Lo Ch'ang-p'ei (9 August 1899-13 December 1958), scholar and educator who was known for his researches on historical phonology and Chinese dialects. After 1949 he was director of the institute of linguistics and philology of the Academy of Sciences at Peking. Born in Peking, Lo Ch'ang-p'ei came from a family of Manchurian origin. The family name had been Sa-k'o-ta, and Lo's native place was Ning-ku-t'a, Kirin. He began his formal education in a modernized primary school, where one of his schoolmates was Shu Ch'ingch'un (q.v.), better known by his pen name, Lao She. The two became lifelong friends. According to Lao She, who later caricatured Lo in his short story "Wai-mao-erh," Lo was a bright, diligent, affable, but obstinate child. After Lo's father died, the family's financial situation became straitened. Thus, at the age of 17, Lo became a stenographer in the Senate. However, he was able to enroll at Peking University to study Chinese literature. Lo's Senate job gave him the opportunity to hear and transcribe a number of dialects and heightened his interest in linguistics.

In 1919 Lo Ch'ang-p'ei was graduated from Peking University. Because he did not have the money to go abroad to study and because Peking University's philosophy department included such scholars and visiting scholars as Hu Shih, Liang Shu-ming, Chiang Monlin, John Dewey, and Bertrand Russell, Lo remained there. Among his fellow students in the department of philosophy were Chu Tzu-ch'ing and Ku Chieh-kang (qq.v.), both of whom became prominent scholars.

Lo Ch'ang-p'ei began his teaching career in the spring of 1921. While continuing his studies at Peking University, he took a parttime position teaching Chinese at the First Peking Municipal Middle School. That autumn, he went to Tientsin to teach full time at the Nankai Aliddle School. He returned to Peking in 1922 to become principal of the First Municipal Middle School. In 1923, at the age of 24, he was appointed to the faculty of Northwest University in Sian as professor of Chinese phonology. In 1928 he published his first scholarly articles, "Ch^ieh-jUn hsvi chiao-shih" [explication of the preface to Ch'ieh-yun, a rhyme book of c.600 A.D.], ''Ch'ieh-yim t'an-i" [investigations in Ch'ieh-yun], and "Shuang-sheng tieh-yün shuo" [what is meant by "homorganic initials and reduplicated finals"]. In these articles he discussed the traditional Chinese spelling and rhyming systems.

His research in Chinese historical phonology led Lo Ch'ang-p'ei to develop an interest in Chinese dialects.- In 1926, while teaching at Amoy University, he started studying the Amoy dialect. His York was temporarily interrupted in 1927, when he went to teach at the Chung-shan University in Canton. In 1929 he joined the newly established Academia Sinica and worked under Y. R. Chao (Chao Yuen-ren, q.v.), who was in charge of the philology section. Inspired by Chao's knowledge, especially in the field of phonetics, Lo took up his study of the Amoy dialect again and published an important monograph entitled Hsia-men yin-hsi [the sound system of the Amoy dialect] in 1931. This monograph became the standard work on the Amoy dialect, which is one of the most important Chinese dialect groups; knowledge of it is of great value to the study of sounds in archaic Chinese. In the autumn of 1 934 Lo Ch'ang-p'ei became a professor of Chinese literature at Peking University, succeeding Liu Fu (q.v.), who had died in July of that year. Lo continued to work at the Academia Sinica and participated in the investigation of Chinese dialects under the direction of Chao Yuen-ren. He also collaborated with Chao and Li Fang-kuei (q.v.) in translating Bernhard Karlgren's Etudes sur la phonologie Chinoise into Chinese under the title Chung-kuo yin-yün hsueh yen-chiu. Meanwhile, he published such articles and books on Chinese historical phonology as T'ang wu-tai hsi-pei fang-yin [dialects in the northwest during T'ang and Five Dynasty times] of 1933, Kuo-yin tzu-mu yen-chin shih [history of the evolution of the national phonetic symbols] of 1934, and Shihyun hui-pien [traditional phonology] of 1935, which was compiled by Lo and Liu Fu. In the spring of 1937 Lo Ch'ang-p'ei left Peiping for Kunming. During the Sino- Japanese war, he was chairman of the Chinese department at Hsi-nan lien-ho ta-hsueh (National Southwest Associated University). He also continued to work for the Academia Sinica. Lo later recalled that in the beginning he and his colleagues were not enthusiastic about doing a systematic study of the dialects spoken in southwest China because they found the local languages to be similar to the mandarin. Later, he realized that investigation of Chinese dialects should do more than compare ancient and modern sounds or concentrate on the special vocabulary of a certain dialect. It was more important to draw an over-all map of Chinese dialects and to pinpoint significant isoglosses. Thus, he suggested that the institute of history and philology of the Academia Sinica should avail itself of the opportunity to make a general investigation of dialects throughout Yunnan province. His suggestion was accepted, and the work was carried out by the Academia Sinica during the war years. Among the dialects Lo investigated were those of Kun-ming, Lien-shan, Pai-i, Fu-kung, Li-su, Li-chiang, Kung-shan, Ch'ai-shan, Lang-shan, Lan-p'ing, La-ma, Tali, Pin-ch'uan, Teng-ch'uan, Erh-yuan, Yunlung, and Lu-shui. Though primarily a student of phonetics, Lo Ch'ang-p'ei did not limit himself to that field. During the war years, he developed an interest in the sociological and historical aspects of languages and became increasingly attracted to semantics. He tended to interpret cultural phenomena from a linguistic viewpoint. For instance, by examining the kinship terminology of the Tibetan-Burman speaking tribes he •attempted to establish a historical relationship between them and the tribal peoples in southwest China. In his later work, he continued this tendency of using sociological and anthropological insights in the study of language. In this vein he completed his Chung-kuo jen yü Chung-kuo wenhua [the Chinese people and Chinese culture]. From 1945 to 1948 Lo Ch'ang-p'ei was in the United States as a visiting professor of Chinese phonetics and literature, first at Pomona College and then at Yale University. During this period, he published several articles and read papers in English. These included "Indian Influence on the Study of Chinese Phonology," which was published in Sino-Indian Studies in March 1945; "A Preliminary Study on the Trung Language of Kung-shan," which appeared in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies in March 1945; "Phonetic Substitution in Chinese Loanwords from Indie," read before the American Oriental Society in April 1947; "The Prefix n- in the Kachin Language," read before the American Linguistic Society in August 1947 ; and "Evidence on Amending Bernhard Karlgren's Ancient Chinese j- to rj-," read before the American Oriental Society in March 1948. In the autumn of 1948 Lo Ch'ang-p'ei returned to Peiping to serve as a professor and as dean of the graduate school of humanities of Peking University. When the Communists besieged the city, he shut himself in his home and devoted his time to completing the manuscript of YU-yenyü wen-hua [language and culture], which he had begun to write in 1943. Although it was not published until 1950, this work, except for the conclusion, was completed before the Communist takeover. YU-yen yü wen-hua may be regarded as Lo's final major work in two senses. First, it is his last piece of non-political scholarly writing. Second, it synthesized his interests in many fields: phonology, philology, semasiology, literature, anthropology, and sociology. In this work, the influence of such prominent Western anthropologists and linguists as Edward Sapir, L. R. Palmer, E. B. Tylor, and Bronislaw Malinowski on Lo's conception of language can be seen clearly. Using the ideas of his Western preceptors, Lo stressed the fact that language and culture are inseparable and attempted to demonstrate the relationship between the two by presenting the results of his own studies. He suggested that linguistic studies in China should imitate Western scholarship in studying the language in the general context of its cultural background and that understanding of the cultural past could be enhanced by investigating the origin, infusion, and transformation of the language. Lo Ch'ang-p'ei's writings before 1949 show no evidence of inclination toward any socialist doctrine. As a matter of fact, he was a member of the Kuomintang. He returned to Peiping in 1948, he later said, not because he was interested in the prospect of a new government, but because he wanted to rejoin his family and his manuscripts. His initial lack of enthusiasm for the Communist regime also was shown by the fact that, during the siege of Peiping in 1949, he remained secluded and devoted himself to the writing of Yu-yen yü wen-hua. In late 1949, however, Lo's attitudes began to change. He participated in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He applied for membership in the Chinese Communist party, but was rejected in 1950. Meanwhile, he engaged in a vigorous campaign of selfcriticism and ardent advocacy of the Communist party line. These efforts brought him a series of appointments: director of the institute of linguistics and philology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Peking (1950), member of the Nationalities Affairs Commission (1951 ), member of the Committee for Reforming the Written Chinese Language (1954), and representative to the National People's Congress (1954). From July 1952 to March 1955 he also served as chief editor of the monthly journal Chung-kuo yü-wen [Chinese language], and from 1955 until his death he served on its editorial board. Although he was plagued by high blood pressure, Lo continued to study and write almost until the day of his death. In 1957 he and Wang Chün published a major work, P'u-t'ungyü-yen-hsueh kang-yao [outline of general linguistics]. Lo died on 13 December 1958. Several of his works were published posthumously. These include the first volume of Han Wei Xan-pei-ch'ao yün-pu yen-pien yen-chin [the evolution of rhyme categories in the Han, Wei, and Nan-pei periods], written in collaboration with Chou Tsu-mo and published in 1958; Pa-ssu-pa-tzu yü YUan-tai Han-yü [the hPags-pa script and the Chinese language of the Yüan period], published in 1959 and written with the help of Ts'ai Mei-piao; and Han-yü yin-yün tao-lun [guide to Chinese phonology] of 1962. A selection of Lo's writings on linguistics was published in 1963 under the title Lo Ch'ang-p'ei yü-yen-hsUeh lun-wen hsUan-chi. Eulogies of Lo as a great Communist and a great linguist, as well as a provisional bibliography of his writings, appeared shortly after his demise in Chung-kuo yü-wen.