Languages without Native Speakers

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on the development of grammatical and notational technologies for encoding song lyrics and pronunciation standards that more nearly mimicked daily speech of official and, finally, local languages. Drawing on research of scholars like Sheldon Pollock and Alexander Beecroft on development of vernaculars out of cosmopolitan literary languages and work of scholars like Haun Saussy on inscription and orality, this chapter uses cognitive concepts like memory chunking to argue that material technologies, like writing and print, and scholarly activities, like dictionary and rhyme book writing, gradually enabled a “natural” stylistic of individual sentiment explored by poets and dramatists like Li Qingzhao and Xu Wei. The end of this chapter revisits the “Tang-Shen debate” to describe a dialectic of (classical) “elegance” and “fashionable” intelligibility in late imperial efforts to craft performing arts with empire-wide appeal.