and (2) that it was more simplified, but also preserved the inherent beauty. 

From Oracle Bones to the Qin-Han Reforms

Boltz, William G. The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System. New Haven, CN: American Oriental Society, 1994.
Summary

Although the script of the oracle bones and the Zhou bronzes are fairly well documented there is a gap between them and the Qin standardized script. With this lack of evidence it is hard to show a direct line of evolution between the early scripts and the Qin-Han scripts. A further complication to the matter is that most of the pre-Han works were filtered through Han scribes who revised and altered the works to align with their script. Since the early 90s, however, more and more artifacts have been uncovered that have the original text forms from the pre-Han period. These artifacts found, written on wood, bamboo, or silk, have brought new light to the evolutionary process of the script. 

I order to show how the Kai Shu 楷书 (standard script) came into existence it is necessary to first look at Qin Shi Huang Di 秦始皇帝 and the reforms of Li Si 李斯. The author brings new light to the story of the Qin Emperor burning books. He argues that a main reason for the burning could have been to guarantee the success of his script standardization. At the time he came to power many different scripts were being used, but the burning of the books destroyed scholarship written in the Gu Wen 古文 (ancient script). Thereby making it useless to learn the script, as nothing was written in it. This reform led to a near millennium gap between the bone and bronze inscriptions and the Qin script. The author argues that the period of standardization lasted from Li Si (c. 200BCE) to Xu Shen 许慎 (c. 100CE). During this period there were still a number of variant scripts which slowly faded away. This variants might have had lexical differences to the standard script, but the author only focuses on the graphic variants in order to show the clear evolutionary pattern.  

Next the author looks at the Ma Wang Tui manuscripts which he shows can be accurately dated to the pre and early Han Dynasty because of their use of Han Emperor's given names (which would have been avoided after they were emperor). In these pre-reform manuscripts there are several cases of graphic variation. The main example of this variation is characterized by the characters 堇 and 勤. Both characters are pronounced the same, and both have the same meaning, they just look different. This shows that the 力 radical had not yet been standardized, and it remained in flux until after the reform period. This type of variation is to be expected because the longer the script was used the more characters needed to be created by adding pieces (radicals in this case) to preexisting characters. And although the process was used regularly, there was no standard way of adding radicals until after Xu Shen. Another variation is classified by the difference in uses between 而 and 能. The characters are used in the same way, but even now we are not sure if they were pronounced the same way, or if they had the same meaning. 

Chinese System Classification

DeFrancis, John. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1986.

There are many debates on what to call Chinese characters, and hope to classify them. There are many categories that linguists group Chinese into which DeFrancis explores: ideographic, logographic, morphographic, to name the main ones. Those that argue that Chinese is ideographic say that each character represents an idea. And although it can be pronounced differently using different dialects the same idea is still present. For logographic proponents say that the Chinese characters represent a word. 'The key point of disagreement leading to these terms is whether a character conveys meaning directly or through the intermediary of the word.' Mophographic comes from the argument, what is a word? Those that claim logography say that a word is one character, where those that favor morphogrphy say that word is more than one character. This view continues by claiming that each character is actually a morpheme, the smallest meaningful unit in the language. Due to the complex nature of the characters even more classifications arise. Phonograms comes from the phonetic element that is claimed to exist in some 90 percent of Chinese characters. This grouping is further elaborated by calling them syllabic phonograms. This points to the phonetic element but also link in that the words come in the form of syllables.

It is widely known that the characters have pictographic beginnings, but they soon evolved into stylized characters. Chinese characters can be broken up into individual units called 'strokes.' These units can be further broken up into three different categories:

Dots: 丶

Lines: l，一，𠄌

Hooks:亅，乛，乙

Although characters are made up of these strokes they themselves hold no inherent meaning or sound value, just as the "丶"part of "x" has no meaning or sound value. Strokes are made by having a starting point, the moving toward any direction from northeast to southwest.

In many dictionaries characters are classified by the number of strokes that they contain. Those wanting to look up a character will not only need to know how many strokes are in a character but also in what order they are written. Ah a general rule "top before bottom" and "left before right." As an example, the 人 character is comprised of two strokes in this order: 丿then丶. The 大, is 一，丿，then 丶. And 囗 is l，𠃍，then －. Simple characters, like these, are then combined with other simple characters to make complex characters. They are usually combined by left-right or top-bottom. 唔 is made up of three simple characters, two 口 and one 五. The two 口 are added to the left and bottom of the 五. Other examples include: 叶，佫，㭉. Using these principles you can keep adding on simple or even more complex characters to the left or top to create an infinite number of characters, 舞，遲，駴，鱡. Ninety percent of the characters in the Chinese dictionary used these two rules left-right or top-bottom.

What do the Characters Mean?

Honey, David B. "The Word Behind the Graph in Classical Chinese: Three Notes on the Logographic Writing System." Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association 26, no. 4 (October 1989): 15-26.
Summary

In this article the author argues that although people think that Chinese is easy because its lack of grammatical tense, gender, and other 'syntactical signposts.' The learner of Classical Chinese soon wishes that these things did exist, because the grammatical function of a character is not apparent in the graph or the phonological aspect of the character. Although the structures of the characters do not change, depending on the context, the grammatical functions of the character can. In order to fully understand the meaning of the characters one has to 'approach Classical Chinese in terms of the words represented be the graphs.' For example 中 means middle and is one of the first characters that students learn, but in the classical phrase 「射者必中礼」(the archer must center on ritual) the 中 means 'to center.' This apparent change in means is not as radical as it can be in some cases. This is all possible through the logographic nature of the script. The article is then broken down into three different ways 'in which the words function behind the graph.' First, Polygraphy means that several graphs can represent the same word. This function is possible because graphs are often borrowed for their sound. Several graphs with the same sound can be used interchangeably to mean any one specific character. Early Chinese was phonographic, one character, one sound. And so the graphs were just used for their sound only and not for any inherent meaning behind them. Second, Polysemy means that one character can represent several different words. For example, 「独樂樂，孰樂？」the 樂 character is used three times, but each time it is pronounced a different way, with the first two together meaning music and the last one meaning 'to enjoy.' This can be understood by understanding that both meanings/words come from the same root even though over time they have changed. As in the English 'practical' and 'practice' both come from the Latin 'practicus.' The third is polyptoton, which means the same character used in two grammatical functions. More specifically this is where a character serves two different grammatical roles in one sentence, or is used in its regular fashion in addition to being used grammatically.

Creel, Herrlee Glessner. Chinese Writing. Washington, DC: American Council on Education, 1943.

The main point of the article is two-fold. The first part is showing the pictographic nature within many characters and how they evolved overtime to look like and mean what they do. Characters are put together to form a sentence which is then broken apart to show how the characters' meaning is changed depending on the context. The second part of the article breaks down a phrase written in literary Chinese to show that even more inference and background knowledge is required to understand it. After each character in the saying is explained then the background story behind the phrase is shared. Even with that much insight it is still a leap between the two meanings. Context is one of the most important ways to understand what is really meant.

Chinese Writing

Chang, Cheng-Mei. “Chinese Writing.” Expedition 31, no. 1 (1989): 40-51.
Summary

In 221BCE with the establishment of the Qin Dynasty, emperor Shih-huang unified the script. He wanted to simplify the script for less time-consuming stone carving proclamations. This script is known as the ‘lesser seal script.’ Although this script had fewer curves it was still nowhere near simplified enough. A new script was slowly created to further simplify, in it many of the remaining curves were transformed into straight or flaring lines, and many of the remaining curves were transformed into straight or flaring lines, and many strokes were abbreviated as one or two swift lines. As this script was widely used by clerks it became known as the ‘clerical script.’ Even before the end of the Qin Dynasty (221-207BCE) this script was already in wide use. The Han Dynasty (206BCE-220CE) continued the simplification process that started in the Qin with the development of three new scripts—cursive (ts’ao-shu，草書), standard (k’ai-shu，楷書), and running (hsing-shu，行書).

The cursive script further abbreviated the clerical script and became the script of short-hand.

The standard script was also a simplified version of the clerical script dropping many flaring strokes. A new type of stoke was introduced, this stroke would pause and then turn quickly as in乚.

The running script, also based off of the clerical script did not attempt to simplify but just to link the characters together. The script was mostly used by calligraphers. The Han Dynasty also added to the amount of characters to about 10,000, this number steady increased throughout the dynasties. During the Qing dynasty the total amount was around 47,000, but with only 3000-5000 to read and write well. The standard script caught on and solidified during Sui and Tang Dynasties and has remained mostly unchanged until the introduction of the simplified script. 

During Shang Dynasty the script was used for spiritual communications and was usually accompanied by a sacrifice. The Zhou Dynasty continued on with the same traditions with the addition that the script was also used for secular interactions. In the Sui and Han Dynasties the script was mostly employed with monitoring and governing the vast empire. All government officials were required to have an understanding of the current scripts of the time and could be replaced if they consistently had illegible hand writing. This rule persisted until the end of the Qing Dynasty. With rules like these in place the end of the Han Dynasty was the ideal situation for the art of calligraphy to arise. During the Six Dynasties period (220-589CE) the calligraphic art flourished as the political unrest brought forward new Daoist ideas. The time period trumpeted individualism and fought against the Confucian ideals which encouraged calligraphy to take firm hold. During the period calligraphy had merged itself with the culture created some of the greatest calligraphers in Chinese history.Calligraphy continued to develop for the remainder of Chinese history, employing different combinations of brushes and ink. The three scripts created during the Han Dynasty, however,  continued to be the only scripts employed.

Modern Written Chinese and Chinese Writing

Modern Written Chinese

Chen, Ping “Modern Written Chinese in Development.” Language in Society 22, no. 4 (December 1993): 505-537.
Summary

The main point of this article is to show the development of modern written Chinese in terms of the literary classical Chinese (wényán) being replaced by the vernacular script of everyday life (báihuà).

Wényán was the writing standard for the 2,000 years before the cultural upheavals that started in 1919. It was formed from the Chinese spoken during the pre-Qin and Han periods (206 BCE to 220 CE). Even though the wényán was closely related to the spoken language early on it soon became divorced.

Báihuà was a script created during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) that was more closely aligned with the common speech. Although the vocabulary and grammar of the wényán script was different from the spoken language it was used by the literary elite who looked down on the báihuà script. Although not the elite script, báihuà gained a little higher status at the end of the Tang Dynasty and was used to write novels up to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1911).

Chinese Writing

Chang, Cheng-Mei. “Chinese Writing.” Expedition 31, no. 1 (1989): 40-51.
Summary

The focus of this article is to show the progression of the script throughout the dynasties as well as the development of the art of calligraphy. The Chinese script is unique in the fact that it is understood by knowing the character regardless of the pronunciation. It therefore unifies peoples that speak many different dialects. Right at the beginning the author asserts that Chinese did not evolve from a pictographic script, but was mostly of a phonographic script with some logograms.

Shang Dynasty

The earliest evidence of writing was found written on bones, 'shell-bone script.' The script contained 3000-4000 character, of which we can identify about 1000-2000. Although the size of different characters was not standardized (depending on number of strokes), the way it was written was—vertically downward and then left to right.

Zhou Dynasty

Most of the Zhou Dynasty's 'bronze script' has been found written on ritual bronzes. The script included some 4000 characters with some Shang words being dropped and new ones added. It is hard to do too much comparison as the purpose of the Shang script was oracular and the Zhou's was bureaucratic. Over the 800 years of the Zhou Dynasty the script became more abstract and even less pictographic. 'Gracefulness' became the main focus of the scribes and character sizes were standardized and the layout balanced. Also unlike early Zhou inscriptions that contained 10-100 characters the later inscriptions reached over 200-300. 

The Dynasty was split up as feudal lords ruled much of the land during the period of the Eastern Zhou. The feudal lords lacked the means for monumental inscriptions and so they published their pedigrees on specially commission vessels. As a new sign of their power they wrote in a new script—the 'seal script.' This script was more convoluted than the older script, it added new strokes to add a more ornate feel to it. Likewise in southern China a script was produced that tried to accomplish the same goal by incorporating birds into the characters. Although these ornate scripts were popular they were not as practical. A simplified version of the script came under heavy use for everyday correspondences as well as official documents. This simplified script would be the basis for future scripts. With most of the writing of this time being written on bamboo slips, paper, silk, and hemp it has been near miraculous that enough samples have survived that we can have a good idea of what writing was like over 2200 years ago.

Origins - Early Chinese Writing

Boltz, William G. “Early Chinese Writing.” World Archaeology 17, no. 3 (February 1986): 420-436.
Summary

The article starts with the first evidences of early Chinese writing that were discovered—Shang bronze vessels. The Author notes that the writings found on these vessels fall into the categories of ‘clan names’ and ‘content inscriptions.’ These engravings are fairly simple to understand although the exact pronunciation has been lost us. A work published in 1903 by Liu O shed new light to the topic of early Chinese writing when he unveiled his collection on ‘oracle bone inscriptions.’ The author debunks the claims that the oracle bones carvings are much more archaic as opposed to the bronze vessels by noting that the differences in the quality of each script can be explained by the material used to write it on. The characters written on bones needed to be scratched whereas the bronze could be artfully crafted. Therefore the oracle bone characters are mostly made of straight lines of differing lengths, whereas the bronze character are perfectly proportioned and contain many curves. Although there seem to be many differences between the two scripts they both represent full-writing, just used for different purposes.Chinese evolved in much the same way as writing in other parts of the world. It first started off as pictographic and then slowly changed to logographic. But unlike other scripts Chinese never moved towards a syllabographic or an alphabetic script. Early Chinese evolved through three main stages: Pictographic, Multivalent, and Determinative. In the pictographic stage only tangible objects, such as animals, were represented by characters. Next ideological definitions were added to existing characters that were homophonous, the meaning ‘come’ was added to the word 'grain' (both pronounced lái). Lastly a determinative was added to clarify which meaning was meant, such as adding 亻(human) to 象 (elephant) to show that the 像 (image) meaning is meant. By 1200 B.C.E. (Shang Dynasty) all three stages had already taken place. While other scripts around the world continued to change Chinese stayed the same.
The author flatly denies the theory of stimulus-diffusion and offers other explanations to the Chinese invention of writing. Some archaeologists claim that Chinese originally came from scratches found on pottery as early as 4800 B.C.E. The main argument for theory is that some of the scratches resemble a few of the Shang characters, but this is speculative at best. A second reason for doubting this claim is, as noted above, scripts usually appear in pictographic form first which goes against what we know about the development of the Shang writing. And a third reason is the large gap of time 4800-1200 B.C.E. It is very unlikely that a ‘half-way’ developed lasted for three and a half thousand years nearly unchanged. With this said the author challenges the view of Cheng Te-k’un as stated the development of writing took no less than 6000 years. It is an invention not an evolution. A second candidate is the more likely origin of the script—marks from the Ta wen k’ou culture. These marks are obviously objects and are roughly dated to 1900 B.C.E. which puts it in a much more reasonable time frame to eventually cause the invention of the Shang script; the Ta wen k’ou graphs also share the ‘clan-name’ inscriptions found on pottery. The Author concludes with his postulation that it is not much of a jump to go to a clan being represented by a character to the character representing the pronunciation of the clan name. The Ta wen k’ou graphs are the ‘tangible’ proof to show how the script moved from ‘non-phonetic to phonetic.’

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Essay Proposal

Essay Proposal

Thesis

The Chinese script has continued to evolve until the emergence of Kai Shu 楷書 (standard script). The same factors that governed the creation and standardization of earlier scripts is mirrored in the creation of the vernacular Cantonese script of Hong Kong.

Basic Outline

I plan on using Qin through Tang Dynasty texts to lay out a pattern for how the clerical script evolved into to the standard script. Also to show the standardization of the radical system by Xu Shen. I will then use blogs of current Hong Kong Chinese, newspaper articles, and signs in Hong Kong to show that they are creating characters the same way that Li Su and Xu Shen did earlier. Some of the main comparisons that I plan to draw include the following:

     They borrow a character that is common use, but add a new radical to it in order to change the meaning; the original character and the new character have approximately the same pronunciation and intonation.

     They borrow a character that was used in the past, but has not been used at all recently, or is very uncommon, and then assign a new meaning to it. Thus keep everything the same just adding to the polyvalence of the character.

     They create a new character by modifying one that is used, but giving it a different pronunciation and a different meaning; the character is changed enough to make it obviously different from the original.

I will end by showing how the Cantonese vernacular script has yet to be officially standardized, and explore, using the Qin-Tang sources, possible outcomes of the script. This will be done by comparing the evolution of early Chinese to the evolution of the Cantonese script and projecting the outcomes of the Chinese script on the vernacular Cantonese script.

Plan to acquire background knowledge

Over the past few months I have been slowly learning about the evolution of the Chinese script. As a resource for the continuation of that study I will use the following books: Zhou Youguang. The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2003. and Boltz, William G. The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 1994. These two books contain mostly broad overviews of the evolution of the Chinese script, but also include more specific sections which parallel the author's area of expertise.

Plan to acquire Qin-Tang Dynasty texts

All of the books that the library does not have, which is most of them, I will acquire them the through inter-library loan service. For the rest of the sources I plan on using the Harvard University Virtual Chinese Rubbings Collection, http://vc.lib.harvard.edu/vc/deliver/home?_collection=rubbings, for many of them. The site includes scans of rice paper rubbings of stele and other carved-in-stone artifacts. My other main source for these early written and starved documents are the following: Qiu Xigui. Chinese Writing. New Haven, CT: Birdtrack Press, 2000. and De Bary, Theodore and Bloom, Irene. Sources of Chinese tradition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. These three sources contain hundreds of individual documents that will just need to be sifted through.

Plan to acquire examples of current vernacular Cantonese usage

The first place that I plan to get examples of Cantonese is from the blogs of high school and college age people from Hong Kong. I have already found quite a few; it is easy to locate them by searching on google. The second place to look is for newspaper articles. To find these I plan to look on the Hong Kong government website, as well as the websites of the individual newspaper companies that print in. Hong Kong. The third is mostly going to come through google image searches. I plan on locating everyday signs that people in. Hong Kong would see by searching for pictures taken in Hong Kong. These three sources will show the depth of immersion in the Cantonese characters by showing its use with teens and early adults as well as business men and everyday people. As an introduction to this section of research I plan on reading the only author who has touched on the subject of a vernacular Cantonese character script, Donald Bruce Snow. I plan on reading the book, article, and dissertation by him: Cantonese as a Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular, A Short History of Published Cantonese: What is Dialect Literature?, and Written Cantonese and the Culture of Hong Kong: The Growth of a Dialect Literature. These works also contain specific examples of Cantonese vernacular script in use in various media which I can draw from to illustrate the evolution and usage of the characters.

Plan to analyze sources

 For the Qin through Tang sources I will plot a timeline of the character development and see the progression of the script. This will also show the evolution and change of the script which will show a specific trend that I can use as a map for chartering the course of the Cantonese script. Using the sources that I find on the Cantonese script I can view the different uses to show the unstandardized nature of the script, as well as show the nature of the characters. The main point that I will want to draw from the sources is to show, by breaking down the structure of the characters, how the they have been created.

Schedule

Jan. 6-11: Proposal, start to acquire the books and sources required for the paper

Jan. 13-18: Research Qin-Tang texts - make note cards

Jan. 20-25: Organize Qin-Tang sources

Jan. 27-Feb. 1: Research Hong Kong vernacular script - make note cards

Feb. 3-8: Organize Vernacular sources

Feb. 10-15: Organize final outline

Feb. 17-22: Write the introduction and background information sections

Feb. 24-Mar. 1: Write the Qin-Tang Section

Mar. 3-8: Write the Hong Kong section

Mar. 10-15: Write the comparison and future sections

Mar. 17-22: Edit and format essay

Mar. 24-29: Emergency work week