Etymology – Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian

13/02/2023

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.

11/02/2023

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.

11/02/202311/02/2023

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.

11/02/202305/03/2023

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.

02/03/202203/03/2022

Counting on fingers in Taivoan and Makatao

Taivoan (T) and Makatao (M) are two southwest Formosan groups generally regarded as dialects of Siraya (S). All have been extinct since the early 20th century, but we possess word lists recorded by early investigators, conveniently collected in Tsuchida, Yamada and Moriguchi (1991), Moriguchi (1998) and Li and Toyoshima (2006). Li (1993) has also recorded a short word list from an elderly speaker who remembered a few words from the previous generation, including most of the numerals. It is generally close to Taivoan T15. The numerals 6-9 are particularly interesting. Interspersed with forms relatable to Siraya proper and/or to other Formosan languages, one finds a set of four intriguing forms, not seen as numerals anywhere else in Taiwan. I cite below from Tsuchida, Yamada and Moriguchi (1991), adding Li’s data:

	‘6’	‘7’	‘8’	‘9’
M7	rangaran	kimsen	karasen	kavaitya
M8	langalan	kimseng	kalasin	kabaitya
T2	rangaran	kunsin
T4		kumsin
T6	lanlan
T13			kalasin	tabatiya
T15	langalang		kalasin	tapatiak
Li (1993)	zaŋizaŋ	kumsin		tapatit

The M7 vocabulary was recorded by Ino Yoshinori in August of the 33rd year of the Meiji era (1900 CE if I am not mistaken) in Marun (老碑庄), a central-eastern Makatao variety. The data are also available through Moriguchi (1998). The word ‘6’ is the key. It is homophonous with ‘bear’ in Marun: both rangaran (for ‘bear’, see Moriguchi 1998:219, #122). Now, compare Li’s version of ‘6’ zaŋizaŋ with the word for ‘large, big’ recorded by Ogawa at 崗仔林 (point 143b, Li and Toyoshima 2006:478): mai-zanga-zang (in Ogawa’s notation; better segmented as ma-izang-a-zang).

I think these are finger names, as used in counting. ‘Six and ‘bear’ both draw their etymology from ‘big’. The bear for obvious reasons, ‘six’ because it refers to the thumb, the big finger.

Imagine a counting system using hand shapes to count to 10 on a single hand: the extended small finger means ‘1’, the extended small finger and ring fingers, ‘2’, and so forth: all the fingers extended means ‘5’. For ‘6’, keep the big finger extended and hold the other four folded. ‘Big’ is then an adequate name for ‘six’. For ‘7’, thumb and index extended; and so forth, until ‘9’, which has all the fingers extended, save the small finger. For ’10’, a different kind of hand sign is needed (for instance, our ‘zero’ sign would work).

So I hypothesize that in the above table the series for ‘7’ is a name of the index, ‘8’ a name of the middle finger, ‘9’ a name of the ring finger. There is no alternative numeral for ’10’ based on finger names because the sign for ’10’ must, as I said, have been of a different kind.

These hypothese are not easily falsifiable, as the names of the different fingers in the Siraya group are not known. Yet considering that these four numerals clearly are not compounds of other Austronesian numerals, and that they do not seem to be part of a non-Austronesian substratum, the hypothesis of a post-PAN transfer from another close lexical system has much to recommend it.

[added the next day]: Sander Adelaar reminds me that Blust’s classification of north Borneo languages (2010) relies on the replacement of PMP *pitu ‘seven’ by *tuzuq ‘to point, indicate’. Blust traced the idea that this is due to finger counting to van der Tuuk and Wilkinson, citing Wilkinson (1959:1242): “After counting all the fingers of the hand (lima) we come back to the thumb (six) and the index-finger (seven)” (emphasis mine, LS). With ‘6’ = thumb and ‘7’ =index, this is very similar to Taivoan-Makatao. It is likely that Taivoan-Makatao finger-counting is ancestral to the system in north Borneo.

references

Blust, R. 2010. The Greater North Borneo Hypothesis. Oceanic Linguistics, 49(1), 44-118.

Moriguchi, Tsukenazu (ed.) 1998. 伊能嘉矩番語調查手冊 [Ino Yoshinori’s field notebook], ed. by : T. Moriguchi, pp. 13-201. Taipei: Southern Materials Center.

Tsuchida Shigeru, Yukihiro Yamada and Tsukenazu Moriguchi (eds.) 1991. Ogawa’s Siraya/Makatao/Taivoan (comparative vocabulary). Linguistic materials of the Formosan sinicized populations I: Siraya and Basai, ed. by Shigeru Tsuchida, Yukihiro Yamada and Tsukenazu Moriguchi, 1-194. Tokyo: The University of Tokyo, Linguistics Department.

Li, P. Jen-Kuei. 1993. New data on three extinct Formosan languages. BIHP 63: 2: 301-322.

Li, Jen-kuei and Masayuki Toyoshima (eds). 2006. comparative vocabulary of Formosan languages and dialects, by Naoyoshi Ogawa. Asian and African lexicon series 49. Institute for Languages and cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

Wilkinson, R.J. 1959. A Malay-English dictionary (Romanised). 2 vols. London: Macmillan.

23/02/202223/02/2022

A new example of PAN *-X

In my 2019 paper proposing a solution to Kra-Dai tonogenesis, I argued that the Kra-Dai tone B originated in two Austronesian endings: *-R, a voiced uvular fricative, already well established as a PAN phoneme; and *-X, a voiceless uvular fricative, not proposed before as a PAN phoneme. I presented 6 examples of PAN *-X with AN and Kra-Dai cognates in section 4.2 of that paper: ‘shoulder’ *qabaRaX, ‘palm of hand’ *dapaX, ‘knee’ *puquX, ‘bran’ *qepaX, ‘grandfather’ *apuX, ‘branch’ *saŋaX. In addition, I gave two examples of *-X without Kra-Dai cognates: ‘thorn’ *duRiX, ‘chaff’ *qeCaX. Later on (in this post), I found additional Formosan evidence for *-X in *qeCaX. Here I want to present the evidence for a new PAN reconstruction ending in *-X.

Next to the well-known PAN word *susu ‘female breast, udder’ there existed a second form, reflected in Amis cohcoh ‘to suck, suckle’, which had a ‘laryngeal’ coda. Kra-Dai cognates are found in Laji (a.k.a. Lachi, Lati), and they are in tone B:

Jinchang Laji (=Flowery Lachi) tɕo44 (< B1) ‘breast, milk’ (Li Yunbing 2000 in ABVD)
Tân Lợi Laji co22 (< B12) ‘breast’ (Kosaka Ruichi 2000 in ABVD).

Tân Lợi does not distinguish B1 and B2:

co22 ‘breast’ (< B1)
(quN0) phu22 ‘shoulder’ (< B2)

While Jinchang does: Jinchang B1 is given as high rising 45 by Ostapirat (2000), mid-high 44 in Li Yunbing (2000), while B2 is mid rising/breathy 24ɦ in Ostapirat (2000): pɦu B2 ‘shoulder’ and low rising 13 in Li Yunbing: quŋ55 pu13 ‘shoulder’ (reconstructed with final *-X in Sagart 2019, cf. above).

Proto-Hlai (Norquest 2007) tɕiɦ B has tone B, like Laji (above), but the front vowel is unexplained. Outside of Norquest’s proto-Hlai, there is no reconstruction of ‘breast’, ‘milk’, or ‘udder’ given for proto-Kra, proto-Tai or proto-Hlai by either of Ostapirat or Pittayaporn.

For the initial correspondence of PAN *s in Lachi, compare *isa ‘one’, Jinchang Laji tɕaŋ44 , Tân Lợi Laji cam22. The nasal ending is an accretion. Bonifacy (1906:277) gives Lati ‘one’ as čam, but simply ča in ‘eleven and ‘twenty-one’ .

These considerations support the new AN reconstruction *suXsuX ‘to suck, suckle, breast, milk’.

References

Bonifacy, Auguste. 1906. Etude sur les coutumes et la langue des La-ti. Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient 1906, pp. 271-278 (here)

Kosaka, Ryuichi [小坂, 隆一]. 2000. A descriptive study of the Lachi language: syntactic description, historical reconstruction and genetic relation. Ph.D. dissertation. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

李云兵 / Li Yunbing. 2000. 拉基语硏究 / Laji yu yan jiu (A Study of Lachi). Beijing: 中央民族大学出版社 / Zhong yang min zu da xue chu ban she.

Norquest, Peter K. 2007. A phonological reconstruction of proto-Hlai. PhD dissertation, U. of Arizona.

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⟩

10/07/2021

Tibetan sgro ‘large feather’—an epilogue

In an earlier post I discussed the Chinese connections of Written Tibetan (WT) སྒྲོ sgro ‘large feather, tail feather, quill’. I argued against the commonly held view that this word is cognate with OC 羽 *[ɢ]ʷ(r)aʔ > hjuX > yǔ ‘feather, wing’, proposing instead a connection to 喬 *[N-k](r)aw ‘lift, elevated, high’, 鷮 *[k](r)aw ‘kind of pheasant’ and to Jingpo ʃă³¹kʒau³³‘to praise, extol’. My idea was to connect the TB word with the elevated tail feathers of pheasants.

A semantically more straightforward Chinese cognate has appeared: 翹 *[g]ew > gjiew > qiáo ‘long tail-feather’ (failure of the initial to palatalize is unexplained). The root in this word consists of a velar or uvular initial, possibly voiced, with rhyme *-ew. OC velars and uvulars go to velars in WT. As to the rhyme, Hill (2012:35) states that “Tibetan cognates have the main vowel -o- whenever Old Chinese has final -w, regardless of the main vowel in Old Chinese”. We should therefore expect the WT vowel to be o. While the MC rhyme excludes medial -r-, Tibetan sgro has -r-: perhaps it is the Sino-Tibetan ‘multiple object’ <r> infix. Alternatively we could suppose that the Chinese form also included medial -r- —that would explain the failure of the initial to palatalize before*e; but an OC *grew should give MC gjew, not gjiew.

The same character writes another word, homophonous with ‘long tail-feather’: 翹 *[g]ew > gjiew > qiáo ‘to raise’, which probably expresses the verbal root out of which ‘long [raised] tail feathers’ derives. Although 翹 in its two meanings has a different vowel from the cognates I had earlier proposed, ablaut between *a and *e is relatively common. I regard the *a and *e forms as ablaut variants in the meaning ‘lift, raise’, applied to the long tail feathers of birds like the pheasant.

This comparison is important because it illustrates a lexical innovation of western ST (‘TB’): once WT sgro is excluded, the numerous western ST cognates of 羽 *[ɢ]ʷ(r)aʔ ‘feather, wing’ all mean ‘bird’, or similar: the meaning ‘feather’ is entirely absent. See STEDT #1603 PTB *w(a/u) BIRD / EGG / WING / FOWL. We are in the presence of a PST word meaning ‘feather, wing’, changed to ‘bird’ via ‘feathered game’ or ‘winged game’ in western ST.

Reference

Hill, Nathan W. (2012) The Six Vowel Hypothesis of Old Chinese in Comparative Context. Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics 6.2: 1-69

14/02/202105/01/2023

Alternating -it-s and -ut-s rhymes in the Shi Jing: a dissimilatory change after all

In a recent post I listed six cases of unexpected rhyming between *-it-s and *-ut-s in the Shi Jing, noting that this always occurred after a labial initial. I treated these examples as resulting from an assimilatory process spreading the labial feature onto the vowel. From the sections of the Shi Jing where these rhyme contacts occur, I deducted that the change had taken place in (north)western China.

Guillaume Jacques immediately commented that the reverse interpretation might be worth considering: a dissimilatory process changing *-ut-s to *-it-s after a labial. In that case, the four labial-initialed *-it-s words (as reconstructed in Baxter and Sagart 2014) 寐 *mi[t]-s, 穟 *s.[ɢ]ʷi[t]-s, 季 *kʷi[t]-s, 悸 *[g]ʷi[t]-s must have their OC rhyme emended to *-ut-s : they evolved to *-it-s through labial dissimilation only in eastern China, while continuing to rhyme as *-ut-s in western and northern regions (Daya, 王風 Wang Feng and 衛風 Wei Feng sections).

In a first response, dated 28-02-2020, I resisted this alternative treatment, missing the point that the change could be dissimilatory and the vowel in the OC reconstructions 寐 *mi[t]-s, 穟 *s.[ɢ]ʷi[t]-s, 季 *kʷi[t]-s, 悸 *[g]ʷi[t]-s, inferred as it was from MC, could be innovative. In a second comment to the same post four months later I finally saw the light, citing Lushai mut ‘to sleep’ as a potential cognate of 寐 ‘sleep’ in support of reconstructing 寐 as *mu[t]-s in OC. In this post I present more evidence for the dissimilatory view. I am indebted to Bill Baxter for bringing some of the relevant facts to my attention. In what follows I will take as established an east-west dialect distinction in Shi Jing times, described in a forthcoming paper by Ma Kun and myself.

If one of the four words: 寐穟季悸 rhyming as *-it-s or *-ut-s depending on the region had a second reading in MC *-t, we would directly know the direction of change: as suffixed *-s is a necessary condition for the change to occur, the s-less form would show the original vowel. That is, unfortunately, not the case. We can still look for a word-family relating *-it-s and *-ut-s words, and also including s-less members.

Let us consider the words for ‘broom’ and ‘comet’. A comet—really— looks like a certain type of broom—a besom—, so it is not surprising that a Chinese word combines the two meanings: 彗 *s-[ɢ]ʷi[t]-s > zwijH > huì ‘broom; comet’. A synonym is 孛 *[b]ˤ[u]t-s > bwojH > bèi ‘comet’. These two words have the rhymes involved in the *-ut-s / *-it-s alternation, and both have labial or labialized initials. 孛 has a second, s-less reading: *[b]ˤ[u]t > bwot > bó ‘comet’. If 彗 and 孛 can be shown to be etymologically related, then the direction of change cannot be from *-it-s to *-ut-s because the s-less reading of 孛 is compatible with *u and *ə, but not with *i.

But are they related ? as reconstructed in Baxter and Sagart (2014), the two words involve very different roots: [ɢ]ʷi[t and [b]ˤ[u]t. Initial [ɢ]ʷ- in the former was reconstructed because the phonetic series of 彗 includes words with MC x- and hj-, both compatible with an uvular, and a voiced obstruent was needed to voice the prefix. But that reconstruction is not inscribed in marble. I am going to argue that one can derive both 彗 and 孛 out of the labial-initial root in 孛.

The two readings of 孛 ‘comet’ are based on a root Pˤ[u]t (where ‘P’ stands for a labial stop, and [u] stands for either *ə or *u). There is an external cognate: Tangkhul phut ‘broom’ (Bhat 1969). VanBik (2009) reconstructs Proto-Kuki-Chin *phut ‘dust, powder’ which is probably related—a broom is an instrument for dusting. Matisoff’s STEDT web site reconstructs PTB *pʷut ⪤ *hwut ASHES / DUST, which includes Written Burmese phut ‘dust’. Schuessler (2007:171) offers 勃 ‘powdery’ (sc soil) as a Chinese cognate (reconstructible as *[b]ˤ[u]t > MC bwot in the Baxter-Sagart system). This word is most likely related to 孛 ‘comet’ via ‘broom’. Baxter and Sagart (2014) reconstruct OC independently from TB, but since OC *ə usually corresponds to a in other ST languages, the u vowel outside of Chinese argues, though not conclusively, for *Pˤut over *Pˤət.

Let us now suppose that 彗 MC zwijH ‘broom; comet’ contains root *Pˤut. We can explain the z- initial as a voiced outcome of the OC *s(ə)- prefix, and the -w- medial as the lenited version of the labial stop in the root. The prefix would have undergone voicing assimilation on the stop—we would need to reconstruct either of OC *bˤ-, *m-pˤ-, or *m-pʰˤ-, which all converge into [b]- before MC, according to the BS system (I am excluding *N-pˤ- and *N-pʰˤ which would only make sense in an intransitive verb). The *[b]- in the OC reconstruction of 孛 in Baxter and Sagart (2014) represents either one of those three onsets. Lenition of the stop would be more natural in an intervocalic environment, suggesting *sə-[b]-. Evolution to zw- would be via *sə-b- > *sə-β- (lenition) > *s-β- (loss of prefix vowel) > *zβ- ( s- > z- voicing assimilation) and finally zw-(defricativization). The appearance of -w- before *u would be what triggered the change from *-ut-s to *-it-s in the east: *zwut-s > *zwit-s: in other words, a dissimilatory change.

There is a problem with pharyngealization. I have assumed that the root common to 孛 and 彗 had a pharyngealized initial *Pˤ. Now OC pharyngealized words normally do not evolve to MC division 3, yet 彗, MC zwijH, is a third-division word. Why is that ? while in general loosely attached preinitials/prefixes (i.e. having the form *Cə) can occur in all MC divisions, *sə- as reconstructed in the Baxter-Sagart system only ever occurs in MC third-division words. There is something in that prefix which is incompatible with root initial pharyngealization, causing it to be lost. I suspect the prefix was [si] rather than [sə] as Baxter and Sagart reconstructed it, and the front vowel prevented coarticulatory anticipation of the pharyngealization gesture in the following consonant.

Let us go back to the proposed role of medial -w- in triggering the change from *-ut-s to *-it-s: this fails to explain the participation of 寐 in the change, as the initial is a plain *m. The price to pay for our analysis is that we need to stipulate a minor change turning OC [mu] into [mʷu] in the eastern pronunciation, before the *-ut-s > *-it-s change took place. But the idea that medial -w- triggered the change does fit in rather well with the absence of MC labial stop initials among the four words involved. Under a dissimilatory account, the -it-s/-ut-s alternation is conditioned by a labialized initial *Cʷ- preceding *-ut-s, not by a labial consonant preceding *-it-s.

I have shown that deriving 彗 and 孛 from a single root *Pˤut is feasible, even if it requires us to add a hitherto unknown lenition process to our OC reconstruction toolkit. This supports the dissimilatory analysis. In a forthcoming post, I will add new members to the proposed word-family and investigate the phonological and morphological variation it contains.

References

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

Bhat, D. N. Shankara. 1969. Tankhur Naga vocabulary. (Deccan College Building Centenary and Silver Jubilee Series 67). Poona: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute.

Schuessler, A. 2007. ABC etymological dictionary of Chinese. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

VanBik, Kenneth. 2009. A reconstructed ancestor of the Kuki-Chin languages. STEDT monograph 8. Berkeley, University of California.

STEDT: https://stedt.berkeley.edu/~stedt-cgi/rootcanal.pl

07/05/202024/06/2021

Southern Austronesian *sa-puluq-at in numbers 10 to 19

(view clickable tree)

Jump to Southern Austronesian master post

This post returns to a subject discussed in a 2010 conference paper (here). New facts are presented and the interpretation is slightly modified.

Several Philippine languages belonging to the South-Central Cordilleran subgroup in northern Luzon: Kankanay, Kalinga, Bontok, Ifugao, Balangaw, Inibaloi, have a conjunction reflecting Proto-South-Central Cordilleran *et [ət] ‘and, and then’. In the Central Luzon group of Philippine languages, Kapampangan, not in direct contact with the Cordilleran languages, has at ‘and’, reflecting either *et [ət] or *at. Tagalog, a Central Philippines language, has at ‘and’, which can only reflect *at, unless it is a loan from neighboring Kapampangan at ‘and’ (personal communications from L. Reid and R.D. Zorc, April 2007). Kapampangan is known to be a source of loanwords to Tagalog. Among the Central Cordilleran languages reflecting *et ‘and’, Isinai, Kalinga and a few others use a phonologically reduced form of that morpheme between pulu ‘ten’ and a following unit numeral. Thus in Kalinga, ‘ten’ is simpulu < *sa-n(g)a-puluq, but ‘eleven’ is simpu:lut osa (Tryon et al. 1995, Vol. 4, 43-45). That last form is analyzable as /sin-pulu=t osa/, where /=t/ ‘and’, /osa/ < *əsa ‘one’. Similarly, ‘twelve’ is simpu:lut duwa /sin-pulu=t duwa/, where /duwa/ < *duSa ‘two’ and /=t/ ‘and’. Kapampangan, the only Central Luzon language with a reflex of *et, does not use it in compound numerals. Although Tagalog may have borrowed the conjunction from Kapampangan, it does use a reduced form of at in compound numerals above ‘20’, in a very similar way to Kalinga and Isinay:

dalawampu	‘twenty’ < daduha ‘two’ + nasal linker + puluq ‘ten’
dalawampút isá	‘twenty-one’ < daduha ‘two’ + nasal linker + puluq ‘ten’ + =(a)t ‘and’ + *esa ‘one’
dalawampút dalawá	‘twenty-two’ < daduha ‘two’ + nasal linker + puluq ‘ten’ + =(a)t ‘and’ + *daduha ‘two’

The puluq-t-numeral form cannot easily have been borrowed from Cordilleran into Tagalog, as the languages are not in contact: if Tagalog borrowed the conjunction from Kapampangan, Tagalog shows a development parallel to Cordilleran in its use of the conjunction.

There are two possible accounts of the development of the conjunction itself in the Philippine languages. In the first, the conjunction’s oldest form in the Philippines was *et [ət], regularly evolving to at in Kapampangan, and loaned to Tagalog as at. Under that account, the conjunction, inherited only in the South-Central Cordilleran and Central Luzon groups, reconstructs to the northern clade of Philippine languages in the phylogeny of Gray, Drummond and Greenhill (2009), which this post follows for Malayo-Polynesian. Use of the conjunction between *puluq and a following numeral in Cordilleran and in Tagalog must be the result of parallel innovations.

In a second account, the conjunction’s oldest form in the Philippines was *at. Kapampangan and Tagalog inherited it in that shape, while in the Cordilleran languages the presumably unstressed vowel underwent centralization, to [ət]. Under that account, Tagalog being part of the southern clade, both *at ‘and then’ and the *puluq=at+numeral construction reconstruct higher, to the ancestor of the southern and northern Philippine clades, that is node 28, Proto-Philippines, in Gray, Drummond and Greenhill (2009).

Whether as *et or *at, the Philippine conjunction is reminiscent of the form ato ‘and, with’ in Amis (central Amis: Fey 1986, Namoh 2013) and of the conjunction katu in Paiwan. In Nataoran Amis (Nataoran Amis: Bril fieldwork), atu may occur in numeral expressions (Isabelle Bril, p.c., 11 February 2014):

a cacay-en atu la-tusa ku ni-pabeli itakuan-an tu pawli

HORT one-UV and half NOM PERF.NMZ-give me-OBL ACC banana

Give me one and a half banana (lit. ‘let it be one and a half the giving a banana to me’)

Both Namoh (2013:136) and Bril treat ato~atu as originally composed of a ‘and’ plus =to ‘oblique common noun marker’, drawing a parallel to aci ‘and + personal noun’ (<a ‘and’ + =ci ‘personal noun marker’). The oblique common noun marker to itself is analyzable into t- oblique and u or o common noun marker.

In a northern Amis numeral system recorded by Tsuchida (here), tu, a shortened form of atu, serves in numerals between 11 and 19 as a linker between the locally innovated word for ‘ten’: sabaw , and the following unit number, e.g. sabaw tu tulu ‘13’, sabaw tu lima ‘15’.

Similarly, in a Paiwan dialect recorded by Chang Hsiou-chuan (here), a conjunction katu occurs between *sa-puluq and a following unit number, e.g. tapuluʔ katu ʔunəm ‘16’. katu is analyzeable as ka–tu ‘and-oblique noun marker’, or possibly ka–atu ‘and–oblique noun marker’.

While *sa-puluq, the Puluqish word for ‘10’ ends in *-q, which corresponds to -k in Kra-Dai, the Kra-Dai word for ‘10’ ends in *-t, as if it came from *pulut: Proto-Kra (Ostapirat 2000) *pwlot ’10’; Proto-Hlai (Norquest 2015) *fu:t ’10’. The languages of the Kam-Tai branch have replaced the inherited form with a Chinese loanword.

The Philippine developments suggest an explanation. The following scenario is based on the hypothesis that the oldest Philippine form of the conjuction was *at. It is also possible to explain the facts under the view that it was *et, but the explanation is slightly more complex.

Comparison of Amis and Paiwan leads one to posit a conjunction *atu ‘and’ between *sa-puluq ‘10’ and a following numeral. In PSA the presumably enclitic conjunction was reduced to *at through syncope. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian and Proto-Kra-Dai, the direct daughters of PSA, inherited both *at and the compound numeral construction with it. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian in turn transmitted these to its immediate daughter Proto-Philippines, but the conjunction and construction were lost in Malayo-Polynesian outside of the Philippines. For this to occur, a single loss is required as such a node is supported with 98% posterior probability in Gray, Drummond and Greenhill (2009). Soon after Kra-Dai branched off, and independently from developments in the Philippines, *at ‘and’ was further reduced to /t/, and the resulting *sa-puluqt was reduced to *sa-pulut in PKD. This then evolved to Proto-Hlai *apu:c, Proto-Kra *pwlot. The outcome in Proto-Kam-Tai is unknown because these KD languages have abandoned Austronesian numerals for Chinese ones.

Reference

Gray, R.D., A.J. Drummond and S. Greenhill (2009) Language Phylogenies Reveal Expansion Pulses and Pauses in Pacific Settlement. Nature, 323, 479-483.

Norquest, Peter. 2015. A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai. Brill.

Ostapirat, Weera. 2000. Proto-Kra. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 23.1:1-251.

04/05/202010/07/2020

Lockdown etymologies: chowder

The American English word chowder refers to a thick fish soup made in New England. It is said (here) to go back to late Latin caldaria ‘cooking pot’. More specifically: Fr. chaudrée, a thick fish soup of the Charentes region (recipe here).