Riding the wind of rebirth

"what do you mean……"

"Work-study program." Zhou Zhi said, "I think we can use the dialect voice collection work as a work-study program."

"Shu University recruits students from every province. We can recruit students who are interested in this, provide them with appropriate training, and then assign them tasks to complete during their vacations, and pay them a certain amount of money."

"The flashcard reading is very simple. They are indigenous people, so they just need to read it aloud. The key is the slang. We may need to go to the countryside to conduct investigations."

"It's the same as the 'Field Survey of Jiachuan Dialect' that you did, right?" Mr. Gu understood a little.

"Yes, let them follow that template. In addition to the basic word card rewards, we will give additional rewards if they find new word combinations or Chinese character pronunciations in the dialect."

Gu Youwen knew that his last disciple was not just wealthy. After all, many of Clover's projects were realized by combining the backgrounds of the Chinese Department and the Computer Department of Shu University. Gu Kailai was also familiar with the money-making ability of the Clover Group through Mai Mingdong, and he also told the old man about it when they were chatting at home.

It's just that this family doesn't take money seriously. They just listen to what others say just because they have money. It's only now that Gu Youwen realizes that wealth really does make one powerful. The resources they can mobilize are huge.

Then I think about my own son who is doing research on "Jiyun" in the capital, and the grant he has received so far is only 30,000 yuan. It is true that if you compare yourself with others, you will die, and if you compare goods, you will throw them away.

"Then... should I give you some more work?" Mr. Gu changed his mind and wanted to assign Zhou Zhi another task: "Otherwise, it seems that you have too much free time in your first year. Can you review the information collected by other students? Or write programs?"

Based on the old man's understanding of Zhou Zhi, this guy will definitely not analyze the information manually after collecting it, and will definitely solve most of the problems through programs and databases. The phonetic and rhyme classics themselves are a very rigorous logic and methodology, which are very suitable for information technology analysis.

The key point is that there are many information technology talents in Clover Group now, and he can also organize the background forces of the group to do private work for him, so he won't be tired.

“No, no…” Zhou Zhi waved his hands in fear: “It is very troublesome to build this information system. It would be great if we can come up with an idea within a year.”

"At most, while waiting for the voice samples, I studied the research results of Karlgren and Zheng Zhangshangfang, and combined them with my master's Guangyun Shuzheng to build a simulation system for Guangyun."

"I have already checked the textual research you did for our master's Guangyun Shuzheng," Gu Youwen said. "Your idea is also very good. Let's verify it with the research of Karlgren and Zheng Zhangshangfang. Let's see if there are any conflicts and contradictions. Then list them and study them again."

As soon as Zhou Zhi heard it, he knew that the old man had fallen into his old habit again, which several bigwigs had criticized - it is never too late to study hard and it is never too late to publish a book.

This is a good thing, but the big guys are worried that everyone is getting old, and if they don’t publish a book in time, what if…

"By the way, Luo Changpei, Zhao Yuanren, and Li Fanggui added many annotations and revisions when they translated Gao Benhan's works. Don't ignore these three people."

"I'll give you Zheng Zhangshangfang's phone number later. If you encounter any questions about his paper during your research, you can call him directly for advice."

"Huh? Are you familiar with each other?" Zheng Zhangshangfang is now over 70 years old, about the same age as the teacher uncle. He started to enjoy the State Council subsidy last year and is still a professor at Nankai University. "This circle is very small." Gu Lao said: "When your teacher uncle was working on the "Chinese Dictionary", he was also in the editing team of Wenzhou Teachers College. He left Wenzhou after being admitted as an associate researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1980. He specialized in linguistics research in Beijing and had a good relationship with your teacher uncle."

"So there is this relationship. Then this matter will be easy to handle." Zhou Zhi said with a smile.

"Well, when this is almost done, we will have a reliable method and fairly reliable sound value accuracy."

"Let's wait until we finish our doctoral dissertation to finish the rest of the work, right?" Zhou Zhi said with a shy smile, "Old man, it's great that you can finish so many things within two years."

Old Master Gu couldn't help but laugh. He was very satisfied with this young disciple, but the greater the ability, the greater the responsibility. He hoped that Zhou Zhi would achieve more than just this.

The reason why he did so many things based on the research of Gao Benhan and Zheng Zhang Shangfang, even putting aside his own knowledge, is enough to show that the old man has an extraordinary heart.

The Gu family's family tradition mainly focused on the phonology of Medieval Chinese, mainly based on the philological foundation of the Qianjia School handed down from the late Qing Dynasty. They used traditional methods to study philology, still following the old path.

In addition to "Studies in Chinese Phonology", Gao Benhan's achievements also include a magnum opus that encompasses the research in the second half of his life - "Dictionary of Ancient Chinese".

If Studies in Chinese Phonology only used the tool of modern dialect investigation to find a method for constructing the phonetic and rhyme system of Middle Chinese and reconstructed its phonetic values ​​for the first time, thus preparing the conditions for inferring ancient sounds and proving modern sounds, then Dictionary of Ancient Chinese is Karlgren's further deductive practice based on this method, making an important attempt to reconstruct ancient sounds.

His method mainly utilized the rhyme of The Book of Songs and the homophonic principles of Chinese characters, and based on his own reconstructed Middle Chinese sounds, that is, the sound system of Qieyun, he applied the "internal simulation method" to reconstruct the phonetic values ​​of the sound categories in The Book of Songs.

The "internal simulation method" is a method that emerged in the 1930s and 1940s after the rise of structural linguistics, which applied the analysis method of synchronous language structure to the study of language evolution.

Karlgren applied it to the study of ancient Chinese sounds, and his research results can be found in different works such as "Dictionary of Sino-Japanese Character Analysis", "Problems of Ancient Chinese", "Study of the Book of Songs" and "Chinese Word Families".

If Studies in Chinese Phonology is the crystallization of Karlgren's research on the phonetics of Middle Chinese, then Dictionary of Old Chinese is a concentrated description of his research on the ancient phonological system of Chinese. They both occupy an important position in the history of Chinese linguistics. Applying this method to the study of the history of Chinese phonology has achieved remarkable results and has been widely accepted by Chinese linguists.

The same was true for Zheng Zhang Shangfang. He and Pan Wuyun studied the homophonic and rhyme parts together during the turbulent times. After ten years of hard work, they completed a brand new six-vowel ancient sound reconstruction system.

What’s even more interesting is that this system independently reconstructed by Zheng Zhang and Pan was developed in the international academic circles in the 1980s, almost simultaneously with the reconstruction of ancient Chinese sounds by Bao Nigu-Bai Yiping in the United States and Staroskin in the former Soviet Union, in different parts of the world. The materials and rationales they were based on were also different, but they actually came to almost the same conclusions.

These three were praised by the academic circles for a time and were called the three major systems of hexagram reconstruction.

Obviously, Mr. Gu felt that his school should surpass Zhou Zhi's generation and advance into ancient Chinese music. (End of this chapter)