Old Chinese: A new reconstruction  Author(s): William Baxter,
Laurent Sagart   This book introduces a new linguistic
reconstruction of the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of Old
Chinese, the first Sino-Tibetan language to be reduced to
writing. Old Chinese is the language of the earliest Chinese
classical texts (1st millennium BCE) and the ancestor of later
varieties of Chinese, including all modern Chinese dialects.
William Baxter and Laurent Sagart's new reconstruction of Old
Chinese moves beyond earlier reconstructions by taking into
account important new evidence that has recently become
available: better documentation of Chinese dialects that
preserve archaic features, such as the Min and Waxiang dialects;
better documentation of languages with very early loanwords from
Chinese, such as the Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai and Vietnamese
languages; and a flood of Chinese manuscripts from the first
millennium BCE, excavated or discovered in the last several
decades. Baxter and Sagart also incorporate recent advan