The problems about consonant clusters in old Chinese are hotissues in modern linguistics and traditional phonology in China.Joseph Edkins advanced some opinions about the consonantclusters of old Chinese for the first times. And BernhardKarlgren also pointed out that there are some relationshipsbetween concord-characters in modern Chinese and consonantclusters in old Chinese. After that, Lin, Yu-tang et al. havestudied on the problems about consonant clusters.
So far, there are many studies about the forms of consonantclusters in the period of old Chinese and the rules of changesfrom old Chinese to middle Chinese, but there are shortcomingson the researches about internal constraints of changes.Therefore, this article will explain two problems below throughoptimality theory. First, what was the forms of consonant clusters in old Chinese? Second, what were the reasons for the loss ofconsonant clusters in middle Chinese?
As a result, old Chinese had consonant clusters and their formwas “C+L”, because Max-IO dominated *Complex and Sonorityhad higher hierarchy than Ident-IO(F). But in the period ofmiddle Chinese, there was a reverse of hierarchy betweenMAX-IO and *Complex, and there were successive hierarchicalraise from right to left among Ident-IO(F), *Onset-VO, Ph andOnset-Son, so that ‘voiceless obstruents(or nasal) + liquid’ and‘voiced obstruents + liquid’ in old Chinese have changed into‘voiceless obstruents(or nasal)’ and ‘liquid’ respectively in middleChinese.