About
Bill Baxter, Associate Professor of Linguistics and Asian Languages and Cultures, specializes in historical linguistics. His book, A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology (Mouton DeGruyter, 1992), presents a reconstruction of the pronunciation of Old Chinese (the language of the earliest Chinese literary texts). Professor Baxter, along with Laurent Sagart (CNRS, Paris), is revising a book manuscript, Old Chinese: A new reconstruction (under review by Oxford University Press), the product of seven years of collaboration: a linguistic reconstruction of the Chinese language of about 1000 BCE, drawing upon previously underutilized evidence, including recent research in modern Chinese dialects, early Chinese loanwords in other languages, and documents recently recovered from archeological sites. His recent publications deal with the history of Chinese and its dialects, linguistic approaches to early Chinese literature, and the methodology of historical linguistics.
Professor Baxter’s current and recent teaching includes Deciphering Ancient Languages, Language in Science and Nature, Asian Travelers, Languages of Asia, Language and History, How Different is Chinese?, and Sinological Tools and Methods. He has advised several Ph.D. candidates, including Uffe Bergeton (Asian Languages and Cultures/ALC)), “Pre-Qin Conceptualizations of Culture and Identity in Pre-Qin Terms” (in progress), and Myeong-seok Kim (ALC), “An Inquiry into the Development of the Ethical Theory of Emotions in the Analects and the Mencius” (2008). He has also worked with students pursuing M.A. degrees, such as Caleb Ford (Center for Chinese Studies), “Repatriated Patriots: Huáqiáo [overseas Chinese] and the Construction of a New China” (in progress). He has also advised students in undergraduate theses, including Jackson Woods (ALC), “Foreign Views and Interpretations of the 1911 Chinese Revolution” (2008), and Jill Peck (Linguistics), “Reconstruction of Proto-Waxiang [a group of dialects in Húnán province]” (in progress).
Selected Publications
- 1992 A handbook of Old Chinese phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- 1997 Word formation in Old Chinese (with Laurent Sagart). In Jerome Packard, ed., New approaches to Chinese word formation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- 1998 Situating the language of the Lao-tzu: The probable date of the Tao-te-ching. In Livia Kohn and Michael LaFargue, eds., Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching. Albany: State University Press of New York.
- 2000 Did Proto-Mandarin exist? Journal of Chinese Linguistics.
- 2000 Beyond lumping and splitting: probabilistic issues in historical linguistics (with Alexis Manaster Ramer). In Colin Renfrew, April McMahon & Larry Task, eds., Time depth in historical linguistics. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
- 2006 Mandarin dialect phylogeny. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale.
- 2009 Reconstructing Old Chinese uvulars in the Baxter-Sagart system (Version 0.99) (with Laurent Sagart). Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale.
- 2010 [The prefixes *N- and *m- in Old Chinese] (with Laurent Sagart). [Journal of Sino-Tibetan Languages, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences].
- 2012 Reconstructing the *s- prefix in Old Chinese (with Laurent Sagart). Language and Linguistics.
