Old Chinese
E175085
Old Chinese is the earliest attested stage of the Chinese language, spoken during the Shang and Zhou dynasties and reconstructed from ancient texts and inscriptions.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Old Chinese canonical | 40 |
| Old Chinese (hypothesized) | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T1524306 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Old Chinese Context triple: [Ma, originatesFrom, Old Chinese]
-
A.
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese is the historical stage of the Chinese language spoken during the Sui, Tang, and early Song dynasties, serving as the ancestor of many modern Chinese varieties and a key reference for historical phonology.
-
B.
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese is the traditional written form of the Chinese language that served for centuries as the literary and scholarly standard across East Asia.
-
C.
Yue Chinese
Yue Chinese is a major branch of the Chinese language family, best known internationally through its prominent variety Cantonese spoken in southern China and among overseas Chinese communities.
-
D.
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a family of related Sinitic languages and dialects, including Mandarin, Cantonese, and others, spoken by over a billion people primarily in China and across Chinese-speaking communities worldwide.
-
E.
Xiang Chinese
Xiang Chinese is a major Sinitic language variety spoken primarily in Hunan province and surrounding regions in south-central China.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Old Chinese Target entity description: Old Chinese is the earliest attested stage of the Chinese language, spoken during the Shang and Zhou dynasties and reconstructed from ancient texts and inscriptions.
-
A.
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese is the historical stage of the Chinese language spoken during the Sui, Tang, and early Song dynasties, serving as the ancestor of many modern Chinese varieties and a key reference for historical phonology.
-
B.
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese is the traditional written form of the Chinese language that served for centuries as the literary and scholarly standard across East Asia.
-
C.
Yue Chinese
Yue Chinese is a major branch of the Chinese language family, best known internationally through its prominent variety Cantonese spoken in southern China and among overseas Chinese communities.
-
D.
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a family of related Sinitic languages and dialects, including Mandarin, Cantonese, and others, spoken by over a billion people primarily in China and across Chinese-speaking communities worldwide.
-
E.
Xiang Chinese
Xiang Chinese is a major Sinitic language variety spoken primarily in Hunan province and surrounding regions in south-central China.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (54)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
Sino-Tibetan language
ⓘ
historical language ⓘ stage of the Chinese language ⓘ |
| coreText |
Analects
ⓘ
Mencius ⓘ Book of Songs ⓘ
surface form:
Shijing
Shujing ⓘ Yijing ⓘ Spring and Autumn Annals ⓘ
surface form:
Zuo Zhuan
|
| followedBy | Middle Chinese ⓘ |
| follows | Proto-Sino-Tibetan ⓘ |
| hasFeature |
abundant word-initial *r- and *l-
ⓘ
complex initial clusters ⓘ derivational morphology ⓘ distinction between voiceless and voiced obstruents ⓘ final nasals *-m *-n *-ŋ ⓘ final stops *-p *-t *-k ⓘ lack of modern Mandarin tones as phonemic pitch ⓘ largely monosyllabic morphemes ⓘ morphological prefixes ⓘ morphological suffixes ⓘ rich consonant inventory ⓘ tonogenesis from consonantal features ⓘ |
| influenced |
Classical Chinese
ⓘ
Middle Chinese ⓘ
surface form:
Middle Chinese phonology
modern Sinitic languages ⓘ |
| reconstructedBy |
Bernhard Karlgren
ⓘ
Laurent Sagart ⓘ Li Fang-Kuei ⓘ Pan Wuyun ⓘ William H. Baxter NERFINISHED ⓘ Zhengzhang Shangfang ⓘ |
| reconstructedFrom |
Middle Chinese
ⓘ
surface form:
Middle Chinese phonology
phonetic loans in inscriptions ⓘ phonetic series in Chinese characters ⓘ rhyming in the Shijing ⓘ transcriptions of foreign names ⓘ |
| spokenIn |
Eastern Zhou
ⓘ
surface form:
Eastern Zhou dynasty
Qin dynasty ⓘ Shang dynasty ⓘ Spring and Autumn period ⓘ Warring States period ⓘ Western Zhou period ⓘ
surface form:
Western Zhou dynasty
early Han dynasty ⓘ |
| studiedInField |
Chinese philology
ⓘ
comparative Sino-Tibetan linguistics ⓘ historical linguistics ⓘ |
| subclassOf | Chinese language ⓘ |
| timePeriod | approximately 13th century BCE to 3rd century BCE ⓘ |
| usedIn |
Warring States bamboo manuscripts
ⓘ
bronze inscriptions ⓘ early transmitted classical texts ⓘ oracle bone inscriptions ⓘ |
| writingSystem | Chinese characters ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Old Chinese Description of subject: Old Chinese is the earliest attested stage of the Chinese language, spoken during the Shang and Zhou dynasties and reconstructed from ancient texts and inscriptions.
Referenced by (41)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
subject surface form:
State of Zhao
subject surface form:
State of Yan
this entity surface form:
Old Chinese (hypothesized)
subject surface form:
State of Qin
subject surface form:
State of Chen