About

Zev Handel is a professor in the Department of Asian Languages & Literature at the University of Washington. He holds a Ph.D. in Chinese Language from the University of California, Berkeley, earned in 1998, and an M.A. in East Asian Languages from the same institution, completed in 1992. His academic background also includes an A.B. in Mathematics from Harvard College in 1988. Handel's fields of interest encompass Asian writing systems, Chinese dialectology, comparative linguistics, historical linguistics, historical phonology, and Sino-Tibetan linguistics. His research focuses on the development of Sinographic (Chinese-character based) writing systems in Asia, the history of the Northern Min dialects of Fujian Province, and related linguistic topics. He has authored significant works including a forthcoming book titled "Chinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" and the book "Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script." His scholarly contributions also include editing volumes such as the "Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics" and publishing numerous articles on Old Chinese phonology, Sino-Tibetan origins, and Chinese script history. Handel is actively involved in teaching courses on Asian linguistics, Chinese language, and historical phonology at the University of Washington.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Linguistics
• Acoustics
• History
• Archaeology
• Philosophy
• Physics

Selected publications

• Introduction: Graphemic classifiers in complex script systems

  Journal of Chinese Writing Systems · 2024 · 8 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence

  This article explores the role of unpronounced semantic classifiers , also known as graphemic classifiers or determinatives , in three ancient complex scripts: Egyptian, Chinese and Sumerian. These classifiers are silent hieroglyphs, Chinese characters or cuneiform signs that are combined with other signs that carry phonetic information to form a complete written representation of a word. While these classifiers are written and visible, they are not pronounced . They add silent, motivated semantic information related to the meaning of the word. These classifiers can be found in various positions within words, reflecting cultural and referential information. Classifier studies, in general, have gained significant interest at the intersection of linguistic typology, cognitive linguistics, semiotics of scripts and neuroscience. The research field examines classifiers in oral languages, signed languages and complex scripts, emphasizing that regardless of modality they reflect a shared cognitive effort to organize knowledge. It is our hope that the scholarly contributions in this issue will open up a new chapter in classifier studies and in comparative script analysis. Theoretical and analytical work undertaken in the last few decades has been done primarily by individual researchers specializing in one language or script. Our approach combines large-scale corpus data with comparative script analysis carried out by teams of collaborators who can contribute specialized expertise in different ancient writing systems. The research possibilities opened by our newly developed digital tool iClassifier are presented in detail in the other contributions in this issue. This work has laid a strong comparative foundation that we can now build on, to develop new insights into the early history of script development and the commonalities and differences among ancient cultural conceptualizations of the world.

  PublisherDOI

• Richard Van Ness Simmons (ed.): <i>Studies in Colloquial Chinese and Its History: Dialect and Text</i> x, 286 pp. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2022. ISBN 978 988 8754 09 0.

  Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies · 2023-02-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

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• The Culture of Language in Ming China: Sound, Script, and the Redefinition of Boundaries of Knowledge

  The Journal of Asian Studies · 2023 · 16 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Linguistics
  • History
  • Philosophy

  Nathan Vedal's erudite, incisive, and thoroughly researched monograph reexamines the conventional wisdom on Ming-era intellectual culture and its relationship to Qing scholarship. Vedal is primarily concerned with the formation and change of the boundaries of scholarly disciplines. He asks us to examine Ming-era intellectual exchanges in contemporary terms rather than through the lens of Qing or modern-day disciplines. The specific discipline that centers Vedal's attention is philology (xiaoxue 小學), an area of scholarly investigation that in the Ming encompassed linguistics, musicology, cosmology, and literary studies before narrowing considerably to language and textual studies in the Qing.Vedal undertakes a wide-ranging investigation of Ming xiaoxue scholarship. With an astonishing command of the primary and secondary materials, he impressively achieves the twin goals of being broadly inclusive in scope and of focusing in detail on the work and legacy of several key intellectual figures operating within “communities of philological knowledge,” including some who are largely forgotten today. One example of many is Zhang Xianyi 張獻翼 (1534–1601), who interpreted the Book of Changes as a work of lyrical verse. Particularly impressive is Vedal's archival research. He makes use of curated bibliographies, edited and revised editions, prefaces, and evaluations to show us how scholars of the Ming engaged in dialogue with each other and to trace lines of influence and interpretation over time and into the Qing. The editorial decisions made by the Qing compilers of the Siku quanshu 四庫全書 are a part of this story as much as for what they exclude as for what they include.The book is divided into major sections titled (1) “Sound and Script”; (2) “Singing and Speaking, Reading and Writing”; and (3) “Philology: The Making and Remaking of a Discipline.” Within each section, Vedal masterfully presents the disciplinary contours of communities of academic discourse and their shifting interactions, highlighting the importance for Ming intellectuals of concepts like “self-so” (ziran 自然) learning, numerical correlation, moral edification, and cosmological approaches to an understanding of language, pronunciation, Chinese-character structure and function, and the interpretation of ancient texts. In order to provide concrete phonetic values to help readers navigate the many studies of phonology that his book describes, Vedal has made the commendable choice to use a modified form of Y. R. Chao's “General Chinese” (tongzi 通字), rather than Pinyin, to romanize pronunciations in Ming-era phonological works. While these romanized forms are not intended to be reconstructions of early Guanhua pronunciation, they reflect distinctions of pronunciation that are not present in the modern standard but are essential to understanding phonological examples and arguments in Ming texts. The romanization is not burdened by unfamiliar phonetic symbols and is sufficiently close to Pinyin that pronunciations can be readily recognized and interpreted by ordinary readers. Crucially, it retains explicit indication of the consonant endings of the historical entering tone. This makes transparent the logical structure of a sequence of graphs like 嗟姐借節 (as found in Wu Jishi's 吳繼仕 [fl. 1579–1611] Yinsheng jiyuan 音聲紀元). The General Chinese romanizations ziē, ziě, ziè, ziet reflect the progression through the ancient four tone categories more clearly than would Pinyin jiē, jiě, jiè, jié (63).Vedal's book makes an essential contribution to our understanding of Ming intellectual history and to the development of the late imperial and modern-day academic disciplines of philology and linguistics, with implications even for how we situate twentieth- and twenty-first-century discourses of language reform (the subject of a brief epilogue to the book). It is a well-founded refutation of, and important corrective to, the simplicity and selective bias of a narrative that developed around the scholarly lineage of Qing-era Evidential Learning (kaozhengxue 考證學), one that is “widely accepted to the present as a straightforward narrative of the history of linguistic and scholarly innovation in China” (206).In his conclusion, Vedal notes that one purpose of his book is “to present an alternative understanding” of key intellectual changes in China that took place in the eighteenth century as the Ming intellectual legacy was reconceived and reconfigured. “Rather than seeing the eighteenth century as a pivot away from philosophical speculation in pursuit of moral improvement toward philological study of texts and language, we might alternately characterize this dramatic period of intellectual transition as a shift in methods of learning and conceptions of disciplinary boundaries” (217). Vedal's study has achieved its purpose and provided us with valuable insights and frameworks for further exploration of aspects of the intellectual history of China.The book is dense but readable and helpfully populated by numerous illustrations from Ming and Qing scholarly works. It will be of immense value to scholars of late imperial intellectual history and also essential reading for those interested in the traditions of intellectual investigation of language, writing, music, lexicography, grammatology, numerology, and cosmology—traditions that have shaped our modern scholarly engagements with these areas of inquiry.

  PublisherDOI

• Diachronic developments in fricative + nasal sequences

  Journal of Historical Linguistics · 2022-06-21 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract Through comparison of regular sound correspondences in three closely related Tibeto-Burman (TB) languages, Ersu, Lizu, and Duoxu (collectively “ELD”), informed by external comparison with other TB languages and recent phonetic analyses of the production of voiceless nasals, we reconstruct *fricative-nasal sequences in their common ancestor, Proto-ELD. In the development of these historic clusters, two pathways of change can be recognized. Their difference lies in the divergent relative phasing of velic and oral gestures in the original fricative-nasal sequences: (i) fricative weakening (from a tight cluster): *FN &gt; N̥ &gt; h̃ &gt; x (ii) fricative strengthening (from a loose cluster): *F-n &gt; *F-t &gt; t &gt; k or *F‑n &gt; s The different reflexes observed in Ersu, Lizu, and Duoxu represent different points along these two developmental pathways. These reconstructions and pathways of development have implications for our understanding of both universal (phonetic) and language-specific aspects of change in fricative-nasal sequences. The first pathway makes it possible to explore the process of nasal devoicing beyond voiceless nasals so as to enrich our understanding of nasal devoicing in natural languages. The co-existence of two opposite pathways of change, on the other hand, provides insights into the morphological and syllabic structure of words with contiguous fricative-nasal sequences in ELD languages at different points in time – insights that may be valuable in examining the history of other languages and language families beyond the ELD cluster.

  PublisherDOI

• Historical Phonology of Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese. By Nathan W. Hill

  Journal of the American Oriental Society · 2021-08-27

  article1st authorCorresponding

  &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; The Historical Phonology of Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese. By Nathan W. Hill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 373. $110.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

  PublisherDOI

• A Phonological History of Chinese by Zhongwei Shen

  Journal of Chinese linguistics · 2021-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Reviewed by: A Phonological History of Chinese by Zhongwei Shen Zev Handel (bio) A Phonological History of Chinese. By Zhongwei Shen. Cambridge, New York, Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2020. A Phonological History of Chinese is an important and welcome contribution, which attempts to fill a glaring gap in English-language scholarship on Chinese language history. It is intended for “both the general phonologist and specialist of Chinese studies, as well as both beginners and experts” (p. xxxiv). The book is divided into six parts. The first presents the complex and daunting set of concepts and terminology that arise from the peculiar history of phonological analysis of Chinese. Mastering this knowledge is essential to an understanding of key source materials and the secondary scholarship derived from them. The remaining five parts correlate with the traditional phonological periodization of Chinese phonology: Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, the transitional period from Middle Chinese to Mandarin, Old Mandarin, and Modern Mandarin. This way of structuring the book implies a conservative—what some would call “Karlgrenian”—understanding of Chinese language history, as a series of northern standards proceeding in a straight line of direct inheritance from the Western Zhou dynasty down to the modern Beijing-based standard Chinese of the PRC. But the author ends up presenting a far more nuanced and valuable understanding of Chinese language history, one that emerges with increasing clarity through the later chapters. [End Page 568] The author, Zhongwei Shen, begins the introductory chapter by stating flatly: “The study of the phonological history of Chinese is in essence a study of a history of phonological standards.” (p.3). As a matter of disciplinary practice this is a fair description of much work in historical Chinese phonology by 20th-century linguists, but as an assertion of fact it is incorrect. So much so that it is contradicted by Shen’s very next sentence: “Historically, the Chinese language is a set of not just variants in time but variants in space as well.” The third sentence of the introduction clarifies that the opening sentence presents an authorial choice, not an immutable truth: “the purpose of this book is not to cover all the available historical variants in time and space, but to focus on the phonological standards of major historical periods.” What Shen’s book covers, then, is but one possible phonological history of Chinese, limited in perspective. It can be taken as an implicit rejection of the call made by Jerry Norman and W. South Coblin in 1995 for a new approach to Chinese historical linguistics that shifts focus away from artificially elaborated literary standards encoded in dictionaries of character readings and onto “the comparative and historical study of human speech in China” (Norman and Coblin 1995, 576). Ironically, however, Shen’s initial characterization of his own book proves to be overly reductive. The second half of the work, which deals with northern varieties of Chinese from the Song Dynasty to the present (i.e., the last 1,000 years or so), ranges far beyond descriptions of “phonological standards” to provide a detailed and fascinating summary of what textual sources can tell us about varieties of Chinese language spoken across space and time. And it is precisely this second half of the book where Shen makes the greatest contribution to Chinese historical phonological studies, and which makes this book so valuable to the linguist or China specialist with an interest in this subject matter. The first three parts of the book are of lesser significance. The first part, “The Keys to Traditional Phonology”, introduces the source materials, concepts, and terminology connected to Middle Chinese, the native phonological tradition that grew up around it, and 20th-century scholarship on its reconstruction. This material is the traditional starting point for teaching and research in historical Chinese phonology, and as many university students have learned, it is rough going. The terminology [End Page 569] is daunting, the concepts are esoteric and opaque, and the connections to actual language pronunciations are often tenuous or unclear. I suspect that for the reader who is not already familiar with this subject matter, the dense and abstract presentation will not be easy to follow. This is...

  PublisherDOI

• A Phonological History of Chinese. By Zhongwei Shen. Cambridge, New York, Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

  Journal of Chinese linguistics · 2021-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  1 The Journal of Chinese Linguistics (Preprint)© 2021 by the Journal of Chinese Linguistics. ISSN 0091-3723/ Review of A Phonological History of Chinese. Reviewed by Zev Handel. All rights reserved. REVIEW A Phonological History of Chinese. By Zhongwei Shen. Cambridge, New York, Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Reviewed by Zev Handel University of Washington, Seattle A Phonological History of Chinese is an important and welcome contribution, which attempts to fill a glaring gap in English-language scholarship on Chinese language history. It is intended for “both the general phonologist and specialist of Chinese studies, as well as both beginners and experts” (p. xxxiv). The book is divided into six parts. The first presents the complex and daunting set of concepts and terminology that arise from the peculiar history of phonological analysis of Chinese. Mastering this knowledge is essential to an understanding of key source materials and the secondary scholarship derived from them. The remaining five parts correlate with the traditional phonological periodization of Chinese phonology: Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, the transitional period from Middle Chinese to Mandarin, Old Mandarin, and Modern Mandarin. This way of structuring the book implies a conservative—what some would call “Karlgrenian”—understanding of Chinese language history, as a series of northern standards proceeding in a straight line of direct inheritance from the Western Zhou dynasty down to the modern Beijing-based standard Chinese of the PRC. But the author ends up presenting a far more nuanced and valuable understanding of Chinese language history, one that emerges with increasing clarity through the later chapters. Zev Handel [zhandel@uw.edu]; Department of Asian Languages and Literature, Box 353521, University of Washington, Seattle WA 98195-3521 USA; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0360792X 2 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS (PREPRINT) The author, Zhongwei Shen, begins the introductory chapter by stating flatly: “The study of the phonological history of Chinese is in essence a study of a history of phonological standards.” (p.3). As a matter of disciplinary practice this is a fair description of much work in historical Chinese phonology by 20th -century linguists, but as an assertion of fact it is incorrect. So much so that it is contradicted by Shen’s very next sentence: “Historically, the Chinese language is a set of not just variants in time but variants in space as well.” The third sentence of the introduction clarifies that the opening sentence presents an authorial choice, not an immutable truth: “the purpose of this book is not to cover all the available historical variants in time and space, but to focus on the phonological standards of major historical periods.” What Shen’s book covers, then, is but one possible phonological history of Chinese, limited in perspective. It can be taken as an implicit rejection of the call made by Jerry Norman and W. South Coblin in 1995 for a new approach to Chinese historical linguistics that shifts focus away from artificially elaborated literary standards encoded in dictionaries of character readings and onto “the comparative and historical study of human speech in China” (Norman and Coblin 1995, 576). Ironically, however, Shen’s initial characterization of his own book proves to be overly reductive. The second half of the work, which deals with northern varieties of Chinese from the Song Dynasty to the present (i.e., the last 1,000 years or so), ranges far beyond descriptions of “phonological standards” to provide a detailed and fascinating summary of what textual sources can tell us about varieties of Chinese language spoken across space and time. And it is precisely this second half of the book where Shen makes the greatest contribution to Chinese historical phonological studies, and which makes this book so valuable to the linguist or China specialist with an interest in this subject matter. The first three parts of the book are of lesser significance. The first part, “The Keys to Traditional Phonology”, introduces the source materials, concepts, and terminology connected to Middle Chinese, the native phonological tradition that grew up around it, and 20th -century scholarship on its reconstruction. This material is the traditional starting point for teaching and research in historical Chinese phonology, and as many university students have learned, it is...

  PublisherDOI

• CHAPTER 1 GRAPHS

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2020-12-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Mieczysław Jerzy Künstler: The Sinitic Languages: A Contribution to Sinological Linguistics. (Collectanea Serica. New Series.) xiii, 322 pp. London and New York: Routledge, 2019. ISBN 978 0 367 18620 3.

  Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies · 2020-02-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Mieczysław Jerzy Künstler: The Sinitic Languages: A Contribution to Sinological Linguistics. (Collectanea Serica. New Series.) xiii, 322 pp. London and New York: Routledge, 2019. ISBN 978 0 367 18620 3. - Volume 83 Issue 1

  PublisherDOI

• CHAPTER 5 EARLY LEXICONS

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2020-12-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Katia Chirkova

  Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale

  4 shared

• Wolfgang Behr

  3 shared

• Rint Sybesma

  2 shared

• Chaofen Sun

  1 shared

• Richard VanNess Simmons

  1 shared

• James A. Matisoff

  1 shared

• Cheng-Teh James Huang

  1 shared

• Orly Goldwasser

  1 shared

Labs

• Zev Handel LabPI