The present work is divided into two parts. Part I is devoted to the reconstruction of the phonology of Common Shē, the ancestral form of the closely related Sinitic dialects spoken by the Shē ethnic minority of China. The approach applied is the classical comparative method, in which modern data from seventeen modern dialects are subjected to comparative reconstructive analysis. Data from additional Shē varieties are also adduced as needed. The end product of these procedures is a hypothetical phonological system, which for the sake of brevity we call Common Shē, though this term should more precisely encompass not only phonology but also syntax and lexicon.

As outlined elsewhere (Coblin 2018; 2019), we hold that Common Shē and Common Neo-Hakka, the proto-language from which the modern Neo-Hakka dialects derive, are closely related sister languages descended from a common speech form which in the present work we call Common Hakka-Shē. Part II below is accordingly devoted to the comparison of Common Shē and Common Neo-Hakka, so as to arrive at a higher order Common Hakka-Shē reconstructed system. This comparative exercise takes as its basis the Common Shē forms reconstructed in Part I and the Common Neo-Hakka ones presented in our earlier study of comparative Hakka (Coblin 2019). The final chapter of Part II summarizes and assesses our findings regarding Common Hakka-Shē and concludes with suggestions for the future study of even earlier stages in the history of early south central spoken Chinese.

At the end of the work, Appendix I gives the entire corpus of 647 Shē and Neo-Hakka comparative syllable sets used in the basic reconstruction of Common Hakka-Shē. Following this, in Appendix II, is a corpus of 658 comparative Shē lexical sets. Lexical material of this sort, which comprises both monosyllabic and polysyllabic words, is collected in a number of published Shē dialect surveys and sometimes studied in more or less detail there, but to our knowledge these data have not so far been treated from the standpoint of comparative reconstruction. We take this step here, first because the Shē dialects are relatively less well-known among students of Sinitic languages and, secondly, in order to present an experimental model for how a full comparative Shē etymological dictionary might someday be constructed. The data are arranged topically, and the entire Appendix is followed by an English index. Some data from this appendix are also adduced in the Hakka-Shē reconstructive work in Part II. Finally, a brief general index to pertinent topics in the work as a whole concludes the monograph.