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The Kitan Language and Script
The Kitans established the Liao dynasty in northern China, which lasted for over two centuries (916-1125). In this survey the reader will find what is currently known about the Kitan language and scripts.The language was very likely distantly related to Mongolian, with two quite different scripts in use. A few generations after their state was defeated, almost all trace of the Kitan spoken and written languages disappeared, except a few words in Chinese texts. Over the past few decades, however, inscriptions from the tombs of the Liao emperors and the Kitan aristocracy have been at least partially deciphered, resulting in a significant increase of our knowledge of the Kitan lexicon, morphology and syntax.
320 pages, Paperback
First published August 30, 2008
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April 13, 2014
The Kitan script refers to two separate writing systems created in northern China during the Liao Dynasty (907–1125) to set down a still mysterious and not yet fully deciphered language. Daniel Kane is the foremost expert on Kitan in the English-speaking world, or anywhere outside of China really, and this monograph published by Brill summarizes everything known about the language and script as of its 2008 publication date. Kane is especially keen to present for an English-speaking audience the publications of a Chinese team that has made major gains since the late 1970s, overturning most earlier (and more readily accessible) scholarship.
I am not qualified in old forms of Chinese and have no prior experience in the nitty-gritty of Kitan decipherment. However, my work in linguistics does involve the Altaic languages, so I am intrigued by the idea that the Kitan language might be a descendent of Pre-Proto-Mongolic, and therefore a “Para-Mongolic” language. Unfortunately, Kane does not dedicate any real space to discussing the case for Kitan as Para-Mongolic, though he occasionally compares Kitan reconstructions to Mongolic words. The only major overview of the topic is Juha Janhunen's paper in Routledge’s The Mongolic Languages, which was published in 2003. Kane was publishing this five years later and had access to much more literature, so I really wish that he had presented his own updated and expanded version of Janhunen’s article.
But what you do get here is really cool stuff, at least for this dilettante. For virtually every inscription and every graph he lists the chain of reasoning that has lead to a tentative deciperment. The features of the Kitan inscriptions like the ten stems, five colours and twelve animal signs of Chinese culture are set out. After discussing the Kitan Small Script in great detail, he offers a chapter on Kitan morphology, namely an array of suffixes that can be identified as case markers, tense forms and converb markers. Somewhat less space is dedicated to the Kitan Large Script, but he does note advances made since the turn of the millennium.
The last chapter steps back from the Kitan language for a bit to try to reconstruct the Chinese dialect of the Liao Dynasty attested in the Kitan inscriptions, which must have had some features setting it apart from dialects further south. This chapter will be of great interest to anyone reading about reconstruction of Middle Chinese in general.
I am not qualified in old forms of Chinese and have no prior experience in the nitty-gritty of Kitan decipherment. However, my work in linguistics does involve the Altaic languages, so I am intrigued by the idea that the Kitan language might be a descendent of Pre-Proto-Mongolic, and therefore a “Para-Mongolic” language. Unfortunately, Kane does not dedicate any real space to discussing the case for Kitan as Para-Mongolic, though he occasionally compares Kitan reconstructions to Mongolic words. The only major overview of the topic is Juha Janhunen's paper in Routledge’s The Mongolic Languages, which was published in 2003. Kane was publishing this five years later and had access to much more literature, so I really wish that he had presented his own updated and expanded version of Janhunen’s article.
But what you do get here is really cool stuff, at least for this dilettante. For virtually every inscription and every graph he lists the chain of reasoning that has lead to a tentative deciperment. The features of the Kitan inscriptions like the ten stems, five colours and twelve animal signs of Chinese culture are set out. After discussing the Kitan Small Script in great detail, he offers a chapter on Kitan morphology, namely an array of suffixes that can be identified as case markers, tense forms and converb markers. Somewhat less space is dedicated to the Kitan Large Script, but he does note advances made since the turn of the millennium.
The last chapter steps back from the Kitan language for a bit to try to reconstruct the Chinese dialect of the Liao Dynasty attested in the Kitan inscriptions, which must have had some features setting it apart from dialects further south. This chapter will be of great interest to anyone reading about reconstruction of Middle Chinese in general.
Displaying 1 of 1 review