baxter-handbookchinesephonology
Baxter
A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology
Trends in Linguistics : Studies and Monographs 64 from Mouton De Gruyter. A detailed new analysis of the Old Chinese sound system, based on the work of Nicholas C. Bodman, E.G. Pulleyblank, S.E. Jaxontov and others.
This book is on the short list for most over-priced book in my libary (over $250 as I recall for a well-printed, but pedestrian book of 922 pages) compared to book prices at the time. I bought it in March, 1996.
Discussion:
The Introduction, Chapter 1.1 and parts of Chapter 2 proved interesting in spite of my meager training in phonology. (His discussion at 1.2.2, Dialects or languages?, is certainly worth reading for anyone interested in how the regional varieties of spoken Chinese with differences equal or greater than the languages of Europe, for example, can properly be called 'dialects'.) But most of the time I use Baxter to see how he has reconstructed a specific syllable associated with a specific character and for that, Appendix C, The rhyme words of the Shijing is where I look. In Appendix C, Baxter lists "all the rhyme words of the Shijing, including their modern pronunciations (in pinyin romanization), Middle Chinese transcriptions, and Old Chinese reconstructions."
ISBN: 311012324X