The Date of the Merger of *-ps and *-ts in Old Chinese

Linguists generally believe the Old Chinese sound change *-ps > *-ts occurred early enough to affect rhyming in the Book of Odes during the Zhou Dynasty. However, some scholars argue rhyme patterns in the Odes alone do not confirm this change occurred in the Western Zhou, suggesting it occurred by the Warring States (Zhāng 2021[2019b]). This paper refutes Zhāng’s hypothesis and presents evidence from excavated Shang and Western Zhou documents, supporting an earlier date for this change. This evidence includes the words 介 1 MC keajH ‘armor’, 介 2 MC keajH ‘single’, and the xiéshēng series built on 眔.