  The hierarchy of classical Chinese poetry has been broadly acknowledged by a
number of studies in Chinese literature. However, quantitative investigations
about the evolutionary linkages of classical Chinese poetry are limited. The
primary goal of this study is to provide quantitative evidence of the
evolutionary linkages, with emphasis on character usage, among different period
genres of classical Chinese poetry. Specifically, various statistical analyses
are performed to find and compare the patterns of character usage in the poems
of nine period genres, including shi jing, chu ci, Han shi , Jin shi, Tang shi,
Song shi, Yuan shi, Ming shi, and Qing shi. The result of analysis indicates
that each of nine period genres has unique patterns of character usage, with
some Chinese characters that are preferably used in the poems of a particular
period genre. The analysis on the general pattern of character preference
implies a decreasing trend in the use of Chinese characters that rarely occur
in modern Chinese literature along the timeline of dynastic types of classical
Chinese poetry. The phylogenetic analysis based on the distance matrix suggests
that the evolutionary linkages of different types of classical Chinese poetry
are congruent with their chronological order, suggesting that character
frequencies contain phylogenetic information that is useful for inferring
evolutionary linkages among various types of classical Chinese poetry. The
estimated phylogenetic tree identifies four groups (shi jing, chu ci), (Han
shi, Jin shi), (Tang shi, Song shi, Yuan shi), and (Ming shi, Qing shi). The
statistical analyses conducted in this study can be generalized to analyze the
data sets of general Chinese literature. Such analyses can provide quantitative
insights about the evolutionary linkages of general Chinese literature.
