Zhengzhang Shangfang (; ; 9 August 1933 – 19 May 2018) was a Chinese linguist, known for his

reconstruction of Old Chinese Although Old Chinese is known from written records beginning around 1200 BC, the logographic script provides much more indirect and partial information about the pronunciation of the language than alphabetic systems used elsewhere. Several authors h ...

. Zhengzhang was born as Zheng Xiangfang ( ; ) in

Yongjia County Yongjia County (; Wenzhou dialect: yon2ko1/ yu3 ''ion ko'') is a county in Wenzhou in the southeast of Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China, located north of the city proper of Wenzhou Wenzhou (pronounced ; Wenzhounese: Yuziou �y33 ...

, on the outskirts of

Wenzhou Wenzhou (pronounced ; Wenzhounese: Yuziou �y33–11 tɕiɤu33–32 ), historically known as Wenchow is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Zhejiang province in the People's Republic of China. Wenzhou is located at the extreme south east o ...

. As and have the same pronunciation in the

Wenzhou dialect Wenzhounese (), also known as Oujiang (), Tong Au () or Au Nyü (), is the language spoken in Wenzhou, the southern prefecture of Zhejiang, China. Nicknamed the "Devil's Language" () for its complexity and difficulty, it is the most divergent div ...

, his personal name became Shangfang ( ). While he was in high school, his parents changed his family name to Zhengzhang ( ), a combination of the parents' surnames ( Zhèng and Zhāng). At this time, he became interested in historical phonology and studied the works of

Yuen Ren Chao Yuen Ren Chao (; 3 November 1892 – 25 February 1982), also known as Zhao Yuanren, was a Chinese-American linguist, educator, scholar, poet, and composer, who contributed to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar. Chao was born a ...

, Wang Li and others at Wenzhou's library. In 1954, unable to enter university to study linguistics, he began geological work in the Beijing area. In his spare time, he continued to develop his own ideas on

Old Chinese phonology Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence. Although the writing system does not describe sounds directly, shared phono-semantic, phonetic components of the most ancient Chinese characters are b ...

, particularly the finals and vowel system. In the 1960s and 1970s, he undertook dialect survey work in Wenzhou for Lü Shuxiang until he was sent to work in a factory during the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...

. During a period when the factory was closed due to a factional battle in the

Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...

, he began exchanging ideas with

Pan Wuyun Pan Wuyun (, born March 1943) is a leading Chinese linguist and specialist in historical Chinese phonology. Career Pan was born in Rui'an, Zhejiang in 1943. After graduating from high school, he was unable to attend college because of his famil ...

and Jin Shengrong, and refined his

Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...

system to a six-vowel system. Essentially the same system was independently developed by William Baxter (building on a proposal by

Nicholas Bodman Nicholas Cleaveland Bodman (July 27, 1913 – June 29, 1997) was an American linguist who made fundamental contributions to the study of historical Chinese phonology and Sino-Tibetan languages. Bodman was born in Chicago in 1913. He entered Harva ...

) and by

Sergei Starostin Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (russian: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин; March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005) was a Russian historical linguist and philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypotheti ...

. In 1980, he joined the

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) is a Chinese research institute and think tank. The institution is the premier comprehensive national academic research organization in the People's Republic of China for the study in the fields of ...

Publications

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References

Works cited

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Zhengzhang, Shangfang 1933 births 2018 deaths Linguists from China Chinese phonologists Educators from Wenzhou Writers from Wenzhou Shanghai Normal University faculty Scientists from Wenzhou 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists Linguists of Chinese