Wang Li memorial volumes. English volume 9789620403392, 9620403398

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WANG LI MEMORIAL VOLUMES

, .

The Edito Dr. T. K. collection 1• on the co, her Englisl ------- ----1--,--------'+---+~-,-------+---____;,;

WANG LI MEMORIAL-VOLUMES ENGLISH VOLUME

Edited by The Chinese Language Society of Hong Kong

Joint Publishing Co. (HK)

This collection includes two volumes, one containing papers in Chinese, the other papers in English. Copyright © 1987 Joint Publishing Co. (HK) All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Edited by The Chinese Language Society of Hong Kong 19-21 Hennessy Road, 18th Floor, Hongkong Published by Joint Publishing Co. (HK) 9 Queen Victoria Street, Hongkong First Published February 1987 Printed by C & C Joint Printing Co. (H.K.) Ltd. 75 Pau Chung Street, Kowloon, Hongkong ISBN 962·04·0339·8

To Our Readers

We regret to say that the title of this collection of papers had to be changed from Papers Presented to Wang Li on His Eightieth Birthday to Wang Li Memorial Volumes upon the death of Professor Wang on May 3, 1986. The change was made with the approval of all our contributors, and was the only change the Editorial Committee decided to make - the Preface and the papers themselves are printed without alteration of the original texts. The Chinese Language Society of Hong Kong July, 1986

Editorial Committee

Chief Editor : Ma Meng .~ ~ Members : Y. N. Chan ~JJ!J;flrfl Rosie F. L. Chen 75'£# Y. S. Cheung ~ B ~ C. F. Ching fn~~ W. Y. Lai ~mf= K. S. Lee **ffl C. Y. Sin itiNil~ C. K. Tam ~,~~ Benjamin K. T'sou ;J~~~ T. H. Yao MH~Wl S. N. Yau i~ifd:·~

~*

Professor Wang Li at Robert Black College, University of Hong Kong, December 1980.

Professor and Mrs. Wang Li at the Peak, Hong Kong, December 1980.

Preface

As its title indicates, this collection of writings is published as a tribute to Professor Wang Li, a linguist of great distinction, to mark the memorable occasion of his eightieth birthday. Professor Wang Li has made contributions to Chinese linguistic studies that can be conveniently measured in terms of centuries. He has devoted more than half a century's time to the study of the Chinese language; he has made investigations into many centuries of that language's historical development; and it is predi /Ja/ is reg. shift); 16 PTB *rap: Lu. rap "tread (upon); (comp.) trample"; ii ljap/ljap "tread, trample"; 17 PTB *(s-)rway "cane" ➔ "rope/string"; PK *(s-)rwi ''vine/creeper"; ~ liwar/lywi: "creepers, lianas" and lt , id. "creeping plant" (cf. also ~ liwar/ lywi "wind around, be attached to; bind; string"); also (clusters) 18 PTB *gra: WT gra-ma "the bones [=spine] of fish"; g glio/ ljwo: "spine"; 19 PTB *gra1J "cold"; if- glja9 /lfa!J "chilly, cold"; 20 PTB *(-)gra!J: WT 'gra1;-ba ~ bgra!)-ba "to number, count," sgra!)-ba "enumerate"; WB khya!)' (< *s-gra!J) "compute, cal~ culate"; :It glja!J/ljalJ "to measure"; 21 PTB *grulJ: Tamang (Nepal) mu-guru1J "thunder" (mu-< "sky"); ~~ gljb!J/ljwJ (loan), "id."; 22 PTB *krap "weep"; i"lL. k'lj_ap/k 1,;p, "id.'l (cf. the parallel roots from same GSR-694 series: 37, 38; 23 PTB *grak "fear"; ~l glfik/lak (loan), "id." (AD gloss) (and add s- and ?- forms cited below); also the numerous prefixed forms passim below. PST */r/ was maintained in PC, however, at least in prefixed roots, as shown conclusively by 24 PTB *(-)ruk "six"; 1' gljok/ljuk but P-Tai (loan) *xrok 9 ; cf. also the "culture word" for "indigo," PT *graamA; Fi_gl/J,m/Utm but WT rams, Lp. ryom < *sram; also the parallel P-Tai *graanB "lazy"~ffgUtn/Utn:, "id." (AD). To make matters worse, the *r- system also repeatedly implants a medial *-r- in roots which can only reject this foreign element, the most notorious example being the widespread, basic root: 25 PTB *(g-)sb.t "kill"Jlsat/~at (NOT *srat or *sret), "id." (regular vocalism: STC: fn. 488). Finally, the *r- system is utterly unable to handle the intricate network of allofamic relationships in AC that is so significantly revealed by the *s/P- line of reconstruction. A second major difference between the PTB and AC initials involves the AC lack of the two initial glides, /w/ and /y/, along A

A

A

32 Wang Li Memorial Volume

with the palatal /i/. As pointed out by the writer (1948), this feature is simply one aspect of a fundamental shift in AC from voiced continuants to stops, giving rise inter alia to the famous "unwanted" final -g and -d of GSR, as in the -g of k£wag/kj1u: "nine" (14) in the face of the final *-w both of the cognate PTB *[d] k-aw and the early loan to Tai: P-Tai *kawB. As suggested in STC (pp. 192-93), one can conceivably reconstruct *-g and *-d at the earlier (PST) level but the lack of a parallel *-b 10 is very much in favor of the above interpretation.11 PST initial *w- clearly underwent a parallel shift, the AC initial g- nicely filling the gap created by /k/ ~ /k'/ ~ / / ~ /g'/, yielding MC y- (Karlgren'sj-) 12 ; cf. the twin (*waA ~ *wa 8 ) roots: 29 PTB *(s-)waA "be in motion (come/go)"; -=f- gtwo/yiu "go, go to"; 30 PTB *(r-)wa 8 "rain"; ff:i gtwo/yju :, "id." The other PST initial glide *y-, however, did not shift to the anticipated AC d£- as originally believed (Benedict 1948) but rather to AC ( d}z- ~ ts( ')-, with voicing apparently conditioned by prefixation (cf. note 26); cf. 31 PTB *(-)yak "armpit"; ~ ziak/iak "id."· 32 PTB *(s-)ya "night"· PK *?ya "evening"· :TJt ziag/ia- "night"; -J7 dziak/ziak "evening, night"; ~ siak/siiik (loan) "night" (see below for the final); 33 PTB *yaw "liquor/beer/ wine"; ~ ziog/iau: "cycl. char." (but graph is drawing of wine vessel and is used in Zhou inscriptions in sense of "wine"); ijll,j tsjog/tsjau: "spirits, wine"; 34 PTB *(g-)yfi,(-n): WT g-yon-pa "left (hand)," g-yo ~ yo "cunning, deceit"; (cf. sinister ; reg. vowel shift); 1r tsa/tsa "left (hand)"; 35 PTB *(b-)yaw(-n) "rodent (mouse/rat/rabbit)" (with "collective" plural *-n: STC: fn. 428); tt, tstwan/tstuen ~ tstwan/ts1uen "hare"; 36 PTB *yul: WT yul "inhabited place; (comp.) village"; Thakali (Nepal)yu/ "village"; H ts'wan/ts'uan "village, hamlet" (AD). Finally, PST initial *±probably yielded d/ij but PTB *i- itself is rare and no certain cognate pairs have been uncovered. 13 To return again to the "larger framework of ST," how can one reconcile PTB, with an elaborate prefixial apparatus, and a Chinese language which on the surface appears virtually prefixless A

A

A

)

'

A

'

A

A

AA

A

)

A

A

Archaic Chinese Initials

33

(but see Benedict 1976c)? The PTB set of prefixes included */g-, d-, b-, r-, m-, s-/ and marginal *!- (in *l-r;a "five"; cf. Zak "arm/ hand") along with the vocalic *a-= ?a-> ?- (see above;/?/ is nondistinctive feature of vocalic onset). These are all maintained in WT('-< 2-) and are well represented in Jinghpaw and Nungish but are only marginally, if at all, present in most southern TB languages although prefixed *s- has left in its wake a complex, boldly marked set of reflexes (see below). Prefixation at the PTB level was evidently very "fluid," with few bound forms, and the over-all picture historically has been one of repeated replacement of prefixes along with frequent re-prefixation (with *a- and *s-), yielding the characteristic "double-prefix" forms analyzed below. Prefix variation is of such great frequency within TB itself that correspondences must be set up with this feature in mind (STC: 103 ff.) and a fortiori the ST comparativist must anticipate similar variation at the earlier (PST) level. Several different kinds of development of PST prefixes are met with in Chinese: (1) Prefix-preemption (Matisoff 1979: 24) with loss of initial, either at an early level (11 "head") or at a later (PC ➔ AC) level (40 "neck"; 41 "lick/tongue"). (2) Coalescence of prefixed stop or *m- with root-initial *ror *!-, as commonly within TB itself; cf. 37 PTB *g-ryap "stand"; JL gliap/liap, "id."; 38 PTB *(g-)rip: Lu. rip "cage or enclosure, cell";" Lp. "grip (< *g-rip) "to confine, cage, put into paddock (as sheep), to stall (as horse)"; ::ff gliap/liap ~ g'liap/g'iap "pen for animals"; 14 perhaps also 9 ("bone"). In two other roots with "body-part" *g/k- prefix the xiesheng evidence indicates that /li/ " > /j/ simplification had occurred: 40 PTB *lil'_J (Nungish *li1J, Lp. -Ii'), WB Ian< *li!J) ~ *a-li'] (Abor alif_J; prob. also Lu., Puiron rilJ < *?ri!J < *?li!J) ~ *k-lilj (CT *khli!J) ~ *m-li!J) (Loloish: Luquan) "neck"; kje!J/kjii!J ~ g1er;/g'jli1'_], from *klje']/ ~ *g'lje!J, "id."; ii lfe:J (or m-lje1j)/lja!J, "id." (see 42 "name"); 41 PTB *(s-}lyak ~ *(m-)lyak "lick/tongue"; nt g1ak/g1ak, from *g'ljak/, "tongue." A

n

A

~

A

34 Wang Li Memorial Volume

The protean nature of ST prefixation is on display here! (3) Metathesis of prefixed *r- and root-initial *m-: 42 PTB *r-mi!J "name"; frl- mja1J (or mlja'!])/mjwv!]- "order, command; name," with -% lje1J (or m-lte1J)/ljii:1_J "command" as apparent phonetic as well as doublet (this graph very often serves for frj- in the inscriptions), the series (GSR-823) also including the word for 41 ("neck"). The metathesized * /r/ appears to have been replaced by /w/ in 43 PTB *r-may "tail" (contra STC: fn. 204 both Bahing me-ri and WB Pa-mri: appear to offer parallels);~ mjwar/myw(}_i, "id." (4) Prefixed *g-, *d- and/or *b- (- 1:c-) "de-aspirated" rootinitial obstruents, both voiced and unvoiced in P-Min but only unvoiced in AC (see above). (5) Prefixed *r- palatalized initial dentals and produced an */a/> /a/ shift in AC; cf. 44 PTB *r-na "ear";!+ niag/ni:,id., merging with 45 PTB *na: WT fza "tendon, sinew"; U fzjag/fzi(loan) "sinew" and contrasting with 46 PTB *(m-)na "female [kin] (grandmother/mother/aunt/older sister/daughter-in-law)" (STC: fn. 487); ~ no/nuo "wife and children" (cf. WT ma "mother," ma-smad "mother and children") and (late palatalization) --fx. fzjo/ njwo "woman, lady, girl," with the regular *-a> -o shift after velars/dentals/labials; cf. also 73 ("fright/frighten"); 92 ("join"). 15 The above evidence for earlier (PC) prefixation is all straightforward, involving at most only the universally recognized velar +/l/ clusters (cf. note 14). By way of contrast, however, the direct evidence for the labial prefixes *b- and *m- [apart from 11 "head" under (1)] requires marked, at times even startling, changes in the initials as reconstructed in GSR; this holds equally well for prefixed *a- (> 2-) and *s-, the latter making up the vast bulk of the material. This brings up the question of an approximate dating for the indicated AC> MC shifts. It now appears, on the basis of extensive analysis of the xiesheng, that Chinese underwent a major transformation between the earliest known stages (Dobson's "Early Archaic"), the language of the Shujing, the Shijing 16 and the A

Archaic Chinese Initials

35

earlier bronze inscriptions down through Karlgren's Zhou II (900 ea. 770 B.C.), and the language of the Zuozhuan and later classics and of the later inscriptions (Karlgren's Zhou III and IV). For the purposes of this study the term "Archaic Chinese" (AC) is used only for the "Early Archaic" as demarcated above, with "Old Chinese" (OC) reserved for the later (but pre-MC) stage of the language (the term "Ancient Chinese" probably should be discarded because of conflicting usage over the years). Material of several different types must be taken into account in reconstructing AC: the xiesheng must "make sense" (see discussion above); dimorphism within AC itself must be considered; comparable forms in "sister" dialects such as LPT and P-Min must be looked at; TB/Karen cognates must be given special weight; finally, at times early loan relationships with Tai/Kadai or MiaoYao(= Austro-Tai; see Benedict 1975) or even with Mon-Khmer/ Austroasiatic (Benedict 1979b) must be brought into the picture (see STAL for the numerals and Benedict 1976b for early loans generally). Prefixed *b- and *m- serve as outstanding examples of the above approach. Although on the surface it would appear that they were rare in AC, at best, closer analysis (STAL : 191 ; Yang 1979) reveals that in the course of the AC> [ OC] > MC shifts they tended to preempt an initial velar followed by /w/ or /1/, appearing in MC as p- and m- (apparently *b- > p- as feature of preemption), and it can be inferred that their occurrence in AC was relatively unrestricted, much as in WT: 17 Table 1 (velar+ /w/) WT 47

48

WB

PTB/PST

* k'ijlb/k'iwo-

go away enclose sleeve

➔

AC/MC

skyob

cwap

*(s-)kywap *kywap

U k'ijlb/k'f.wo tt k'jflb/k'f.wo

36 Wang Li Memorial Volume

(arm+) sleeve

-cwap

*-kywap *m-kywap

* kiwat/kiwet < *-kiwap * m-kiad1/miii.i < A

A

*m-kjwap+

49

bind/clamp

kwap

·*(b-)kwap

$: p-kfwap/p[wvp

➔ law

J.ik s-khwag/xuqi

ashes

so

kho-

big/great meat on sides of spine

·I~

*kwow

k'wag/k'uqi

!We m-kwag/muqi,-

48 WT skyob-pa, pf. (b)skyabs "protect, defend"(+- "by enclosing"); WB cwap < *kywap or *skywap "put in (as finger into ring); [hand+] ring; [arm+] sleeve"; AC k'iab/ (loan) "enclose" and (etym. s. w.) "sleeve," with loss of /w/ (common in AC); the doublet kiwat/, with unaspirated initial after close-juncture (cf. WB comp.), maintains the medial */yw/ but dissimilates the final to -t; for the m-kiad/miai reading GSR states, "The same character has been applied to a synonymous word . . ." ( !) ; the phonetic of this series (GSR-312) is (etym. s. w.) ~ kiwat/kiwet "archer's thimble" (cf. "ring" in WB). 49 WB kwap "bind the edge or border of anything; clamp; make fast by binding; enforce orders; discipline"; Jg. khop (< *khwap) "to border, rim, edge"; perhaps also Lu. khuap "dam up" (the AC graph has "water" as signific!); AC p-kjwap/ "law" (GSR notes, "[k'iab-} as phonetic is probable, in spite of the initial"). 50 WT kho-lag "bigness, robustness; (comp.) space" (for-lag cf. hlag "more, beyond"); AC k'wag/ "great, extend" (reg. rhyme correspondence: Benedict 1977). AC also has the doublet mwag/mu~i, - "meat on sides of spine," apparently the product of secondary voicing: < PC *mA

A

A

A

gwag/.

51 WB kya:


/i/) form is found in the Zuo-zhuan citation of ffi}Ji. s-kio-d 'o (MC Piwo-d 'uo) as the Chu " " term for "tiger," suggesting that this simplifichtion was a feature A

A

38 Wang Li Memorial Volume

of Chu phonology; cf. also the "tiger'' phonetic in r1fI. k'io/k'iwo: " " "ruins" and (loan) s-k'io/xiwo "modest"; also in ~ sk'io/ts'iwo: "dwell, stay; keep still," the (palatalized) prefixed cognate of Prs kio/kiwo "sit down; dwell; repose" (contra STC: fn. 472, which ,._ ,._ reconstructs with medial-I-); also in the variant ~ s-7Jjo l!]jwo "fish" (see 95 for the initials; GSR notes, ... "enlarged by *xo 'tiger', the role of which is uncertain"). 52 WT dgra (-bo) "enemy"; AC "captive" +- "(captured) enemy.'' 53 WT gru "boat; also a hide blown up with air, used for crossing rivers," from *grwa "hide"; for the final cf. the WT doublet ru ~ rwa "horn" < *rwa (STC: 113); AC glio/ "skin" (AD gloss), \ p-gltwo/ "id." (with */w/ maintained); for prefixed p- (< *b-) with body-part word cf. 28 Dim. bugur < *b-gur "(its-) skin"; P-Tai *phiuA "epidermis, cuticle, outer rind of bark." 54 WT gra-ba "carve in wood"; AC "inlay (work in bronze or iron)"; cf. also the prefixed form KJrE s-gio/siwo "engrave" (see 109 " .,, "foot/leg" for initial). 55 Lp. kro: ka/kro-la "stretched out (as horns; as arms or legs)"; WB kra "to be long [= extended) in doing, in time)"; AC "extend." 56 WT 'khrug-pa "to be disturbed": dkrug-pa = West srug = *skrug "to stir (up), agitate; to trouble, disturb, confound"; AC ''disconcerted." 57 CT *glwak "cut"; Miri doublet: jok ~ lok < *glok "cut," also "wound"; AC gluk/ "carve wood" (Shuowen); p-gluk/ "cut; flay, peel,'' also "wound"; s-gliuk/ "carve precious stone/jade" (GY reading); PST *(-)glwak (see STC: fn. 479 for AC /u/~/wa/ variation); P-Tai "to skin, peel." 58 For the *(s) here and in 59 see note 9; WT brgyad through metathesis (WT lacks the /ry/ cluster); cf. also the Chinese metathesis in 59. 59 See below for the AC final -k; in both 58 and 59 the AC forms show underlying simplification ( elision of *-y-) while 59 A

,J..

'

A

A

A

Archaic Chinese Initials

39

also reflects metathesis. 60 WT glags "opportunity, occasion, possibility" (cf. Eng. way); Miju g'lat < *glak "place, village"; Proto-Tamang (Nepal) *glaa < *glak "place"; for the semantics cf. PTB *lam "road/path/ way" (generally) but PK "place, track," Lu. lam "way, path(way), place, direction," lam-lian "road" (lian "big"); AC m-glak/ "westeast-going path between fields"; glag- < *glak+ (cf. Lu. comp.) "road"; perhaps also ~ gliak/liak "trace out, measure the area of, to plan" (+- "place" or "direction" as verb?), also (Zuozhuan) "plan, method" and "road, way." Northern tribe (name): Northeastern Tib. (nomad): mGolok ~ Ngolok ~ Golok (cf. WT mgo "head; summit"; WT regularly /o/ < */a/, as in 34 "left"); ~ is regularly read g'lak/fak "badger" and Karlgren here resorts to a favorite device of scholars: (GSR) ... "by confusion with ~ applied to ... a Northern tribe." Note the "pairing" of GSR series in Table 2: first 57 and 69 (contra Karlgren the role of the "tiger" in 69is hardly "obscure"!); then 1208 and 1216; then 1032 ( 1' is phonetic in ff.t) and 1069 (note the pair: ffi and mgljok/l{uk "grain sown late and ripening early"); then 866 and 781 (but 281 unfortunately is isolated). The early Tai loans, all of the anticipated "post-shift" type (note 9), reflect distinctive LPT features: /ph/ for /p/ after preemption ("skin"); re-prefixed *s- in "six" (*s-khr- > xr-; see note 9) along with retention of PST */r/; /piat/ "eight" (P-Tai */H/ < */ia/ - see Benedict 1975: 182), perhaps reflecting the */y/ of the PST root without the AC simplification;18 */pak/ "hundred," showing the alternative development for *s- prefixed roots (see below). A possible parallel for the /ph/ is found in JlH "new light of the moon, third day of the moon," reconstructed in GSR (530) as p'wat/p'u0t ~ pywad/p'yw,Ji: and apparently interpreted as a huiyl (graph has "moon" and "come out") but perhaps actually a < *b- cognate: p-k1wat ~ p-k1wad- (< *p-k'wat+) belonging under -496 with phonetic 61 ti1 sk1wat/ts1uet "go out, come out, bring out" ~ sk1wad/ts'wi- (< *sk1wat+) "bring out, take out" A

A

40

Wang Li Memorial Volum~

(series includes velar-initial entries); PTB *ku(-s) "take up or out, lift up" (see above for suffixed *-s > AC -t). 19 As can be seen from Table 2, the preempting *b- and *mprefixes produced some radical changes in Chinese but they did not transform the language; this was left for prefixed *a- > ?- and, above all, prefixed *s-. Again it will be helpful to review the TB/ Karen developments here (STC: 105 ff.): PTB/PK prefixed *a-= ?a-(>?-) is a 3rd person pronominal element, generally found with body-part words and kinship terms 20 but also occurring with verbal roots, often in a nominalizing role, e.g. WB thum: "tie in a knot," ?a-thum: "knot." The following developments are of special interest: (a) it can produce nasalization: WT a-chung ('-), representing the unstressed form of the prefix(> /a/), 21 yielded prenasalized obstruents in Khams (Eastern dial.), e.g. 'dod-pa "wish" > ndodpa, an intermediate step in the shifts *Pd-> n-, *?b- > m-, as found in other SEA languages (P-Tai > Shan; PMK > Vn.). (b) it can transform a continuant into an obstruent, e.g. Nungish *a-sum "three"> Rawang atsum; WT 'tsho-ba (< *'so-), pf. SOS "live"; 'chi-ba (< *'si-), pf. si "die"< PTB *say (regular pala talization ). (c) it can precede other prefixes, especially *m- and *s-, forming "double-prefixes," e.g. Mk. i!Jnim < *m-nam "to smell," arynim < *a-m-nam "odor"; Lhota Naga ehme < *a-s-min "ripe"; also PBL *?s-nam < *a-s-nam "younger sister" (STC: *s-nam). Remarkably enough, the Chinese development closely parallels that of Tibetan in the first two features 22 while supplying an additional parallel (to TB) in the third (See Table 3.) As pointed out in STAL, the xiesheng supply the crucial evidence here, with corroborating evidence from all the sources outlined above. Karlgren attributed the commingling of stop and nasal initials in certain series to latitude on the part of the xiesheng creators but this view encounters difficulties. With Y:. b 1wo/b ju: "father" ~ pjwo /piu: "honorific" available as phonetic

Archaic Chinese Initials

4I

Table 3 (prefixed *a-= -Pa-) PST level *?.(!-g*?.a-j*?.a-d*?.a-b*?.a-s-

WT

. Khams

➔

'g-

➔

!JC·

➔

'i-

➔

njndmbntsh-

➔ ➔ ➔

'd- ➔ 'b- ➔ 'tsh- ➔

AC ?.g- ➔ ?.d- ➔ ?.d- ➔ ?.b- ➔ ?.s-

MC

[!Jg•] [nd-J [nd-J [mb-j ➔

➔ ➔ ➔

➔

!J· nnmts'-

in the long GSR-102 series why, for example, was lffi:t pJwo/pju(< *-pya+) "tax" written with (GSR) ff:t miwo/miu: "martial" as " ""parrot"? This phonetic in a series (-104) including ~ mJ,wo/mJ,u: becomes understandable if a stop such as Pb- is reconstructed for the phonetic, thus providing for two cognate sets: 62 WT dpya "tax, duty"; pjwo/- "tax" and 63 PTB *bya "bird"; Pbiwo/: "parrot." The point is established beyond any doubt by two "double entry" sets: Pdjan/njan (~ Pdian/nien: ~ d'ian/d'ien:) "tread, trample" (note the d'-doublet), written jl and ~ , each from series (-201 and -4S3) which otherwise have only stop-initial entries (!); also :iiff Pgian/9ien "grind, rub, polish" (Shuowen) and the cognate :ii~ Pgian/'ljien- (< suffixed form) "stone for rubbing ink" (AD), both also from stop-initial series (-239 and -241, but note Rff ?gian/9ien [AD] and flt g'ian/yien: "beautiful"). In view of the extreme "fluidity" of the PST prefixial apparatus (above) one cannot anticipate more than a handful of direct correspondences with WT or any other given TB language. Actually there is at least one direct correspondence with WT for each of the stops, also one with Rawang (Nungish) for the sibilant (and one stop) (See Table 4.) 64 WT mgo "head" (literal sense) but 'go in derived sense: dmag-'go "commander of an army (dmag)" < "army-it's (*a-> '-) head," 'go-pa "officer, headman": also mgon-po "principal, master, lord" (see STAL: fn. 30 for suffixed -n with body-part words). The AC form is phonetic in a series (GSR-257) with many stop-

42 Wang Li Memorial Volume

Table 4 (PST prefixed *a-)

WT 64

head

Lu.

Rawang ag;;

'go mgo (n)

65 66 67 68

hang down cast away/ expel magician wipe

three ➔ triad

69

*a-gaw (-n)

Jc 'lg{_wan/!JfW n

*m-gaw (-n)

*

*(-) jwal

fual

AC/MC

PST

'iol

*a-jwal

'dor

*a-diir

dwia/iwie

% 'ldwia/nwi AC/MC /ia/ before labials). AC kj61j/ "dwelling-house" (Shijing) < *kyum (STC: fn. 4 79) also reflects *C- prefix but again the PTB *s- prefix is A

A

A

48 Wang Li Memorial Volume

matched by P-Min in the compound -f-'s zl-gong ·"womb": Foochow tsy-kuy but Putian tsou-urey (see Nakajima 1979 for this Min dialect, which has "softened stop" reflexes in a number of forms, incl. t/J "dog"; Kienyang eu, Kienow e). AC tA s-kjwar/ "bent" has the phonetic :tJ, g'wan/'tuan "pellet," hence ~ , id. "bend" by concatenation (see Benedict 1977 for the rhyme correspondence). The AC "triplet" for "ladle" is highly instructive in illustrating both the secondary voicing and the palatalization so characteristic of Chinese. The P-Min "softened stops" provide us with an additional source for prefixed *s- in Chinese (STAL: 182), as in "dog"; cf. also 82 PST *ga·t ~ *(s-)ka·t "cut"; Miri ga·t "cut (with drawing motion); reap (as rice); incise"; Jg. gat "cut, lop off (as twigs)"; Lu. a·t (< *s-ka·t) "cut, reap"; ~ g'adf¥ai- (< g'at+) "to hurt/be hurt" (< "cut"); ~ g'at/rat (loan) "injure"; WIJ k.it/kat "cut; destroy" but P-Min *s-kot "cut" (Kienyang ue "cut off''). The shift to dental after cluster *s, found also in TB and Karen (Table 5), is as firmly supported by the xiesheng and comparative evidence as is the rest of the scheme (STAL: 182 ff.), with tell-tale doublets such as "small pit": ~ g'am/tam- (Shuowen; phonetic in GSR-672) and 1f sg'am/d'q,m: (GSR describes as a hui-yi yet correctly includes in this 672 series!); also "lotus flower": rl'i g'am/g'lj,m: and 1r sg'am/d'q,m: (from above series); the Shijing has the reduplicated form: rl'i 1r g'am:-sg'am: < *sg'amsg'am, perhaps an early loan: (WT kun:iuda < Ssk.) with *s- prefixation and secondary voicing (*-um > -am is reg. shift), at times well supported by comparative data, e.g. 83 PST *(-)ka(-n) "sky/ heaven": WT mkha "heaven," nam-mkha "heaven, sky"; Magari nam-khan "sun": Garo mikka (= mka) "rain; (comp.) sky"; "'R sk'ien/t'ien and )i17c s-k'ien/xien (AD) "sky/heaven," from *s-ka-n with the PST "collective" plural *-n suffix(= "the heavens") (reg. vowel shift before final dental). One can hardly ignore the obvious xiesheng evidence virtually clamoring to be heard from the pages of GSR but the problem has always been: what to do about it?

Archaic Chinese Initials

49

Karlgren drifted about on a highly irregular tack, at times isolating a dental-initial form in a separate series, e.g. 84 j;: sk 'am/t 'qm "covet"; cf. WT skam-pa "long for," is separated from its phonetic 4- kiJm/kiam "now" (-645) and placed alone (under -551) with the note: "4- kjJm can hardly be phonetic, so this is probably a compound ideogram," but at other times unabashedly scrambling velar- and dental-initial entries together in single series, as in -496 (see 61 "take up/out"), sometimes with a strange demurral (as in "small pit," above). On the other hand Bodman, after rejecting sk/t- as "improbable," sets up *s-k-l- > t- (!), ending up with the worst of linguistic worlds since a horde of "unwanted" medial /l/'s have thus been added to the "unwanted" medial /r/'s already thronging his AC landscape. 25 In view of the array of *s/s- + velar-initial forms in AC one must suppose that a similar apparatus also obtained for other stop initials but, unlike the situation in P-Min with its full complement of "softened stops," the xiesheng offer relatively limited supporting evidence. In the case of labial stops this evidence, with but a single exception ("lute," below), involves /!/ clusters, which are indicated for several GSR series (STAL: 189), e.g. the "dragon" series (-1193; see 74, which includes JIB sp'lju!J/t'jwo8 "favor" (sp'li- and sk'li- both yielded MC t'i;sbli- and sgli-yielded i-, etc.); also -178 with ~ blwan/luan "bell on horse's trappings" (cf. Si. bruan "neck bells for domestic animals") as phonetic and including ~ ?blwan/mwan "Southern barbarian" and ~ s-blwan/~wan- ~ s-bljwanMwan- "twins." The best supported of all these series, however, is -892 although in GSR the phonetic " ?bla.'!}/mn; "toad" has been banished to the realm of "unreconstructable" (for AC) forms under -1252 (in AD the series is kept intact under 633 with the note: "Forms a phonetically very curious series"). The complex relationships with TB involved in this series, with direct correspondences for two *s- forms, are presented on p. 50. Lp. sum-bryo1J "fly" < *sbra'!] (reg. shifts) +sum- but WB yar;, paralleling the MC form, suggests PTB */a/ vocalism (STC: "

A

A

,A

A

A

,A

A

50 Wang Li Memorial Volume

WT 86 fly, n.

Melam

PTB

AC/MC

sbra!]

Foochow Silj

< sbli!J

+ li!J 87 string/ (')phre!} cord ambri!J 88 full/fill -

*(a-)pra!}

*a-brcnJ itffl, sb'lja!]/di'Ja'!} *(s-)blil) *1111 sblja']/ia']--(loan)

-

Jg_ sblfe!J/fii!J

fn. 469); Foochow silJ (Norman) ~ +lir; (Nakajima) (Putian also +li'!]) with si- ~Ii-< *sbli- doublet contrasting with si- ~ i- < *sgli(above; see 80 "arm/hand/wing"). For "string/cord," WT (')phre!J (-ba) but West and Cent. T. dialects have -a!]< *-a"!} (STC: fn. 344); Miju bra!) "rope"; Melam (Nungish) ambri'!J shows secondary nasalization after *a- (cf. Khams in Table 3). PTB *blilJ "full," *s-bli!J "fill"; AC sblja'!]- (loan) "full (sc. ear of grain)" ;sblje[J/ (reg. vocalic corresp.) "full, fill" (PST *s- both "causative" and "intensive"). Complications arise in the case of dental stops because of the special reflexes produced by the "double-prefix" *a-s- > ls-. In Chinese this had already at the AC level yielded the affricate /ts/ ~ /dz/ fro~ both stop and nasal, paralleling the ls- > ts'- shift (Table 3); AC probab,ly retained ls- (see above) and certainly retained ?sk( ')- and ?sg( ')- on the xiesheng evidence (STAL: 187); note here the "strange" GSR-280 series: lfL s-kat/?at "crush under wheels" and tL lskat/{sat "slip, strip." This development is linked through the key root for "seven" with TB, where a three-way contrast must be set up for PBL, the prefix *s- failing to aspirate the initial in WB and yielding a distinct tone (3) in Lisu while *lsn- preempted the */n/ in Lisu and in Loloish generally (as in Chinese). (See top of p. 51.) Note that P-Min has cluster *s forms (see below) for both "eye" and "year," suggesting [s-] prefixed forms for AC. The comparative TB evidence indicates that at the PTB level the

Archaic Chinese Initials

PBL

89 eye 90year 8 seven

WB

Lisu

PTB/PST

AC/MC

51

P-Min

*s-myak myak. myt 3 *(s-)myak § [ s-J mjok/miuk *smok *snik *snien hnac ni2 *(s-)ni•!J ~ [ s-J nien/nien [ ts'ien/ts'ien] *(a) (s-)ni·!J *tshit *'lsnis *(a)snis -hnac iu,5 -1::; ts'jet/ts'jet

cluster */sn/ must be set up for "seven" (from a "frozen" *sprefix form: "2" + "5") as opposed both to "eye" (e.g. WT mig) and "year," the PBL *s-m- ("eye") vs. *sn- (''year") distinction having been a secondary development. The BL and Chinese final shifts in "year," paralleled in other roots (STC: 79, 165), were probably conditioned by initial features. The AC doublet for ''year," with development like that of "seven," is indicated by the Shuowen interpretation of -f- ts'ien/ts'ien "thousand" as phonetic in -4'- / s-1 nien/nien "year" (!), which makes sense only if the doublet form is recognized. There is one bit of evidence showing that ?sn- was maintained at the PC level: fi snju/sju "beard"; Amoy ts'iu id., from a PC doublet ?snju (Yang 1981). Table 7 presents a scheme of the complex developments in Chinese both for the above and for nasals generally along with /l/ < PST *Ill and *lr/. Certain PC forms in the above table are conjectural since it Table 7 (Chinese *(P)s/s- reflexes) PC

AC/MC

P-Min

*'ls*'lsk(h)*Pst(h)-

Ps/ts' Psk(')lts(') ts(')lts(') st(')/ts(') [ s-] t(')lt(')

*s-t

*st(h)*s-t(h)

*Psg(h)*'lsd(h)-

'lsg(')/(d)z(') dz(')/(d)z(')

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Wang Li Memorial Volume

*sdh*sd*s-d *Psn*s-n *sn*Psl*s-l *sl-

sd'/dz' sdj/j s-dj/sj ts'/ts' [s-Jn/n

*s-m *sm-

*sn

xn(j)/t'(j)

snj/si t(j)/t(j) s-l/d' s-li/i

*sl ~ *s-l

xl/t' (xlj/xj)

shjsi [s-Jrfj/nj snj/sj ~

*s-n *sn-

*(z)i *s-d

A

*(sn)

xnj/ts'j

*(xn)

[s-jm/m

*sm

xm(j)/x(j)

(smj/sj) *S·!J *S!J

[ s-] !]/!] S!]/n (X!J/X)

is possible that the shifts involved had already taken place at the PC level: *Ps-, *?st(h)-, *?sd(h)-, *?sn- and *?sl- 26 . It should be noted that AC ts'- represents no fewer than five (!) earlier (prefix+) initials: *tsh-, *sth-, *?s-, *skh- and *?sth-, perhaps actualized as emphatics; cf. the Ch'iang (certain dialects) emphatics: ?~-, ?t§h-, ?tsh, Pd~-, ?dz- and even ?ptsh- (!), contrasting with non-emphatics (Chang 1967). The table does not include palatalized forms, e.g. s-l/di'- (see 103, 121), s-difsj- (see 93), and does not reflect the secondary voicing so characteristic of Chinese, especially after *s/s-; cf. 91 PTB *s-kya: WT skya-ba "carry";~ kjo/kjwo: "lift, raise; to present (offerings)"; also (loan) "all," under GSR-75 but belonging in the long -89 series, with phonetic

53

Archaic Chinese Initials

§'I- sgjo/fwo: "lift,'' including (etym. s. w.) ~ id. "give; help; as-

sociate with, together with"~ sgio/iwo- "participate in, be present at" (cf. "ft; s-kio/'liwo [loan] "to be in, in, at, on, with"); ~ s-gio/ siwo "aid; together, mutually; all"; also :$. kio/kiwo ~ sk'iJ/ts'ia "carriage, chariot" (< tone *A: "something lifted/ carried," contrasting with tone *B: "lift"; see note 7); gij. sgjo/jwo "vehicle, carriage, carrier, carry on the shoulders; underlings, the crowd, many"< PST *(s-)kya. It can be seen that the intricate allofamic reticulation here, repeatedly tying in with velars, is dependent upon the *s/?- system as opposed to an *r- scheme or that of GSR. A three-way reconstruction at the PC level, similar to that for the dental nasal (*rsn- ~ *s-n ~ *sn-), is indicated for the dental stops (contra the "pattern filling" of STAL: 181 ), the best evidence being supplied by GSR-1031, with an odd dental/affricate assortment, and -1165. If the phonetic of the latter is reconstructed Ff, [s-}tiog/tieu- ~ [s-ltiok/tiek "condole, grieved" and [diff. word!] "good" we can understand why (GSR note) in the bronze inscriptions this character is always used in the sense of ,f,Z s-diok/siuk (palatalized with second. voicing) "gather"; (loan) "junior, 3rd of 4 brothers." This also supplies the vital clue to the dental/affricate commingling in -1031 (phonetic ,¥: s-djok/sjuk), which includes significant doublets (above under -1165) further linking the two series: Ml stfok/tsjuk and lif.x st'iok/ts'iek (loan) "grieved"; ~ sdjok/zjuk "fine, good." Further support on this point comes from GSR-1010, with phonetic 1f< tjoy/tsjuy - "multitude, numerous; all" and including the "triplet" it fi.81)/tsjUIJ ~ sd'or1/dz'UO!] ~ sd'u'!]/dz'u'!} "junction of two rivers," from *fr-Ito'!};..,, *s-do!J ~ *s-do·y, related to 92 WT sdo!](s)-pa ~ rdOIJS·pa "unite, join"; IP] d'uy/d'uy (< *do·IJ) "together, join, assemble" and (etym. s.w.) wiJ id. "all." In the basic root for "water" Min dimorphism supplie9 the critical support: 93 PTB *tway; s-[d/iwar/swi: (palatalized " with second. voicing), with provisional / d} because the form is isolated under GSR-576; Western Min *sui, as in MC, but Eastern Min *tsui or *s-tsui (noted in Norman 1974), maintaining the A

,._

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

*

A

A

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Wang Li Memorial Volume

original surd: PST *(s-)tway. For both nasals and /l/ the cluster vs. prefix (*s/s-) must be reconstructed for PC and probably also for AC, with the proviso that the cluster form was always palatalized ( *snf, *snj-, *smj[rare] and sl{-) except for *s!}-, where the shift was to n- (palatalized: *s!J/h-), paralleling sg'/d'- (Table 6); cf. 94 PTB *!]fa, a•]y: WB lJai ~'small, little"; f7l S-!]ieg/!Jiei "young and weak"(< *-1Ja·y; Benedict 1977) and (etym. s. w.) ff id. "fawn" (the m- forms are distinct); 5G syfeg/ni /i/ ,. shift (an apparent Chu feature;see 51 "tiger"). For TB add Chepang lah; Rawang (Nungish) sala; PK has *PlaA. 32 "night/evening" (above): Chepang ya-di!J "night" (cf. hnidi!J "afternoon") but dyah-may "tonight" (unanalyzed); WB na' < *ne-ya' (ne "sun"); Trung (Nungish)jya; Lu. zan < *yan < *ya-n; Mk.j6 < *y6 < *ya;PKhas *Pyac (distinctive "3rd tone"). 59 "hundred" (above): s p-gla,k/pvk< *s-b-gr/y]a;Rawang ra ~ ya, Trung sya: Nungish *(s-}rya; Lu. za < *ya; Mk. phar6 < *s-b-r/y}a but WB Pa-ra (< *Pa-ryaA ); PK ••ryaA, but note the ~

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Wang Li Memorial Volume

early loans to MK: P-Waic *ryah and especially Riang-Palaung *parya? < *s-brya, the prototype for Mk. phar6 ! 112 PTB *(s-)ba: Chepang bah "brother-in-law"; WB Pa-pa: (< *-baB) "elf. for dignitaries"; fS pak/pvk (< *s-ba) 32 "eldest brother" ➔ "lord/chief'; also-il'i(loan) pag/pa- "take the lead, have hegemony" (cf. Eng. "to lord it over"). 113 PTB *(m-)aB ~ *(s-)aB ''dumb (mute)": Jg. maa; Lu. a but WT ?a'< *s-aB; PK ?-a? (assim.); m?ag/?a: "id."< *s-a. 114 PTB *(s-)taB "put/place": WT sta(-d); WB tha: < PBL *staB (cluster); % tio/tiwo- "place, order of place, position" < *s-ta+ (palatalized [late], with nominalizing suffix, hence reg. A

A

*-a > -o shift) ~ tiak/iiak < *s-ta "to place, put, apply" (GSR notes, "The same character applied to another word of similar meaning"!). 115 PTB *baB "thin": l:J b 'a.k/b 'ak (loan) "id." < *s-b 'a.k (< *s-ba), as shown conclusively by P-Min *s-bok; this character also originally had another reading: *b 'wo/b 'uo :, the unprefixed cognate of PTB/PST *baB, giving rise to the confusing double readings in GSR-771 and to its connections with -102 (phonetic 'Si:. b'iwo/b'iu:) (thus, for if p'a.g/p'uo [GSR] (loan) "vast" one must read: p'o/p'uo: = ~ "id."); note final ..fik rather than the -akin 59 and 112 but LTP had ..fik (➔ P-Tai *-aak) in 59 (Table 2), A

indicating a dialectical origin for this -ak vs. -ak contrast. 116 PTB *daA: WB ta "rope, cord, string" (obs.); id. "measure with a ta," ?a-ta "measure of length (several cubits)"; tit d'o/ d'uo- "measure of length [about same as in WB]" < *da+ (with nominalizing suffix)~ d'ak/d'fik < *s-d'ak (< *s-da) "to measure" (early loan to Tai: P-Tai *daak, 'id'.). There is a precise parallelism here with 114, even as to the nominalizing suffix(➔ qusheng) and the GSR series involved (-801) reflects double readings, as in both 114 and 115; again one must correct GSR and read d'o/d'uo- for d ag/d 'uo-, thus making sense of the otherwise inexplicable 117 ill d'o/d'uo- [GSR d'ag/d'uo-] "to ford"; PTB *(a-)da: WT 'da-ba "pass over; travel over"; WB thamta: ( -0 after labials) as expected, is reflected in the early loans (on tone corresp. to qusheng): P-Kam-Sui 'i:dac "go across" and P-Tai id. "ford" ➔ "landing place" ➔ "bank" ➔ "stream/river." 118 PTB *(s-)gla "fall"; WB kya'; Lu. tla(k); Mk. k/6; BG *glaP: Garo gaPak, Dim. galai (< *galat); t~ glak/lak "shed leaves; drop, fall, perish," with *s- > q,- before original (PST) cluster *gl-, contrasting with retention before *g-l- (Nos. 108, 109). 1 "eat/food" (above): PTB *dzyaB "eat"~ *dzyaA "food"; it dzjag/zi- "food" < *[ d] za+ (reg. vowel shift after z-, with nominalizing suffix) ~ flcfak/dzcjak "eat"< *s-dcfak (< *s-dcja), with conclusive support again from Min: West. *s-dzie[k] (corresp. to AC/MC s-dtciak/dtciak) ~ East. *s-dziak (corresp. to AC/MC *s-dzcjak/dtcjvk), showing doublet rhyme development from *s-dzcja. 119 PTB *nayA "sun": WB ne; Lu. n{; Mk. (ar)n1; also PK *niA "day"; also PTB *s-nayA "day": Jg. sanf; WBne'but Chepang hni-di'!] "afternoon"< *sni- (cluster); B [s-]njet/n{et "sun; day" but P-Min *(x)nit (cluster) (see above). 120 PTB *(s-)hwa·yB "blood": either unprefixed (Chepang wayP; Mk. wf) or from cluster *s: WB swe:; Rawang sf; Lu. thl< *s[hw]iB; PK *swiB; .Jfn. s-xiwet/xiwet "id."(phoneticin 'l:lfil. sjwet/ sjuet "solicitude"). 121 PTB *(s-)leyA (STC: *s-lay) "tongue": Lu. lei but Mk. de < *s-ley (cf. the AC/MC shift!); Jg. shJli (couplet)< *s-a-ley (with /Pa/ ➔ nasalized) ~ si'!]let (reg. word; cf. the AC/MC final!); ,§- /s-lliat/dz'iat < *-let (reg. vowel shift) "id.", with even more revealing support from P-Min, for which the identical form (*sliat) must be reconstructed (!): East. *dziat but West. *lie[t] (Kienyang, Kienow lie), along with the doublet corresponding to *s-liad/liai-, based on Putian lei- (written lff!J ), from *[s-Jley without showing the special *s- > -k ~ -t effect. Although no comparative data are at hand, the following double reading shows that prefixed *s- also yielded final *-k after A

"

A

A

62

Wang Li Memorial Volume

*/u/, in this instance as a doublet: ~ glju/lju "drag" is phonetic in GSR-123, which includes fk s-glju/sju - "number; some, several" ~ s-glju/siu: "to count"; also read s-gluk/~;;k "a number of times, frequently" but considered "another word" by Karlgren and placed in separate series (-1207). Other doublets of this kind have been turned up and it is anticipated that continuing study of AG will reveal a complete pattern along these lines. It also appears that at least some of the shifts in final from velar to dental, also from nasal to stop, of the kind frequently encountered in the ST area generally, will eventually be shown to reflect prefixed *s-, e.g. 42 (above) PTB/PST *r-mi1JA "name" (generally) but one must recognize a *s-min (< *s-mi!J) doublet at the PST level on the basis of WB min' "command"; CT *min "name". MK. men (< *s-min), id.; PK *menA 'id.'; %' m£en/ "order, command; name," an alternative AC reading for the regular mlfay/ and a doublet of the unprefixed form: 1'; m£ey/mja!J "name." Notes 1. PTB forms cited from STC; Chinese forms cited as AC/MC; tones in TB generally not indicated (where not under discussion); for Chinese: A pmg; B shang; C qu. Abbreviations: AC Archaic Chinese;AD Analytic Dictionary (Karlgren); AT Austro-Thai; BG Bodo-Garo; BL Burmese-Lolo; CT ChangTangsa (STC: 'Konyak' group); Dim. Dimasa; CSR Grammata Serica Recensa (Karlgren); GY Guangyun; Jg. Jinghpaw; K Karen; Lp. Lepcha; LPT L(oans) to P(roto)-T(ai) (early Chinese dial.); Lu. Lushai; MC Middle Chinese; Mk. Milcir; MK Mon-Khmer; N. Northern; OC Old Chinese; P Proto-; PC ProtoChinese; ST Sino-Tibetan; STAL (see Benedict 1976a); STC (see Benedict 1972); T. Tibetan; TB Tibeto-Burman; WB Written Burmese; WT Written Tibetan. 2. See STAL for the lexicostatistical evidence here; the position of Karen remains indeterminate. 3. As pointed out in the excellent summary by K. Chang (1974), the chbng-niu doublets of the Qieyun apparently reflect significant Shijing (AC)

Archaic Chinese Initials

63

•rhyme distinctions not shown in GSR. The Min evidence strongly indicates that many forms reconstructed in GSR with -a (rare), -a or -ia rhyme were derived from earlier closed syllables (cf. 65 "hang down") but it is not at all clear that the AC forms themselves should be so reconstructed, e.g. PST medial vocalic length might have led to simple loss of certain finals in AC. In any event, as is usually the case in these alternative reconstruction systems for AC, the PST scheme of rhymes itself is not necessarily affected. 4. The *r- and *sf?~ are used here for convenience since the systems are not entirely distinct. The GSR makes some use of *s- (but not with stops) while both Li and Bodman make a broader use of *s- but in combination with *-r- and without setting up a prefix vs. cluster contrast. Bodman and the writer independently (1974, 1974) hit upon the AC/MC s-k/r- and s-kh/xshifts but Bodman has not (at last report) accepted the writer's s-g/s- nor the cluster shifts and the?~ reconstructions (see text). 5. The writer (1978) has attempted to show that many features labeled as "obscure" or the like in GSR can be explained in terms of hidden phonetic elements ("cryptoglyphs"); thus, the ubiquitous "tiger" lurking about through the pages of GSR conceals no fewer than three distinct AC forms for "tiger" in addition to the early MK loan that finally prevailed in the language (see 51): R s-gf.eg/sit;. "place name" (Zuozhuan) < *s-gay (Benedict 1977), a doublet of the "tiger" calendrical term: W sgtar/i < *s-gay ( cf. the PTB doublet: *d-gay ~ *d-kay [STC: *d-key ~ *d-gey] "tiger"~ *s-gay [WB in comp. "leopard"]), also read sgjan.Jjen, representing the "collective" plural -n form (STC: fn. 428) (see text below for the initial; also cf. [from same GSR-450 series} iJi and 1rr sgj_a.n/iji,n: "flow out," the latter phonetic in 'lit. k'jan/k'iji,n "exceed"), an early loan to Yao (P-Yao *gian "tiger") and cryptoglyphic (< *gey-n) in ~ g'jan/g'jjin "kill, cut" and'il,s-yjiin/gjrm "boiler";l:its-k'jiin/xivn- "boiler"; a third, unrelated cryptoglyph is found in~ kwiik/kwok "place name" (Zuozhuan); cf. N. Tai *kuuk "tiger," probably from an earlier *kuak (*/uu/ < */ua/ is reg. shift). 6. Perhaps the major unsolved xiesheng problem is the commingling of initial mj- and nf- forms in several series/sets, e.g. ffl. njlir/nje: "adv. suffix/ particle" phonetic in ~ mjlir/myit;.: "finish"; lf njag/ni: "ear" phonetic in slj: mjlir/myitJ.: "bow [type]" (see STAL: fn. 17 for finals);~ mfog/m!!!_u~mug/ Tl1fU "kind of lance" phonetic in~njf>g/nJ:i.u "flexible" (the allofamic relationships preclude the solution: m-nj/mJ.-).

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Wang Li Memorial Volume

7. The *B ~ *A variation reflects a pattern that can be set up for PTB and perhaps even PST (Benedict 1980). Continuing analysis of the various reflexes ( often palatals/sibilants) for the initial of this root has shown that the reconstruction should be PTB/PST *dzya rather than the *dza of STC. This form yielded the AC doublet through the loss of either the */z/ (*dzy- > d'y- > d'dt-) or of the */d/ (*dzy- > *zy- > dzf-), the latter with typical secondary obstruent (see below). 8. The dental or palatal clusters with */r/ for PTB are very much open to question. STC suggests initial *er- for three roots but in two of these ("mortar" and "count") the initial can be set up simply as *ts-, with Jg. ththe regular reflex( for *tsh-, lacking in Jg.). STC (fn. 68) also suggests initial *tr- for "weave" but this root is better reconstructed *(r-)tak (fn. 15). Initial *dr- is set up for one root (*drup "sew") in STC but here, as in the case of the initial *s- + r/1 clusters, it is exceedingly difficult to rule out prefixed *d- + initial *r-. 9. Cf. Table 2 for the gl- cluster; WT has d,ug "six," with prefixed *d- as found also in several other TB groups, but Nungish vacillates between *d- and *k- while Magari kruk, Digaro taxro, Jg. kfur < *kruk and WB khrok < *khruk (poss. < *skruk) all reflect the latter; additionally, the "doubleprefix" is definitely found in PK ( *s-kr- ~ *skr-; see Benedict 1981) and must be reconstructed for LPT: *s-k'rok > *xrok in view of the early loan to Tai: P-Tai *xrok. Thus (contra STC) it can be argued that prefixed *k- (or *g-) should be set up at the PST level for this root, With *d- a replacement, paralleling Kuki-Naga *d-riat "eight" for TB (generally) *(-)g-ryat, id. 10. There are only a handful of final -b forms in CSR, all evidently of secondary origin; cf. 26. PTB *nu·p "enter" ➔ "sink/set (sun)"; 0l nap/nap "to bring in" ~ nwc1b > nwc1d/nuai- "interior, inside, inner, in," also "enter" as loan for J... njap/fzjap "enter; bring in, present," from *nup ~ *nu-p, with secondary voicing after medial vowel length, a regular feature of AC (Benedict 1977). 11. It is possible, as suggested in STC (fn. 486), that MC and the modern dialects, which in some respects represent collateral branches rather than direct descendants of AC, have not undergone a "circular" development such as *-w (PST) > *-g (AC)> -w but have simply maintained final -w (or -u). Against this view, however, stands the fact, in the case of final dental, that the Qieyun distinguishes between the rhymes ~If/ and ~, Nos. 124 and 125

Archaic Chinese Initials

65

of Karlgren's Compendium; he reconstructs both as -i but points out (p. 263) that the former comprises exclusively words ending in AC -d and -r, the latter exclusively words ending in AC -g; this strongly suggests that -d (but not -g) lingered on into the MC period:M~-id vs.Z-i, paralleling another rhyme:

:R:

-ad (No. 49), which Karlgren was unable to disambiguate from No. 47: {i -ai

(p. 243, fn. 1). 12. The MC j- of GSR is in complementary distribution with f-, occurring only before /ii; Karlgren points out that some of his j- forms were spelled with¥- in the Qieyun, leading him to set up an intermediate /¥i-/ stage. The g- reconstruction for AC is supported by the doublet in the following root: 27 PTB *{d-)gwam (for STC *d-wam); !/~ gjum/rjuy (*-m maintained in Min) but modern dialects have reflexes for AC *g'jum/, showing the regular initial correspondence. AC shows a similar loss of aspiration, along with secondary voicing, in a root with the parallel initial cluster *kw-: 28 PTB *kwar: CT *khuar "skin" ➔ "leather/bark"; Rawang (Nungish) kur "(comp.) bark"; Tangkhul and Maring (Kuki-Naga) kor, id.; Dim. (BG) bugur< *b-gur "(its-) skin" (sao-gur "human skin," mi-gur "animal skin/hide"); -1t;. gjw?- prefix as in 63 (Pbiwo/: "parrot" < *Pbya) and cf. also 71. PTB *dyol: WT iol-g-yag ''yak [g-yag] -bull" (cf. ra-ma zol-mo "long-haired goat");f°!f.Pdjwan/njuen "ox 7 ft. high" (phonetic (abbrev.] is!!1-djwan/ijuen) < PST *(a-)dyol; cf. also.(loan) tiap/tiep "paralyzed, unable to move" andf/JfC1djap/njiip "legs sticking together, unable to walk" (from fear? cf. 73); also ~ tied/ts-i- "arrive, come" and (belongs in same GSR-413 series)¥¥?df_et/n{et "c~me, arrive." AC probably also had Pt- and/ or ?t'-, on the basis of analogy with WT, yielding t-, t'- (hence hardly reconstructable). 25. To illustrate this general point, STAL (p. 183) cites ~ sk'J.eg/i'je!J

68

Wang Li Memorial Volume

"red," a lonely dental-initial entry in a long series (GSR-831) made up otherwise entirely of velar-initial forms, and compares it with 85 PTB *(s-)kye!J "id.": WT skye!}- "to be ashamed," Jg. khye!} ~ ce!J "red, crimson"; Bodman (p. 111) reconstructs with -/-, noting "JP [= Jg.] has no-/- clusters". One can hardly quarrel with this note since PTB */1/ clusters yielded /r/ clusters in Jg. (STC: 41) while PST */y/ clusters typically yielded palatalized doublets in Jg. (STC: 51); Jg. "red" falls in the latter category! 26. Additional possibilies for PC are *?sy- and *?s-y, providing a basis for the AC ts- ~ ts'- reflex for PST initial *y- (esp. ts'-, as in 35 and 36). It is also possible that *?sl/t- should be set up for AC itself in view of the cluster of likely TB cognates (and, the initial x- form) associated with GSR-413 (see the analysis in STAL: 191) but note the ?d/n- form (cited in fn. 24) connected with the same series. 27. This series (-90) also includes ~ "son-in-law," to be reconstructed sgjo/[ sjwoj ~ [ s-giegj/siei (GSR notes the "very enigmatic" MC /siei), which illustrates AC doublet formation after *s ~ g- or *sg- as a result of conflicting effects of initial upon rhyme ( e.g. final *-a > -o after initial *g- but > -jag after initial *s-), in this case probably from an earlier *s-gja < *s-gla; cf. WT gla "wages," gla-pa "hired workman" in a context of the TB institution of son-in-law service (note WT bag-po "bridegroom"; Miri pag-bo "male slave or servant"); cf. also 98 PTB *ga "lst pers. prn.": Lp. and Vayugo < *ga; ~ sgjo/jwo and 'S sgfag/i "id." < PST *(s-)ga; also (without the doublet): PTB *(s-)ga "chin": Lp. (ta-)ga; Bodo khu-ga, Dim. khu-sga (khu "mouth"); mi sgjag/i "id."< PST *(s-)ga. 28. See STAL: fn. 17 for AC final -r ~ -g variation; *sljar is the anticipated form here. Perhaps some early Chinese dialect had -jag rather than -jar for final *-il, providing a basis for replacement of the "regular" -jar in this form; note that the Western forms of this ancient "culture word" show a similar variation between -r (Gr.a'lP'"oa, L. sericus) and -1 (Eng. silk< OE. sioloc, for an earlier *siluc), as if derived ultimately from two distinct early Chinese "traditions"! 29. These are to be distinguished from *s/s- with velar + /1/ forms, sometimes representing earlier */r/ clusters; cf. 105 )U!l s-k'ljwar/xyw(}_i: "snakebrood"; PTB/PST *s-khrway: Lu. thuz < *s-khrui (see below) "brood, litter, clutch"; 106 ~ id. (loan) "sound of thunder": PTB *s-krul: WB khyun: ~ khyun: (< *skrun:) "to roar, thunder"; also (~ */o/ doublet) WT khrol

Iii

I

Archaic Chinese Initials

69

"sound," 'khrol-ba "cause to sound, resound"; 107: ~ klfii!J/kjD!]: "bright; shadow"; J; s-kljft!J/?jv!J: "shadow" (GSR assigns toseparate -756 series!); PTB/PST *(s-)kri!J: WB kran (< *-kri!J) "clear, bright"; Dim. sigri!J "shadow," from *s-kri!J (second. voicing, with vocalic harmony; cf. No. 78); for the semantics, cf. P-Tai *!lawA "shadow, shade/light, brightness": Khamti !Jaw "shadow; light (agent of force in nature by action of which upon organs of sight objects from which it precedes are rendered invisible)." 30. This is especially striking in the case of PTB *(s) (g-ftaA "spirit/god," homophonous (etym. s. w.?) with "moon" (108) and remaining so both in Garo and in CT but handled differently in WT: hla < *sla (without */g/) (contrast 100 "cherry") and in Lu.: thlii < *sglaA (cluster; contrast "moon"). 31. The -o ~ -ak (~ -jak) doublet, from unprefixed ~ *s- prefixed root (see Notes. 114, 115 and 116), also explains the puzzling j"'@, g'ak/'fak "to become dry" (see STC: 105 WT has s- indicating "general direction into the condition or state named by the verb root itself," e.g. skra1-ba "become swollen, swell," S!JO·ba "become green"), from *s-ga, with lfi! ko/kuo- "strong" as phonetic(!); the "hidden" doublet here is *g'o < *ga, itself a doublet of t-t k'o/k'uo < *ka "withered, dried up." 32. See STAL: 181 for other evidence for the *s-b (> *sb-) > p-; in at least one form the *s- has been maintained before palatalized */b/: ~ s-bjet/ sjet "lute"; (loan) "rustling of the wind" (phonetic is £', pfet/pjet); this word perhaps offers yet another example of final-t after prefixed *s- (front vowel); cf. MC if fa! b'yi-b'a "guitar" (AD); for the loan cf. 'Pef pjet/p{et "rushing of the wind"; perhaps also WT sbrid-pa "sneeze."

References

Benedict, P.K. 1948. "Archaic Chinese *g and *d," HJAS 11. 197-206. _ _ _ . 1972. Sino-Tibetan: A Conspectus. Cambridge Univ. Press. _ _ _ . 1974. "The Chinese s- orgy," paper presented at 7th ST Conf. Atlanta, Ga. _ _ _ . 1975. Austro-Thai: Language and Culture. New Haven: HRAF Press. - - - · 1976a. "Sino-Tibetan: another look" JAOS 96. 167-97. _ _ _ . 1976b. "Early Chinese borrowings," Papers for the 1st Japan-US

70 Wang Li Memorial Volume

Joint Seminar on East and Southeast Asian Linguistics. Tokyo. _ _ _ . 197 6c. "Archaic Chinese affixation patternst paper presented at 9th ST Conf. Copenhagen. _ _ _ . 1977. "PST vowels," paper presented at 10th ST Conf. Washington, D.C. _ _ _ . 1978. "Chinese cryptoglyphics," paper presented at 11 th ST Conf. Tucson, Az. _ _ _ . 1979a. "Four forays into Karen Linguistic History: II. A note on the reconstruction of Karen final *-s. Ling. Tib.-Burm.," Area 5. 13-20. _ _ _ . 1979b. "Austroasiatic loanwords in Sino-Tibetan," paper presented at Symposium on Austroasiatic Linguistics. Helsingqir, Denmark. _ _ _ . 1980. "The PST tone/accent system: additional TB data," paper presented at 13th ST Conf. Charlottesville, Va. _ _ _ . 1981. "TB/Karen cluster vs. prefix *s-," paper presented at 14th ST Conf. Gainesville, Fia. Bodman, N. 1974. "Some random comments onPaulBenedict'sTheChinese s- orgy," paper presented at the 7th ST Conf. Atlanta, Ga. _ _ _ . 1980. "Proto-Chinese and Sino-Tibetan," in Coetsem, F. and L. Waugh eds. Contributions to Historical Linguistics. Lieden: E.J. Brill. Chang, K. 1967. "A comparative study of the southern Ch'iang ~ dialects," MS 26. 420-44. _ _ _ . 1974. "Ancient Chinese phonology and the Ch'ieh yun," Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, New Series 10. 61-82. Dobson, W. 1964. "Linguistic evidence and the dating of the Book ofSongs," T'oung Pao 51: 322-34. Li, F.K. 1971. "Shang-gil-yin yan-jiu (Studies on Archaic Chinese Phonology)," Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, New Series 9. 1-61. Matisoff, H. 197 5. "Rhinoglottophilia: the mysterious connection between nasality and glottality," in C.F. Ferguson ed. Nasalfest. Stanford Univ. Press. pp. 265-87. _ _ _ . 1979. "Problems and progress in Lolo-Burmese: quo vadimus?" LTBA 4, 2. 11-43 (paper presented at the 6th ST Conf. San Diego, 1973). Nakajima, M. 1979. A ComparativeLexiconofFukienDialects(inJapanese). Tokyo. Norman, J. 1969. The Kienyang Duzlect of Fukien. Univ. Calif. Ph.D. diss. _ _ _ . 1973. "Tonal development in Min," J. Chinese Ling. 1. 222,38.

Archaic Chinese Initials 71

_ _ _ . 1974. "The initials of Proto-Min," J. Chinese Ling. 2. 27-36. Thurgood, G. 1976. The origins ofBurmese creaky tone. Univ. Calif. Ph.D. diss. Yang, P .F .M. 197 6a. "Prefix *s- and *SK-, *SKL- clusters in Proto-Chinese (PC): Part I. Prefix *s- and *SK- clusters." Papers for the 1st Japan-US Joint Seminar on East and Southeast Asian Linguistics. Tokyo. _ _ _ . 1976b. "Prefix *s- and -SK- clusters in Proto-Chinese (PC): Part II. Prefix *s- and *SKL- clusters," paper presented at 9th ST Conf. Copenhagen. _ _ _ . 1977. "Proto-Chinese *S-KL and Tibeto-Burman equivalents," paper presented at 10th ST Conf. Washington, D.C. _ _ _ . 1978. "Proto-Chinese *SK- and Tibeto-Burmanequivalents," paper presented at 11 th ST Conf. Tucson, Az. _ _ _ . 1979. "Traces of Proto-Chinese bilabial prefixes in Archaic and Modem Chinese," paper presented at 12th ST Conf. Paris. _ _ _ . 1981. "Proto-Min and Proto-Chinese *s-: a preliminary study," paper presented at 14th ST Conf. Gainesville, Fla.

·1·...

.. ~,

l'i ~

~

i

I Ii 1~ ii ,!i

['j

A Quantification of Chinese Dialect Affinity Chin-Chuan Cheng University of Illinois

Although there have been many studies on how Chinese dialects relate to each other on the basis of a handful of phonological changes within the framework of traditional historical linguistics, few have attempted to quantify the degrees of closeness. This paper presents a method of quantification of Chinese dialect affinity in terms of lexical items. The data consist of 905 words listed in the Hanyu Fangyan Cihui compiled by linguists in Peking. The corresponding forms in 18 dialects (Beijing, Jinan, Shenyang, Xi'an, Chengdu, Kunming, Hefei, Yangzhou, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Changsha, Nanchang, Meixian, Guangzhou, Yangjiang, Xiamen, Chaozhou and Fuzhou) from the book have been tabulated. These forms in relation to the dialects were dichotomized as either presence or absence. Then contingency tables of each pair of dialects were constructed, and Pearson's Product-Moment in statistics was applied to them to obtain the cross-correlation among the dialects. The correlation coefficients are considered the degrees of closeness. The coefficients are utilized to subgroup the dialects. The derived subgrouping is compared with known facts in Chinese linguistics. Further applications of the method and the coefficients as indices of distance are discussed. *

*

*

74 Wang Li Memorial Volume

1.

Dialect Distance As early as 1935, Professor Wang Li grouped Chinese dialects

into Mandarin, Wu, Min, Yue, and Kejia (Wang Li 1935). His grouping was mainly based on the existence of voiced obstruents; the presence or absence of syllable endings - m, - p, - t, - k; and the number of tones. Professor Li Fang-kuei's 193 7 classification was also made on the basis of these phonological characteristics. 1 Thanks to the successful work of Chinese linguists in the past, phonological details of speech in many localities are generally available. In Professor Yuan Jiahua's (1960) momumental work, Northern Dialects (including Northern Mandarin, Northwestern Mandarin, Southwestern Mandarin, and Xiajiang or Eastern Mandarin), Wu, Xiang, Gan, Kejia, Yue, Northern Min, and Southern Min are established and well documented. Dialect grouping or subgrouping provides us with the information that some speech communities share or do not share certain linguistic features. We are thus able to differentiate the varieties in a systematic way. However, these distinct dialects are actually related. Indeed, the relatedness can be demonstrated by the sharing of various characteristics. Yet, the DEGREES of closeness among the dialects and among the varieties within the dialects have not been well studied. For example, there are no readily available indices for determining whether Kejia as spoken in Meixian is closer to Gan than it is to Yue or whether Xi'an is closer to Ji'nan than to Beijing. One of the objectives of science is to express things in terms of verifiable measurements. It will be further progress in linguistics if we are able to precisely quantify dialect affinity. Indeed, Wang Yude (1960) was the first scholar to attempt to apply glottochronological methods to quantify closeness or remoteness of Chinese dialects. His work, however, is limited to five dialects and the validity of many assumptions in glottochronology is doubtful. In this paper, I will present another method to measure the distance of Chinese dialects on the basis of lexical items. Specifically, the statistician Karl Pearson's product-

I

r

A Quantification of Chinese Dialect Afrmity 7 5

moment correlation coefficients are used to measure the degrees of association among the varieties of dialects as given in the Hanyu Fangyan Cihui (Beijing.University 1964).

2.

Lexical Correlation Syntactic features, phonological characteristics, and lexical cognates are used by linguists as well as by speakers of a dialect who come into language contact with speakers of another dialect to determine dialect relationships. Let us examine how lexical items facilitate such a task. Take the words "sun" and "moon" as an example. According to Hanyu Fangyan Cihui these words exist in the following dialects as give in (1): 2 (1)

Beijing Jinan Suzhou Changsha Nanchang Meixian Guangzhou Xiamen Fuzhou

sun *~i t'ai iao *~i t'E iao *~i t'oiao Bl/j rp.1? d-y *~i t'ai ian B jjj z1 t~u B l/j qit t'EU ~Ml qiat t'Eu iMJjit t'uu B lit B lil lit t'au B l/j ni? lau

moon J=I 1c ye Hao J=I 1c ye Hao J=I 1c O'Y?liao J=I 1c ye lian J=I 1t IJ,fat kuoo J=I -ft. ~iat kuoo J=I 1t jyt kwou ge? J=I J=I ~ ge? ouo J=I

ruu

As shown in (1 ), some dialects have more than one word for the same meaning. The sounds vary across the dialects. But internal phonological patterning and historical correspondences allow us to identify cognates. The Hanyu Fangyan Cihui has identified the cognates and indicates such with Chinese characters. Thus on.the basis of (1 ), we can begin to group the dialects. For example,

76

Wang Li Memorial Volume

the words -:t.J:!hnd J'l ,}t, are used in Beijing, Jinan, :Suzhou, and Changsha, and hence these dialects can be considered to form a group as opposed to the other dialects which do not share these words. Meixian and Guangzhou share ~MJi , and hence can be considered closer to each other than they are to the others. However, as we examine the word Fl 1t , we see that Nanchang, Meixian, and Guangzhou form a group. The grouping established on the basis of l\":M!i therefore has to be reconciled. As more words are taken into consideration, the relationships among the dialects are not a matter of existence or nonexistence but a matter of degree. Counting common vocabulary items is an obvious and old method for subgrouping. But in order to process a large amount of data, a rigorous formulation is necessary. In my view, it is precisely the degrees of association among dialects that need to be seriously studied at this stage of the development of Chinese dialectology. In order to derive the degrees of association among dialects, cognate data have to be transformed in a certain way. The basis for the grouping discussed above is the existence or nonexistence of forms for certain meanings. The words in relation to the dialects are dichotomized as either presence or absence. If we consistently use "l" for presence and "O" for absence, then (1) can be transformed into (2), where the dialects are listed in columns and the words in rows. (2)

Beijing Jinan Suzhou Changsha Meixian Guangzhou Xiamen Fuzhou

1

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

0

0

1

1

r.MRO El 0

0

0

0

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

Ji '.ft 1 J'l 1t 0 J'l 0

1

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

~No

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

:k~:/11 B~]!O

y:i

A Quantification of Chinese Dialect Affinity 77

The arrangement in (2) shows clearly that Beijing and Jinan, Suzhou and Changsha, and Meixian and Guangzhou are perfectly correlated. That is, when a "l" or "0" appears in a dialect, it also appears in the other of the pair. Other pairs, on the other hand, do not exhibit such a relationship. To find the degree of association between two dialects, 2 x 2 tables can be constructed to show (a) the number of words scoring 0 on a dialect and I on the other, (b) the number of words scoring 1 on both dialects, (c) the number of words scoring 0 on both dialects, and (d) the number of words scoring I on a dialect and 0 on the other. For example, on the basis of (2), the contingency tables for the pairs BeijingJinan, Beijing-Meixian and Xiamen-Fuzhou are given in (3). Beijing

Beijing

(3)

I

0 i:::

c;,:j

1

..... 0 ...... i:::

0(a) 6(c)

0

2(b) 0(d)

i:::

.....:>< 1 2(a) ..... c;,:j

(J)

~

0

4(c)

1 0(b) 2(d)

Xiamen ::I

0 ..Q N

::I

~

0

1

1

0(a)

2(b)

0

4(c)

2(d)

The correlation of the two variables, dialects in our case, of each pair can be calculated by using equation (4 ), which was first derived by the statistician Karl Pearson in 1901. 3 (4)

phi

=

v

be - ad (a+ c)(b + d)(a + b)(c + d)

The correlation coefficient so derived is the phi coefficient in statistics. Its value varies from+ I to -1. It indicates both the direction and the strength of relationship between two variables. The sign indicates that the two variables are either positively or negatively correlated. The value 0 means that the two variables are not correlated. The higher the value, the stronger the association. The correlation equation applied to the contingency tables in (3) yields the results in (5).

78 Wang Li Memorial Volume

(5) Beijing-Jinan correlation coefficient: Beijing-Meixian correlation coefficient: Xiamen-Fuzhou correlation coefficient:

1.0000 ~0.3333 0.5774

Since Beijing and Jinan have the same words as shown in ( 1), they are perfectly correlated. Xiamen and Fuzhou are closer related (0.5774) than Beijing and Meixian (-0.3333). Since these coefficients are derived on the basis of 8 lexical items only, they have no useful generality for measuring the degrees of relationship among these dialects. What I have presented so far is only an illustration of the quantification procedures used in this study. The data base and the calculation procedures are presented below. The Hanyu Fangyan Cihui contains 905 words in Putonghua. Each page contains 2 words. Under each word the corresponding items in 18 localities are listed in Chinese characters as well as in phonetic forms. As said before, the charac~ers represent the identified cognate words. In (1) we presented ~nly some of the dialects for illustration. In order to describe the data base for this study fully, let us look at the word "moon" again. Listed in (6) are all the 18 dialects and the various forms of this word in Chinese characters, phonetic transcriptions being omitted here. (6) Beijing

Jinan Shenyang Xi'an Chengdu Kunming Hefei Yangzhou Suzhou Wenzhou

J=I 'iC

Ji% ~'ie R '.Tt fJ '.TC ~1c

Ji~ Ji ~ . '.TC Ji -"f

Changsha Nanchang Meixian Guangzhou Yangjiang Xiamen Chaozhou Fuzhou

Ji '.TC Ji 1t Ji 1t JB't Ji '.TC Ji . Ji ~i J=l , J=HN

Ji

R '.Tt Ji 1t

All the Chinese dialect groups are represented here. Beijing, Jinan,

r A Quantification of Chinese Dialect Affinity 79

and Shenyang represent the Northern Mandarin group, Xi'an the Northwestern Mandarin, Chengdu and Kunming the Southwestern Mandarin, Hefei and Yangzhou the Eastern Mandarin, Suzhou and Wenzhou the Wu, Changsha the Xiang, Nanchang the Gan, Meixian the Kejia, Guangzhou and Yangjiang the Yue, Xiamen and Chaozhou the Southern Min, and Fuzhou the Northern Min group. In preparing the daia for computer processing, each distinct item, judged on the basis of morpheme identification as represented in Chinese characters, was treated as an entry of which the occurrence or nonoccurrence in each dialect was marked "1" or "0". Thus the 5 words corresponding to the Putonghua yueliang ( J=1 1c, 1c -f- , 1t , ffi ) were treated as 5 distinct words and thus the presence or absence in each dialect was marked "1 " or "0" as in (7). J=I

J=l

(7) 00lB0l 001B02 001 B03 001 B04 001B05

J=I

,

J=I

111111111010001000 000000010000000000 000000000101110000 000000000000000111 000000000000000110

The first three digits coded the page number, page 1 in this case. The next letter, "A" or "B", represented the first or the second half of the page where the word was found. The next two columns were for the distinct words coded in an arbitrary sequence beginning with "01 ". After the space in the seventh column, the "1" or "0" mark was given for each of the dialects Beijing, Jinan, Shenyang, etc. in the sequence as shown in (6). Of the 905 Putonghua words, there are a total of 6,454 items for the dialects. All the 6,454 items were coded in the same way as just described. In the Hanyu Fangyan Cihui, these words are grouped into nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, measure words, adverbs, and prepositions and connectives. Correlation coefficients were obtained for these individual categories as well as for the

80

Wang Li Memorial Volume

entire data. The SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) computer package was used to run the statistics. 4 The phi coefficient, discussed above, is the Pearson product-moment-correlation coefficient calculated on nominal-dichotomous-data. 5 Therefore in ~he actual computer run the product-moment coefficient equation given in (8) was used (see Nie et al 1975). L~l XiYi - (L~=l Xi)(L~l Yi)/N

(8) {[L~=l

x~ -

(L~l

xy /N]

[L~l y~ - (L:':1 Y) 2 /N]}

½

where X and Y are scores of words on two dialects whose degree of association is being calculated. The correlation coefficients for the individual categories of nouns, verbs, etc. will not be discussed in this paper because of space limitation. The correlation coefficients for pairs of the 18 dialects thus computed with the entire data are given in Tables la and lb. The level of significance computed is .001. That is, the correlation due to chance is statistically insignificant. The coefficients indicate strength of association. The higher the value of the coefficient is the closer the related dialects in terms of the lexicon. To illustrate the use of the tables, let us now answer the question whether Xi'an is closer to Beijing or to Jinan. We look at line 4 of Table la and find Xi'an heading the row. Its correlation coefficients with the other dialects are listed across and on to Table 1b. In Table I a we find its correlation coefficient with Beijing to be 0.6108 and its coefficient with Jinan to be 0.6076. The answer to the question is Xi'an is closer to Beijing. Thus we have provided quantitative indices to dialect affinity in term of the lexicon. The distance among the dialects can be ranked according to the coefficients. Take Beijing for instance, the dialect closest to it is Shenyang; the next closest is Jinan; the next closest is Xi'an;

IF""

Jinan

.6715 1.0000 .6421 .6076 .4533 .5333 .5008 .5287 .3099 .2311 .4872 .4546 .2123 .2215 .1984 .1641 .1737 .2184

Beijing

Beijing 1.0000 Jinan .6715 Shenyang .6983 Xi'an .6108 Chengdu .4478 Kunming .4902 Hefei .4784 Yangzhou .5110 Suzhou .2891 Wenzhou .2179 Changsha .4613 Nanchang -~428 Meixian .2149 Guangzhou .2401 Yangjiang .2252 Xiamen .1987 Chaozhou .2136 Fuzhou .2693

.6983 .6421 1.0000 .5881 .4254 .4818 .4746 .4936 .2866 .2104 .4487 .4179 .1930 .2037 .1872 .1428 .1608 .1920

Shenyang

.6108 .6076 .5881 1.0000 .4874 .5455 .4993 .5396 .3169 .2211 .4836 .4475 .2013 .2090 .1807 .1332 .1396 .2014

Xi'an

.4478 .4533 .4254 .4874 1.0000 .5530 .4802 .5056 .2951 .2115 .4854 .4233 .1658 .1791 .1480 .0891 .0984 .1399

Chengdu

.4902 .5333 .4818 .5455 .5530 1.0000 .5431 .5731 .3547 .2492 .5383 .4767 .1931 .2204 .1955 .1248 .1290 .1613

Kunming

Table la: Lexical Correlation Coefficients

.4784 .5088 .4746 .4993 .4802 .5431 1.0000 .6014 .3432 .2342 .4836 .4732 .1772 .1993 .1832 .1069 .1190 .1489

.5110 .5287 .4936 .5396 .5056 .5731 .6014 1.0000 .4129 .2621 .5052 .5201 .1912 .2176 .1942 .1247 .1300 .1752

Hefei Yangzhou

.2891 .3099 .2866 .3169 .2951 .3547 .3432 .4129 1.0000 .3128 .3452 .3755 .1821 .1841 .1587 .0798 .0972 .1230

Suzhou

.,.,

1!111111!11!!1!!"""""""'""""""}"'""'==~,~,;.~

-~-...i:l!

:.:.:itm ,,....

Beijing Jinan Shenyang Xi'an Chengdu Kunming Hefei Yangzhou Suzhou Wenzhou Changsha Nanchang Meixian Guangzhou Yangjiang Xiamen Chaozhou Fuzhou

!I • -w=

.2179 .2311 .2104 .2211 .2115 .2492 .2342 .2621 .3128 1.0000 .2610 .2817 .1896 .1949 .1693 .1022 .1012 .1414

Wenzhou

:""SF:..:_.::,..___ -

.4613 .4872 .4487 .4836 .4854 .5383 .4836 .5052 .3452 .2610 1.0000 .5551 .2260 .2275 .2008 .1195 .1353 .1603

.4428 .4546 .4179 .4475 .4233 .4 767 .4732 .5201 .3755 .2817 .5551 1.0000 .2722 .2457 .2290 .1331 .1498 .1844

Changsha Nanchang .2149 .2123 .1930 .2013 .1658 .1931 .1772 .1912 .1821 .1896 .2260 .2722 1.0000 .3022 .2784 .1658 .1856 .1412

Meixian

.2401 .2215 .2037 .2090 .1791 .2204 .1993 .2176 .1841 .1949 .2275 .2457 .3022 1.0000 .4776 .1707 .2118 .1647

.2252 .1984 .1872 .1807 .1480 .1955 .1832 .1942 .1587 .1693 .2008 .2290 .2784 .4776 1.0000 .1860 .2158 .1568

Guangzhou Yangjiang

Table 1b: Lexical Correlation Coefficients

.1987 .1641 .1428 .1332 .0891 .1248 .1069 .1247 .0798 .1022 .1195 .1331 .1658 .1707 .1860 1.0000 .3380 .2800

.2136 .1737 .1608 .1396 .0984 .1290 .1196 .1300 .0972 .1012 .1353 .1498 .1856 .2118 .2158 .3380 1.0000 .2459

Xiamen Chaozhou

.2693 .2184 .1920 .2014 .1399 .1613 .1489 .1752 .1230 .1414 .1603 .1844 .1412 .1647 .1568 .2800 .2459 1.0000

Fuzhou

r A Quantification of Chinese Dialect Affinity

83

etc. The rankings in relation to each of the dialects are given in Table 2. In this table the highest rank is "1" and the lowest is "17''. To read Table 2, first find the name of the dialect in the rows. Then read across the columns to find the ranking of the other dialects in relation to this dialect. All the coefficients can also be ranked. In this ranking we can compare readily the position of a particular pair among all the pairs. The ranks, from 1 to 153, are given in Table 3. Now we see in the table that the Shenyang-Beijing pair ranks first and the Xiamen-Suzhou pair ranks last. The statistics neatly show the degrees of lexical association. However, we need to pause to consider the validity of the method in general and the nature of the statistics in particular.

3.

Validity of Lexicostatistics In historical-comparative linguistics, inferences about language relationships are made on the basis of phonological correspondences, morphological-syntactic-features, and lexical cognates. It is somewhat curious for Annette J. Dobson (1978:58) to state: "Linguists and anthropologists make inferences about the relationships and history of languages within a family from vocabularies. They count the number of cognate words shared by each pair of present-day languages and use these data to reconstruct the ancestry of the family." The use of cognate words exclusively in the study of genetic relationships in recent linguistics history first appeared in the 1950's. Morris Swadesh (1950) first suggested in an article on Salish internal relationships a statistical method which took into consideration the percentage of cognate words existing in pairs of related languages to determine the degrees of relationship or the time-depths of the language split. At the publication of Swadesh's article, many linguists showed an increasing interest in the application of the mathematical method to historical linguistics. 6 This particular lexicostatistical method is

Fuzhou

Xiamen Chaozhou

Yangjiang

5

7

Nanchang

4 4 3 4 2

9 8

Meixian

10

Guangzhou

8

1 1 1 7 7 7 6 8

8 8

3

-

1 2

Jg

~

!

tll

7 7 7 4

8

3 3 3 3 3 4 3 6

~-~ =

10 5

9

7 2 6 7

8 9 9

C:

l

if

(")

5

2 2 3

-

4 1

5

4

5

!3 !3' (IQ

~

5

2 6 6 8 3 7 15 8 10 15 7 10 13 17 8 8 9 16 11 8 10 16 13 6 5 16 10

9 11 7 11 4 9 5 9 6 9 6 11

2 2 2 6 6 3 4

-

Jinan Shenyang Xi'an Chengdu Kumning Hefei Yangzhou Suzhou Wenzhou Changsha

=

.... ~-

Beijing

j'

= J!: 0 C:

tT

N

>< Ill

OQ

6 4 6 ·5 6 4 6 5 5 2 4 1 1 1 5 1 6 3 6 3 4 2 14 10 12 8 12 9 14 12 14 12 13 8

(D

= a tll

14

~

0 C:

g

:E

10 1 10 10 13 14 15 17 17 17

(")

2 2 1 3 3 3

5

9 8 8 9 9 9 9

i

f g.

-

14 14 14 13 13 13 12

13

15 14 13 14

=

s·

>C

a::

!!.

13 5 2 14 6 2 15 13 10 6 15 11 9 6 14 11 7 15

11 11 11

-

8

4 4 1 4

7

5 5

4

8

7 7 7

i"'

Jg

i

11

11 11 11 11 10 11 10 11

10 10 10 10 10

0 C:

N

= tT

>

< = ! a e. ::s =-g

~ ::s

54 50 48 112 110 127 153 151 144

g=-

i::

N

rn

66 60 105 99 119 148 149 133

i::

0

~

g

=E:

9 75 74 94 145 137 126

I»

(")

=JJ ='

63 69 73 139 129 109

~

~

~

::s

Table 3: Ranking of Dialect Closeness of All Pairs

56 62 120 108 134

§"

(I)

s:: ~C')

33 118 87 122

i::

0

~

i

§

107 83 128

i

s·

>
m 2 "clump.". ~lian1 : ~len 1 "ascend"; ~ 1rn 1 "press in." Non-R: il lwan 1 "eel." 1-bian6 : I' bcn 2 "thereupon"; ~ bin6 "hold on to"; i\:t- ben 2 "durable." Back vowel in the base. ~loy 4 : ffi tuy 6 "bare;'; ~ ~uay 5 "stream"; ~ t,y 5 "tie up." 4itmoy4 : J.(iJ muy 4 "nose"; jfit muay 5 "salt"; Ml m:>y6

144

WangLiMemorialVolume

"barbarian." ~lon 1 : iiiil lun 5 "sink"; iji\iJ luan 1 "always"; liiB"t,n 2 "round." 1l/~bD 1 : ff lul) 2 "k.o: grass"; - luaD 2 "current"; ~ SOD 1 "river." In general front vowel bases exhibit more non-R vowel correspondences than back. A particular problem is posed by those nom words which have back vowels and final /m/. Such a combination does not exist at all in SV, and recourse must be had in SV bases with mid or low vowels, forinstance ..ff lum 2 "bush" from t* fam 1 , ±i cum 1 "water jar" from ~ s;;im 1 , or ~ iJim 5 "eel pot" from i1t th;;im 6 . However, where there are SV bases belonging to the same timing categoy as the nom word, that base is used.

j

i

f

Conclusion A comparison of Viet rhyming practice with the rhymes found in the xiesheng and jiajie characters of the nom script suggests that Viet has never been limited to rhyming identical vowels, but instead the vocalic spectrum was divided into five areas which served as the basis of rhyming practice; and further, when, in the 14th century, the traditional Chinese characters were being modified for the writing of Viet, it was this much older poetic practice when served as the model in the choice of phonetic elements. However, as a result of the complexity of the Viet vowel system, more latitude was necessary to encompass all the Viet

rhymes, so that in some cases the rhyming categories were breached. On the surface at least, it would appear that both the history of rhyming practice in Vietnam, and the development of phonetic elements in characters, have run very different courses from those known in the Chinese context.

Rhymes and Rhyming in Vietnamese 145

Notes 1. An almost identical. phonemic solution, with correspondences with the orthography, may be found in Nguyen 1959: x-xiv. 2. The Viet names for the tones, with their Chinese equivalents (with some exceptions) are

,:E ,A ..t. ~ hoi = 3 sac = 5 sac = 7 ngang = 1 nang = 8 ili huyeh = 2 nga = 4 n1'ng = 6 I 3. This word in fact occurs once in rhyming position in line 1048 of the poem, rhyming by the usual rule with om 1 "hug" and hom 1 "day." 4. This happened sometimes with Viet words having both initial and final labials, a very rare occurrence in Chinese: ~ bat1 perforce is used in ~ bup1 "bud." 5. The nom characters are quoted from Nguyen and Vu 1971.

rrt

References Barker, Muriel A. and Barker, Milton E. 1970. "Proto-Vietnamuong (Annamuong) final consonants and vowels," Lingua 24: 268-285. Dao, Duy-Anh. 1979. Chu-Nom. Paris. Nguyen, Din-Hoa. 19 59. Hoa's Vietnamese-English Dictionary. Saigon. Nguyen, Quang-Xy and Vu-van-Kinh. 1971. Tu-dien Chu-nom. Saigon. Thompson, Lawrence C. 1976, "Proto-Vietmuong phonology," in Philip N. Jenner et al. ed. Austroasiatic Studies. University of Hawaii. pp. 11131203. Wang Li. 1948. Han-Yueyu Yanjiu i-l~~liff~ . Pagination fromHanyushi Lunwenji. Peking 1958: 290-406.

I :

:I

r Question and its Presupposition in Chinese Mantaro J. Hashimoto National Inter-University Research Institute of Asian & African Languages & Cultures, Tokyo

"Sometimes it is not possible to determine who it is or not necessary to specify who it is. Then the word ren(someone) is used [in Chinese] ." 1 "The word shenme(what) in 'Xiang(to think) shenme {what) chi{to eat), zhiguan(just) gaosu(to tell} wo(me) "If you want to eat something, just tell me!" ' is an approximate equivalent of English 'something.' " 2

-Wang Li

* 1.

*

Introduction Irrespective of types and structures of the language in which one asks a question, there is one feature common to the logic and semantics of any interrogative sentence. Every interrogative sentence presupposes a (logical) presence of at least one indefinite pronoun sentence having a construction parallel to this interrogative sentence. In other words, whenever or wherever we ask, for example, "Who is going?", we always know. in advance that "Somebody is going." We know it; that is why we ask "Who is going?" If we don't know if our addressee ·wants to eat something, we won't ask "Ni(you) yao(want) chi(to eat) shenme

148 Wang Li Memorial Volume

(what)? 'What do you want to eat?', "before asking ifthe addressee wants to eat something. Because of this presupposition, interrogative sentences can be used in so many languages as rhetorical questions, i.e. syntactic devices for expressing in the form of a question something opposite to what is questioned. Thus, what is really intended to mean by the rhetorical question "Who wants?" is in fact "Nobody wants." It is indeed because an ordinary question "Who wants?" presupposes "somebody wants" that this rhetorical question can be used for expressing the said intention. It is also because of this type of presupposition that we cannot begin a discourse with an interrogative sentence. A teacher, for instance, can start a discourse in his classroom by asking his pupils "Who is going to explain yesterday's homework?" only because it has been customary in his class that some pupils explain their homework every week before a new lesson begins. Undoubtedly because of this logical-semantic tie between interrogative and indefinite pronouns, many languages have well balanced pairs for interrogative and the corresponding indefinite pronouns and some more or less straightforward morphologicalsyntactic principles for deriving one from the other. Thus, for example, the English language has two basic morphemes, whand some- with which we can form well balanced pairs of interrogative and indefinite pronouns for human beings, objects, places, times, etc. as follows:

who what i where when

somebody something somewhere sometime

Needless to say that the presence of this kind of presupposition for every interrogative sentence has nothing to do with the structural characteristics of individual languages. It is a logical antecedent to and prerequisite for any question.

Question and Its Presupposition in Chinese

149

This phenomenon was noticed by modern linguists of the generative-semantic persuasion nearly two decades ago, 3 and has since been well investig~ted with respect to various types of languages. Although the presence of such a presupposition is very obvious, the actual mechanism of forming various morphologicalsyntactic expressions for this kind of semantic tie between interrogative and indefinite sentences has yet to be clarified. The logical relationship between these two is very clear: the former presupposes the latter. Yet the linguistic expression for this logical sequence is not as straightforward as its logic. Depending upon the linguistic structure, we find that in some languages linguistic forms for the former remain unmarked while those for the latter are clearly marked; in some other languages, however, we see no marking order. Even for Inda-European languages, opinions among the linguists are divided since the nineteenth century. Proto Inda-European word stems *kwe/kwo- (masculin/neuter), *kwa (feminine), *kwi- (no gender), *kwu- (adverbial), etc. are all used for both interrogative and indefinite words. Thus in Latin, the word quis appears in the following two different types of sentences: Sed quis hie est homo? "But who is this?" siquis roget ... "If we asked someone ... " Similarly the Gothic hva occurs in both interrogative and indefinite sentences as given below: hva allis ubilis gatawida? "What bad deed did he do?" Seimon, skal pus hva qipan. "Simon, I have something to tell you."

Thus comparative linguists like Philipp Wegener, Paul Kretschmer,,

150 Wang Li Memorial Volume

i i'

"

Hermann A. Hirt, Antoine Meillet, etc. 4 interpret interrogative pronouns to consist of indefinite pronouns with an overlapping interrogative intonation, while classicists like A. Muniet, M. Loyman, J. Hoffman, etc. 5 believe that the origin of interrogative pronouns precedes that of indefinite pronouns. Students of Chinese linguistics will find this problem very challenging, since (a) this logical-semantic association between interrogative and indefinite pronouns has never found any clearcut linguistic forms in Chinese, and since (b) by pursuing this problem in the context of East and continental Southeast Asian linguistics, we should be able to shed some new light on this problem. It may be necessary for us to clarify our terminologies first. There are two types of interrogative sentences in general. One type includes interrogative words (pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc.), e.g. "Who goes there?", "Why is it so?", etc., so that a question is focused on something specific - object, manner, reason, etc. The other type focuses the question on matters expressed by their predicates, like "Do you go there?", "Is there anything inappropriate?", etc., so that there cannot be any specific interrogative word included in this type of sentences. Traditional grammar defines the former as the specific question, while the latter is called the general question. In order to avoid certain confusions, we would like to call the former the interrogative word question/sentence, and the latter will be referred to as the A-not-A question/sentence. This is partly because we believe that the fundamental difference between these two types of questions does not pertain to the generality of question. It rather consists in the presence (in the latter) and absence (in the former) of disjunctive questions. It is also because the Chinese general question sentences literally take the form of a disjunctive question and adopt predicates such as "Doyougo, (or)notgo?", "Is it good, (or)notgood?", etc. What is generally called interrogative and indefinite pronouns are not always pronouns. They can be used as adjectives and ad-

Question and Its Presupposition in Chinese

151

verbs in many languages. Thus the term interrogative and indefinite pronouns may not always be appropriate for some general statements. Since this is qot our major concern here, however, we won't attempt to elaborate on this point in this paper, except that we use the expression interrogative/indefinite words in order to avoid the awkwardness of calling, for instance, "when" an interrogative pronoun.

2.

Asian Typology of Interrogative-Indefinite Words Looking out over the Asian continent from the east to the west, one finds many languages in the northern half of the continent having very well balanced pairs of interrogative and indefinite words. They are, from the east to the west (see Map 1): Japanese

Korean

Manchu

Mongolian

dare-ka (somebody) dare (who) nani-ka (something) nani (what) doko-ka (somewhere) doko (where) nugu-nga (somebody) nugu (who) mueo-nga (something) mueo (what) eodi-nga (somewhere) eodi (where) (a) Written Manchu we-ke (somebody) we (who) ya-ka (someone) ya (which) ai-ka (something) ai (what) (b) Sibe (The Sibe use of interrogative and indefinite words seems to have been much Chinized, and the language does not seem to have morphologically clearly defined pairs of interrogative and indefinite words. )6 (a) Written Mongolian 7 ken (who) ken-ba (somebody)

~----•"-

__

·.;..·

------------:--_--:,.-;:-... ~·-.-·"::.::.:.:..;.;:-

)

.

._

\

,,

su~suu

-.. Newari ,

''--

"

\

\\

C)

~,....,r·

"-...i

\

\

xeo ~ xen-c

r·-·

.>

1

z

Zhuang

nauz

Dong(Ka!ll)

(

n~-Tl'!l'!I

......

i2na 3

ci•cuoi•

Hakka

Wu

'--../ Be(Ong-Be)

khraj Khmer(Ca!llbodian)

ai

r-?

pou' 1awz Cantonese r"'".....r-"\

a ne

'•" Vietnamese Thai

(~ (

/

)

Naxi(Nahi)

na 3ko'

~iZ

(Northern)

Chinese (Southwestern)

sei 1

(Northwestern)

r-

~

Manchu

we~ we-ke

• (_.,.-'")

r.....,.-

-. ~·-·-. ' -

_. ....._r.,

su 1

...._ __....,

\'-.._