Has anyone had a chance to look through this book yet? Has anyone seen it on a bookshelf in a Taibei bookstore?
I’m very eager to get a bit more info on it!
That’s been out for more than a year, but I still haven’t seen a copy. I would expect, though, that it is of the same high standard as the other books in the ABC series. I know someone at the press and could perhaps get a PDF of a few pages, if that would be useful to you.
Once, though, I did see the ABC Dictionary of Chinese Proverbs at Eslite. It was early in the day and I was going to go back for it later, so I wouldn’t have to lug it around all day; but then it was gone. 
Yeah, that would be great!
Normally I’d be buying anything on etymology blind, but I’m really into the character etymology, and find that I don’t really use books on middle and old phonology for instance, so if it’s just groupings of phonetic reconstructions, I might not use it, and I’ve got WAY too many books I don’t ever use. But I’d still very much like to have a look. I’m unlikely to see it on a shelf here, so a PDF of a few pages (especially of the core content, not the long intro section) would be very helpful. You can also let them know I’m a friend of the ABC series, and that I’d be happy to give a thoughtful and thorough review on Amazon if they send me a free copy, LOL.
Not surprisingly, I have a copy of that. You’re welcome to have a look at it. Just remind me before a happy hour and I’ll bring it for you to look through. Can’t make tomorrow’s though.
Some brief, very positive remarks here: Review of ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese. With an example.
I want!!
Hey, how about setting up a dinner or working brunch somewhere to initiate people like me who have always been interested in ancient Chinese phonetics but were afraid to ask? Maybe we can get A-gu up from Kaohsiung as well. I know he’s very excited about this book. I believe that I used to use an earlier version of this work as a lexicon for reading things like the Zuozhuan. It was extremely useful although I can’t comment on it primary function of phonetic reconstruction. I use Pulleyblank’s Lexicon for the same purpose for Warring States to Song readings. Again very handy.
A good source for material is the journal Sino-Platonic Papers. Look especially at the volumes of reviews (e.g., nos. 8, 14, 31, 35), which often cover related books.
Thanks so much for the preview! 
I have to admit, bits like this, posted by 阿牛 on the above linked site, are very useful:
[quote]For example, we all know that lin2 林 and sen1 森 look a lot alike; but would it surprise you to learn they also once sounded more similar and were even probably cognates, differing only in the onset?
lin2 林 (Middle Chinese ljəm), late Han lim, Minimal Old Chinese *r[color=red]e[/color]m
“Forest, forester”
sen1 森 MC ṣjəm, LH ṣɨm, OCM *sr[color=red]e[/color]m
“Forest, dense thicket”; probably an intensive derivative of lin2, possibly influenced by AA parallels.[/quote]
Without that *r[color=red]e[/color]m <–> *sr[color=red]e[/color]m comparison (EDIT: the [color=red]e[/color]'s are supposed to be upside down in the quote and here but the encoding turned them into white boxes), I might have just assumed lin2 and sen1 were two different spoken words just as glade and forest are, and that the characters were arbitrarily different semantic creations. VERY useful.
However, in what I’ve seen of the book, I’m also disappointed to find that many of the linkages I expected to see, ones which I consider fairly obvious, are not covered, and when the author moves into character etymology (as opp. to phonetic), the work is weak and woefully incomplete.
For example, at jiu3 ‘Nine’ it says ‘The graph was apparently invented for a word ‘to bend’…in WT the words for ‘nine’ and ‘to bend’ are also homophones’. But the oracle bone form is clearly a hand and arm, with the elbow (or arguably wrist) bent, and ‘nine’ and ‘elbow’ (jiu3 and zhou3) are obvious homophones, so the graph is widely thought to be a simple phonetic loan of ‘elbow’ and not just “a word ‘to bend’”.
Now, I don’t mind the author tying in another word ‘to bend’, especially if focusing on spoken words, since the elbow is an example thereof, but not even a mention of elbow, when the graph itself is obviously specifically an elbow and not just a ‘bend’? Where’s the phonetic connection between the obvious series 手 shou3 hand-arm, 肘 zhou3 / 九 jiu3 elbow (a bent thing), and 丑 chou3, also widely understood to be derived from a hand graph (regardless of the specific graphic interpretation as a hand bound, a hand with fingers curled (fist), a hand deformed (hence ugly) etc.) ? The series is too obviously semantically and phonetically connected to be neglected in such a work. Had the author said ‘The graph apparently depicts a hand and arm with a bend, representing the wrist or elbow or the notion of ‘to bend’’, and mentioned the shou3 jiu3 chou3 zhou3 series, it would have been quite satisfactory, and I’d not hold against him the failure to mention the 是 匙 linkage.
Admittedly my own interest is very specifically in character etymology, but the phonetic linkages are often vital in that pursuit as well. I will most likely get this work, but given the egregiousness of the above omissions, I’m not that optimistic about how often it will be useful, although there are sure to be a few gems.
[quote=“Dragonbones”][quote]For example, we all know that lin2 林 and sen1 森 look a lot alike; but would it surprise you to learn they also once sounded more similar and were even probably cognates, differing only in the onset?
lin2 林 (Middle Chinese ljəm), late Han lim, Minimal Old Chinese *rəm
“Forest, forester”
sen1 森 MC ṣjəm, LH ṣɨm, OCM *srəm
“Forest, dense thicket”; probably an intensive derivative of lin2, possibly influenced by AA parallels.[/quote]
Without that *rəm <–> *srəm comparison, I might have just assumed lin2 and sen1 were two different spoken words just as glade and forest are, and that the characters were arbitrarily different semantic creations. VERY useful.[/quote]
Although sen1 and lin2 sound different in Mandarin, they are closer in Minnan (sim lim) and Cantonese (sam lam).
Ok, I bought the book (thanks again, Cranky! ) and must say that even if you’re only into character etymology, there are so many good tidbits of info in it that it’s worth buying.
For example, if you’re like me I’m sure you’ll rue the fact it’s hard to find good info on the graph
廌
zhi4, which Shuowen called a one-horned beast similar to a 山牛 which could tell right and wrong (settle cases), or somesuch. Schuessler gives a better definition as ‘some kind of small deer’, tells us that it is first found in the oracle bone texts and in SW, and mentions that the Shang kings bagged them by the hundreds when hunting. So even though his book is about spoken words, you can glean good bits about characters and their usage too. There’s other info on its pronunciation, and on the etymology of the spoken word, related to words for ‘deer’ in proto Mon-Khmer, old Mon, proto Viet-Muong, Khmer and proto Yao.
Under shou3 ‘head’ (the written form 首 is not really relevant, as the book is discussing the spoken words) we learn that it was replaced by tou2 by the Warring States period. Similarly, we learn that the word mu4 for eye (目) was replaced by yan3 already in Han times, except in Min.
Didn’t you ever wonder why we don’t call deer zhi4, pigs shi3 or tuan4, and the head shou3 nowadays? I know it keeps me awake at night. 
Seriously though, these are fun tidbits! I like to know when one word replaced another, and which of the two was more likely a foreign loan.
That said, this is very dense, pedantic reference material in terms of the many abbreviations used for the various reconstructed languages and the many symbols used, so don’t expect to be able to flip this open and just start reading it for enjoyment unless you already have a good grasp on phonetic reconstruction and the history of Asian languages. I personally don’t, so there’s a bit of a learning curve for me to decipher the contents, but I’m certainly enjoying the extra info such as that I mention above which is scattered throughout.
I just received my copy ordered through Amazon! And it’s absolutely fantastic!
Outside of Karlgren, I’ve never seen so much detailed info on the historical linguistics of Chinese in one place. And it’s the only place I’ve seen modern theories put forward in reasonable length. 130 pages of discussion of the development of Chinese (phonology, borrowings from other language families, linguistic reconstruction, etc.), followed by almost 500 pages of pinyin-ordered etymological entries showing pronunciation in old Chinese, developments in meaning and pronunciation, relationship to other words, etc.
All hail Alex Schuessler for bringing this to us!