In a recent post (here), I showed that the STEDT etymon #601 ‘PTB *m/s-tuːk SPIT’ contains two distinct etyma, one of which has no Chinese counterpart, and the other is cognate with the Chinese word 吐 thuX/H < *tʰˤaʔ, *tʰˤaʔ-s ‘to spit’. That Chinese word is not listed in the STEDT as a cognate of etymon #601. It does occur in the STEDT, but under another etymon, #603, given as ‘PTB *m/s-twa SPIT‘. This is how the Chinese word is presented at the bottom of the page for #603 (accessed today, July 10, 2019):
Chinese comparandum
吐 OC *t’wɑ̂, GSR #31m ‘spit’; Coblin 86: OC *thuarh; B & S 2011: *tʰˁaʔ; Mand. tǔ.
吐 OC *t’wɑ̂, GSR #31m ‘vomit’; B & S 2011: *tʰˁaʔ‑s; Mand. tù.
There is much confusion here. The Chinese character 吐 does indeed have two Middle Chinese readings, thuX and thuH (Rising tone and Departing tone, respectively), and the corresponding OC reconstructions in the Baxter-Sagart 2011 system are unquestionably *tʰˁaʔ and *tʰˁaʔ‑s; but the mentions OC *t’wɑ̂, GSR #31m ‘spit’/‘vomit’; Coblin 86: OC *thuarh relate to a different word: 唾 *tʰˤoj-s > thwaH > tuò ‘to spit’. While 吐 refers to the action of spitting out anything that is in one’s mouth, 唾 is used mostly of liquids, such as saliva, wine or blood.
Of the non-Sinitic forms listed by the STEDT under etymon #603, Written Tibetan tho (in the noun tho-le ‘spit’) is evidently a cognate of 唾 *tʰˤoj-s, as first pointed out by Coblin in 1986, and not of 吐 *tʰˤaʔ, *tʰˤaʔ-s. Tibetan loses final -j; moreover, a Tibetan cognate of 吐 would end in -g. Whether the Idu Luoba form a³¹ tiu⁵⁵ kʰɹi⁵⁵ ‘phlegm’, listed by the STEDT under #603, has any connection to 唾 or Tibetan tho is anybody’s guess. In the TGTM group, Thakali has two words glossed as ‘saliva’: tho and thuj. Only one of these—the former— is a possible cognate of 唾 , Tibetan tho; not both as the STEDT implies.
The correct alignment of STEDT etyma and Chinese words for ‘spit’ is as follows:
STEDT# | STEDT etymon | Chinese cognate according to STEDT | Chinese cognate |
601 (I) | PTB *m/s-tu:k SPIT | none | none |
601 (II) | PTB *m/s-tu:k SPIT | none | 吐 *tʰˤaʔ, *tʰˤaʔ-s |
603 | PTB *m/s-twa SPIT | 吐, 唾 | 唾 *tʰˤoj-s |
Recall that the vowel in #601 (II) was shown to be *a (here).
References
Coblin, S. (1986) A Sinologist’s handlist of Sino-Tibetan Lexical Comparisons. Monumenta Serica Monograph Series XVIII (Roman Malek, ed.). Nettetal: Steyler Verlag.