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Category: Billets

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A proto-Kra-Dai preinitial

[Added July 12, 2024. This post is in error.  The morpheme in words beginning in Baoding tsɯ²-, Heitu kɯ2– , Tongshi ʔɯ3  is a general nominal classifier, glossed as ‘一(一个)’ in Ouyang and Zheng (1983:510). The apparent correspondence with Buyang qa- must be coincidental. Oops !]

The three principal subgroups of Kra-Dai are Kra (a.k.a Ge-Yang), Hlai (Hainan Island) and  Kam-Tai. While many Kra-Dai (or Tai-Kadai) languages are largely monosyllabic, in some languages main syllables are preceded by CV minor syllables (‘preinitials’) which correspond to the initial syllables of Austronesian words, as first noted by Li Jinfang for the Kra language Buyang, where an unusually large number of these forms can be found. A list of these, with their Austronesian cognates, was given in Sagart (2005). Guillaume Jacques (2017) has studied the correspondences of the Buyang (Langjia) preinitial qa0– in the Kam-Tai branch.

A correspondence for Buyang preinitial qa0– has now been observed in Hlai dialects: tsɯ²- in Baoding and kɯ2– in Heitu. Although not shown here, the corresponding words in Tongshi, also a Hlai dialect, have preinitial ʔɯ3. Buyang Langjia data are from Li Jinfang (1999); Hlai data from Ouyang and Zheng (1983). The first three words originate in Austronesian prototypes beginning in *q-.

source

Buyang

Baoding

Heitu

shoulder

PAN qabaRaX

qa⁰ʔba¹¹

tsɯ²va²

kɯ²va²

mortar

PAN qaS1elu

—

tsɯ²rau¹

kɯ²rau³¹

nail

PAN qurip

qa⁰lip¹¹

tsɯ²li:p7

—

grass ash

qa⁰tu¹¹

tsɯ²tau³

kɯ²tou³

back

qa⁰ʔdiŋ²⁴

tsɯ²tsʰuɲ³

kɯ²tsʰun³

neck

qa⁰ʑɔ³¹²

tsɯ²zoŋ³

kɯ²zuŋ³

References

Jacques, Guillaume. 2017. On the status of Buyang presyllables: a response to Professor Ho Dah-an. Journal of Chinese Linguistics vol. 45, no.2 (June 2017): 451-457.

Li Jinfang (1999) Buyang Yu Yanjiu. Beijing: Zhongyang Minzu Daxue.

Ouyang Jueya 歐陽覺亞 and Zheng Yiqing 鄭貽青. 1983. Li Yu Jian zhi 黎語簡誌. Beijing: 北京, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences中国社会科学院.

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劓 ‘cut the nose’— a second example of OC ablaut

In a recent blog I argued that the rare word 皕 ‘two hundred’ , OC *prik, was based on  百 *pˤrak > paek > bǎi ‘hundred’ 0781a, with the vowel and absence of pharyngealization of 二 *ni[j]-s > nyijH > èr ‘two’ 0564a which must once have preceded 百 within a compound 二 百: that is, that one source of vowel ablaut in MC was the spreading of the vowel and, perhaps, pharyngealization specification of the preceding morpheme within a compound. Here is a parallel example.

There are in the meaning ‘cut off’ three word families in OC whose main syllable began in *ŋ and ended in *t, while the vowel alternates between *a, *u and *i. The reconstruction used below is experimental. It differs little from Baxter and Sagart (2014) in its treatment of rhymes, which is what matters here.

root ŋ(ˤ)at ‘to cut off’

孼 *ŋ(r)at > ngjet > niè ‘concubine’s son’ 0289g
櫱 *ŋ(r)at > ngjet > niè ‘(shoots from) tree stump’ 0289j
枿 *ŋˤat > ngat > niè ‘(shoots from) tree stump’ 0268a
𣦵 *ŋˤat > ngat > ‘fragment of bone (SW)’ 0269a
乂 *ŋat-s > ngjojH > yì ‘mow, cut (v.)’ 0347a
艾 *(mə)-ŋat-s > ngjojH > yì ‘end, to end (K)’ 0347c
𣡌 *ŋˤat > ngat > niè ‘(shoots from) tree stump’ 0252j
歺 *ŋˤat > ngat > è ‘fragment of bone’ 0269b
歹 *ŋˤat > ngat > è ‘bones, flesh removed’ 0269c
刈 *ŋat-s > ngjojH > yì ‘mow, cut’ 0347b
艾 *ŋat-s > ngjojH > yì ‘mow, cut’ 0347c
孽 *ŋ(r)at > ngjet > niè ‘concubine’s son’ 0289g

root ŋˤut ‘cut off; wobbly, unsafe’

㕟 *-k-ŋˤ<r>[u][t]-s > khweajH > kuì ‘cut off (Qie Yun, no text)’ 0534a
髡 *-k-ŋˤut-n > khwon > kūn ‘shave the head’ 0423a
兀 *[ŋ]ˤut > ngwot > wù ‘amputate the feet’ 0487a
扤 *[ŋ]ˤut > ngwot > wù ‘shake, move; shaken, unsafe, endangered (K)’ 0487b
杌 *[ŋ]ˤut > ngwot > wù ‘tree trunk without branches ’ 0487c
阢 *[ŋ]ˤut > ngwot > wù ‘unsafe’ 0487d
卼 *[ŋ]ˤut > ngwot > wù ‘unsafe’ 0487e

root ŋit ‘cut off the nose’

㓷 *ŋ<r>[e]t-s > ngjejH > yì ‘cut off the nose’ 0285e
劓 *[ŋ]<r>i[t]-s > ngijH > yì ‘cut off the nose’ 0537a

The last root is of special interest. 㓷 is a phonetic compound appearing in Shuihudi texts (He Linyi 2:910) and included in the Shuo Wen, but early paleographical and textual attestations are few. While 劓 occurs in the Shang inscriptions and is widely attested textually: so I take 劓 to be the basic form in this root, to which I assign *i. The alternation between *e and *i is unexplained.

The act of cutting off can apply to a large variety of objects: I assume that the alternation between *a, *u and *i here somehow reflects that fact.

Let us suppose that 劓 *[ŋ]<r>i[t]-s  ‘cut off the nose’ continues an older compound whose first member was 鼻 *mV-bi[t]-s > bjijH > bí ‘nose’ 0521c, and the second, either ŋ(ˤ)at or ŋˤut ‘cut off’. Rather than ‘cut the nose’, this would have meant something like ‘nose-cutting’. If, in addition to <r>-infixation and s-suffixation,  we suppose the same process as for 百 *pˤrak and 皕 *prik, here with 鼻 *mV-bi[t]-s ‘nose’ providing the vowel and pharyngealization specification, we obtain 劓 *[ŋ]<r>i[t]-s. This further supports my hypothesis that one source of OC vowel ablaut is the spread within a compound, of the first morpheme’s  vowel and pharyngealization specification, onto the second.

References

Baxter, William H. and Laurent Sagart. 2014. Old Chinese: a new reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hé, Línyí 何琳儀. 1998. Zhànguó gǔwén zìdiǎn: Zhànguó wénzì shēngxì 戰國古文字典：戰國文字聲系 [Dictionary of the Warring States script: its system of phonetics]. 2 vols. Běijīng 北京: Zhōnghuá 中華.

 

 

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zhēng yuè 正月 ‘first month’ and the stop/nasal alternation in Old Chinese codas.

One of the sources of the alternation between stop and nasal codas—the ‘陽入對轉’ of  traditional Chinese phonology—is assimilation of a final stop to the nasal initial of the following word. An example is the expression zhēng yuè 正月 ‘first month of the lunar year’. The earliest secure occurrence of 正月 I am aware of, referring to the first month, is in the Luan Shu Fou 䜌書缶, a Zhou bronze inscription:「正月季春元日」’on the first day of the first month’. Palaeographers would probably know earlier ones. The character 正 normally writes *teŋ-s > tsyeng > zhèng ‘correct (adj., v.)’. How did it become used to express the meaning ‘first’  ?

There is in Western Sino-Tibetan (a.k.a. ‘Tibeto-Burman’) a root  for ‘one’ which the STEDT website reconstructs as

#2726 PTB *tyak ⪤ *g-t(y)ik ONE (provisional).

The corresponding Chinese root reconstructs as *tek ‘single, only, only one’. It includes these words: 

隻 *tek > tsyek > zhī ‘single’ 1260c, 

適 *s-tek > syek > shì ‘only’ 0877s, 

啻 *s-tek-s > syeH > shì ‘only’ 0877k.

Root *tek and the root in 正 *teŋ-s differ only in the nasality of the coda. This suggests 正 writes 隻 *tek ‘1’ in a context where its ending had become nasalized. The onset of the following word: 月 *[ŋ]ʷat is likely where nasality comes from. 正月 was an appropriate way of putting *teŋ-ŋʷat < *tek-ŋʷat into readable form.

Reference

Liu Shiru. 1965. Weijin Nanbei chao liangci yanjiu (Studies on Classifiers in Wei-Jin and Nan-Bei dynasties). Beijing: Zhonghua.

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Chinese 秋 ‘autumn’: time of collecting.

The Chinese name of the autumn: 秋 *tsʰiw > tshjuw > qiū ‘autumn; crop’ is relatable to 揫 *[dz]iw > dzjuw > jiū ‘collect, bring together (K)’. We may have to emend [dz]iw to m-tsʰiw (although Mandarin jiū suggests *m-tsiw). There are other cases of alternation between aspirated and non-aspirated stops/affricates in related words.

 

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Chinese 冬 ‘winter’: finish, end of the year’s agricultural cycle.

冬 *tˤuŋ > towng > dōng ‘winter’ is clearly related to 終 *tuŋ > tsyuwng > zhōng ‘end’. An external cognate is Chepang tyuŋh ‘at end’; ‘be weak, exhausted’. Final *-m in various TB languages may be due to assimilation to  a verbal suffix -ma, as in Limbu (Michailovsky) tum-ma (√tums-) ‘to be mature, to be ripe’ (of person, grain or fruit). Forms of this verb with final -m, without the suffix, are Jingpo chatum ‘end, finish’; Proto-Ao a-thəm  ‘end, finish’ (Bruhn 14). Along with tyuŋh ‘at end’, Chepang has doublet ending in -m:  dyumʔ– ‘at ease after completing work’, dyum ‘terminate, reach end’; ‘at end’. This would be the ‘end’ of the year’s agricultural cyle.

Although OC *-um goes to *-uŋ in western China in early OC, we can be sure that *-uŋ in 冬 is not the western reading of an OC *-um word: if it was, it would end up as *-əm in the easter pronunciation ancestral to MC (Ma and Sagart, forthcoming) and we would have MC *-om or *-im. So *-uŋ > *-um in TB is due to a labial suffix.

 

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Chinese 夏 ‘summer’: time of leisure ?

Baxter-Sagart 2014 reconstruct 夏 *[g]ˤraʔ > haeH > xià ‘summer’ (~ *[g]ˤraʔ-s). A homophone is 暇 *[g]ˤra-s > haeH > xià ‘leisure’, with a probable cognate in Written Burmese:  â ‘vacant, free; disengaged’. In the two or three months it takes the millets to grow, set ears and ripen, between early summer and harvesting in late summer or autumn, a period of (relative) calm sets in. It would make sense if that period was called ‘leisure’: that would later become the name of summer.

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Chinese 春 ‘spring’: beginning of the egg-laying season?

The etymology of Chinese 春 ‘spring’ has always intrigued me… Baxter and Sagart (2014) reconstruct 春 *tʰun > tsyhwin > chūn ‘springtime’. The observation that the phonetic in excavated texts is 屯 *dˤun 0427a goes back to Yu Xingwu (Jiang Yubin 2018). Baxter and I might as well have reconstructed *-u[n] because -r is possible: GSR 0427 contains several likely *-r words.

Baxter and Sagart (2014:324) argue that there was in OC a vulgar word for ‘egg’, different from 蛋 and 卵, for which no Chinese character exists: OC *tʰu[n]. It is only attested dialectally:  Cantonese   tʃʰœn A1, Hakka tʃʰun A1.  The word is vulgar because, at least in Cantonese, it also refers to the testicles, but it is also vulgar in the sense of ‘popular’. It was probably not part of the speech of early Chinese literati. For that reason it lacks a character.

Here again, final -n is ambiguous for -r. The word is a homophone of 春 *tʰun > tsyhwin > chūn ‘springtime’. Assuming the ending was *-r rather than *-n, the word exhibits the Sino-Tibetan sound correspondence OC *-ur, Bodo -əy, Lushai -ui, -Proto-Karen *-ej, WT *-u, matching the PTB word for ‘egg’ in Benedict’s Conspectus (1972): *twiy=twəy.

Written Tibetan Boro (Bhat) Lushai (Lorrain) Proto-Karen (Luang.) OC (B-S) PST (tentative)
n.a. dəy ‘egg’ tui ‘egg’ Ɂdej B ‘egg’ tʰu[r] ‘egg’ #tʰur
chu ‘water’ dəy  ‘water, river’ tui ‘water’ thej A ‘water’ s.turʔ ‘river, water’ #s-turʔ
mchu ‘lip’ (gusu)təy ‘lip’ (not cognate) n.a. sə.dur ‘lip’ #m-tur

There is a connection between eggs and the Chinese new year season. In general birds “will nest and lay eggs during the warmer months in the north [of the US, LS]. Typically, the timeline ranges between early spring and late summer” (here). Late winter or spring is the time that hens (at least those presumably old varieties that do not lay eggs year-round) start laying eggs. One US site (here) reports that

“One of our employees who’s at a mid-latitude in the US reports that any girls [hens, LS] who stop laying during the winter begin again regularly–and surprisingly precisely–on February 1 or 2, about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.”

I wonder if the Chinese name of spring is not etymologically “when hens start laying eggs” again after the winter interruption. This would be a time worth recording for early Chinese farmers who raised chickens. The mid-latitude US date for the onset of egg-laying corresponds well with the Chinese New Year: “the first day of Chinese New Year begins on the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February” (Wikipedia: here).

If valid, this etymology implies that hen-keeping was widespread at the time of the ‘egg’ > ‘spring’ semantic shift, although this may be before the Old Chinese period, perhaps well before.

Addendum Feb 22, 2023: Ma Kun 马坤 points out a paper by Jiang Yubin 蔣玉斌 where the palaeography of 春 is described. The oracle bone graph has 屯 phonetic and clumps of growing grass as signific. No graphical chickens or eggs to be seen ! But considering that ‘egg’ in the language of literati was probably 卵, that the presence of the meaning ‘testicle’ made  *tʰu[r] an unpalatable association, and perhaps also that the semantic link between springtime and eggs was not necessarily obvious to upper-class city dwellers, it is not overly surprising that an association with eggs is not apparent in the oldest known form of 春.

Finally, a question: don’t New Year yuanxiao 元宵 (here) look like eggs ?

References

Benedict (1972) Sino-Tibetan: a conspectus. Cambridge University Press.

蔣玉斌 Jiang Yubin  (2018) 释甲骨文金文的“蠢”兼论相关问题。 复旦学报 2018，5：118-138.

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Southern Puluqish (master post) (tentative: Dec. 26, 2022)

(view clickable tree) (to list of innovations, sorted by node)

(Jump up one level to Puluqish master post)

(jump down one level to Southern Austronesian)

As shown to date on the clickable tree, the Puluqish group has three branches: Northern Puluqish, Paiwan and Southern Austronesian. Some evidence, presented here tentatively, suggests that Paiwan and Southern Austronesian subgroup together, forming a Southern Puluqish group against Northern Puluqish.

1. final denasalization of *nj. PAN *nj (*j in standard orthography) was a palatal nasal which evolved to a prenasalized palatal stop [ɲɟ] through palatal glide fortition. This phoneme was poorly integrated in the consonantal system, which had no prenasalized stops. In a majority of languages the situation was regularized through loss of the nasal component via independent denasalizing shifts. In others, the stop component was lost. In the present phylogeny the last language to exhibit a nasal reflex of *nj in the direct line of evolution from PAN to PMP is Amis (Northern Puluqish). No Southern Puluqish language (Paiwan, MP, Kra-Dai) has nasal reflexes of *nj. This pattern suggests that a last denasalizing change of *nj, reflected in Paiwan and in all MP and Kra-Dai languages took place in Proto-Southern Puluqish.

2. Elimination of *baCaqan ’10’ and generalization of  *puluq. Eastern Walu-Siwaish had innovated *baCaqan ’10’.  Then Puluqish innovated *puluq. The two forms coexist in Puyuma, showing they were in competition in Proto-Northern Puluqish.  In southern Puluqish, there is no competition anymore: *baCaqan has been eliminated and *puluq remains the only word for ’10’. 

3. *b[i]lih ‘to buy, sell’. The PAN word for ‘to buy, sell’, reflected in Saisiyat, Pazeh, Thao, Seediq, Kavalan, was *baliw. This was displaced in Paiwan and MP by *b[i]lih ‘buy, sell’: Paiwan veli ‘buy, sell’, Proto-Bisayan *bilíh ‘to buy’ (Zorc < ABVD). In Kra-Dai, Proto-Hlai (Norquest) *ɾi:wʔ C ‘to sell, exchange’ still reflects *baliw, but Proto-Lakkja (Theraphan via ABVD) *wlei C2 ‘to buy’ reflects *b[i]lih. Note Kra-Dai tone C from PAN *-h, the expected development (Sagart 2019).

references

ABVD:  Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database. Online at https://abvd.eva.mpg.de/austronesian/. Accessed December 26, 2022.

ACD:Austronesian Comparative dictionary. Online at https://www.trussel2.com/ACD/introduction.htm. Accessed December 26, 2022.

Sagart, Laurent (2019). A model of the origin of Kra-Dai tones. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale, 2019, 48 (1), pp.1-29. ⟨10.1163/19606028-04801004⟩

Theraphan L.-Thongkum (1992) A preliminary reconstruction of Proto-Lakkja (Cha Shan Yao). Mon-Khmer Studies 20: 57-89.

Zorc, David Paul. The Bisayan Dialects of the Philippines: Subgrouping and Reconstruction. Canberra, Australia: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1977. As cited in the ABVD.

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Politeness shift of PAN 2pl pronoun *-mu to singular

Blust (1977) had argued that a politeness shift changing the PAN 2pl pronoun *-mu to 2sg is a PMP innovation. Sagart (2004) proposed that the Buyang 2sg pronoun ma312 is cognate with PAN *-mu 2pl and PMP *-mu 2sg, thus sharing the PMP plural-to-singular shift. Blust (2014:375) states that u::a is not a recurring correspondence between AN and Buyang, urging caution. The correspondence in fact recurs in the other second-person pronoun, PAN *iSu 2sg, Buyang ɕa54. The Buyang form occurs in the plural form tsum54 ɕa54 2pl, (tsum54 plural marker of personal pronouns).  While the habitual fate of PAN *u is to Buyang u, the fact that it evolves to Buyang a in both  2nd-person pronouns shows we are not dealing with a chance resemblance. The politeness shift to singular of the PAN 2pl pronoun is shared by ̴PMP, Buyang and, to my knowedge, the rest of KD. While the evolution of vowels in 2nd-person pronouns is complex, in KD languages where a 2nd-person pronoun has the phonetic shape /mV/, that pronoun is singular unless accompanied by a plural marker.

References

Blust, Robert A. (1977) The Proto-Austronesian pronouns and Austronesian subgrouping: a preliminary report. University of Hawai’i working papers in Linguistics 9, 2: 1-15.

Sagart, L. (2004) The higher phylogeny of Austronesian and the position of Tai-Kadai. Oceanic Linguistics 43,2: 411-444.