15.11.28.23:59: HOW DID KUMĀRA BECOME KAUR?

(Posted after expansion on 15.12.12.17:21.)

The Sikh surname ਕੌਰ Kaur (Punjabi 'princess') is from Sanskrit kumāra 'boy, prince' (f. kumārī) which has the following Punjabi descendants listed in Turner's dictionary:

kavār, kãvārā, kavārā, kuārā, kamārā m. 'bachelor'

kãvārī, kavārī, kuārī, kamārī, f. 'virgin'

kãvar m.' prince'

kaür, kaur m. 'boy, prince'

Those forms share the following changes in common:

The first vowel of kumāra was (almost) always delabialized: u > a.

Is the u of kuār- from u or from m?

kumār- > kuār-?

kumār- > kamār- > kãvār- > kavār- > kuār-?

Is the u of kaür/kaur from u or from m?

kumār- > kuār- > kaur?

kumār- > *kumar- > kuar- > kaur?

kumār- > kamār- > *kamr- > kaur?

The latter scenario seems unlikely since it requires a short vowel to remain while a long vowel disappears.

m lenited to v (sometimes nasalizing the previous vowel) or was lost (except in kamārā).

The original final vowel was lost, and new vowel suffixes were added:

Masculine -ā is a Punjabi suffix. (Sanskrit -ā is feminine.)

Is feminine -ī a direct retention of Sanskrit -ī?

What I don't understand is:

- how a single form could develop in six or seven different ways (is the difference between the last two purely orthographic?):

kavār, kãvārā, kavārā, kuārā, kamārā, kaür, kaur

Are those forms taken from different dialects and/or different time periods?

- how kaür ~ kaur lost long ā (unless a is from ā)

15.11.27.23:59: QʷʰEST FOR FIRE

(Posted after expansion by 15.12.12.13:02.)

Today I found a 110-entry Tujia wordlist at starling.rinet.ru. The forms for 'fire'

Tasha (Qixin) Tujia mi₂₁

Duogu and Boluo (Luxi) Tujia mi₅₃

Dianfang and Tanxi Tujia mi₅₅

made me want to check Baxter and Sagart (2014) to see if they reconstructed Old Chinese 火 'fire' as a potential cognate *m̥ˁəjʔ corresponding to Sagart's (1999: 159) *^ahmɨjʔ. Sagart (1999: 159) wrote,

The Middle Chinese initial [of 'fire'] may reflect OC [Old Chinese] *hm-, *hw- or *hŋʷ-. Evidence that the Old Chinese initial was *hm- comes from a variant form: [Mandarin] hui₃ 𤈦 MC xwjïjX, defined by the Shuo Wen Jie Zi as 'fire' 火也. Since hui₃ 𤈦 includes the phonetic wei₃ 尾 *^bmɨjʔ > mjïjX 'tail', it must reflect OC *^bhmɨjʔ, and [Mandarin] huo₃ 火 itself must be *^ahm[ɨ]jʔ > xwaX (see Li 1971).

If the two words for 'fire' are related, I could trace them back to a common prototype:

Sagart compared his *^ahmɨjʔ to Proto-Austronesian *DamaR 'torch'. If there is a relationship between the two words, ideally my sesquisyllabic Early Old Chinese should resemble the Proto-Austronesian form. My assumption is that Proto-Austronesian preserves first syllables better than Chinese did. However, the voiceless *s- that devoices voiced *m- in my scenario is unlike the voiced retroflex *D of Proto-Austronesian. And the second vowels don't match either. I could work around that by positing *Dam̥ʌR as the source of both words. The *D- would somehow become Early Old Chinese *s- (via *z-?; but cf. a different proposal below), and lower mid *ʌ would lower to Proto-Austronesian *a and raise to Old Chinese *ə. Such proposed sound changes would need to be confirmed in other etyma shared by Proto-Austronesian and Old Chinese.

12.12.12:36: I don't know where Sagart (1999: 159) got Proto-Austronesian *DamaR 'torch' from. In Blust and Trussel's Austronesian Comparative Dictionary, the Proto-Austronesian form is listed as *damaR with an alveolar *d and the gloss 'tree resin used in torches (?)'. Its Kavalan reflex zamaR means 'fire'; other reflexes have meaning involving tree resin, torches, and light.

In modern Mon, "[a]ll voiced and aspirated stops, together with s were reduced to h" in presyllables (Jenny 2005: 27): e.g., Old Mon <dirmoṅ> and Middle Mon <damaṅ> 'dwelling place' correspond to modern spoken Mon [həmo̤ŋ] (Shorto 1971: 194, Diffloth 1984: 176). Could voiced stops like *d- be a source of sonorant devoicing in Old Chinese: e.g.,

*dam- > *dʌm- > *ðʌm- > *θʌm- > *hʌm- > *həm-ʔ > *hm- > *m̥-?

There is no evidence for fricatives as an intermediate stage of *d- to h-lenition in Mon, though it is possible that inscriptional <d> represented [ð] at some point.

The final rhotic in 'fire' normally shifted to *-j but could have shifted to *-n in the dialect of Old Chinese ancestral to the source of the Amoy literary reading hoN³ for 火. (-N indicates vowel nasalization.) Bodman (1985: 12) mentioned that form and others with unexpected nasalized vowels in Southern Min: e.g.,

指 "most of Southern Min" caiN³ 'finger' < *mə.kinʔ? < *-rʔ??

In Eastern Min, Fuzhou has tsieŋ³ as well as tsai³ and tsi³. But it is an outlier among non-Southern Min languages.

cf. Northern Min: 建甌 Jian'ou literary i³ and colloquial ki³ ~ tsi³ < OC *mə.kijʔ? < *-rʔ? without nasal

I presume Northern Min initial zero/h/ɦ are due to postpresyllabic lenition:

*mə.k- > *mə.g- > *mə.ɣ- > *ɣ- > *h- > Jian'ou zero, 松溪 Songxi h-, and 石陂 Shibei ɦ-

椅 Chaozhou iN³ 'chair' < *Cə.q(r)anʔ? < *-rʔ??

cf. Amoy i³ < OC *Cə.q(r)ajʔ? < *-r? without nasal vowel

睇 Chaozhou thoiN³ 'to look at' < *l̥ˤ[ə]nʔ? < *-rʔ??

cf. Cantonese thai³ < OC *l̥ˤ[ə]jʔ < *-r? without nasal (Cantonese has no nasal vowels)

鼻 "Southern Min" phiN⁵ 'nose, to smell' < OC *m-bi[t]-s

好 Amoy hoN⁵ 'to like' (lit.) < OC *qʰˤuʔ-s

潮 Chaozhou tioN² 'tide' < OC *[N]-t<r>aw

'Fire', 'finger', 'to look at', and 'chair' might have ended in *-rʔ (is it a coincidence that they all end in glottal stops?), and it is remotely possible that OC *m-bi[t]-s 'nose' had a nasal variant *m-bin-s (though homorganic alternations are generally between velars; I can't find any examples of *-t ~ *-n alternations in Gong 1994).

However, nothing outside Min points to final nasals (or a final *r that could become a nasal) in the last two words. Could the nasalization of 'to like' and 'tide' be by analogy with other words?

15.11.26.23:16: AN AUSTROASIATIC ADOPTEE IN CHINESE

(12.9.3:29: I wrote the first draft of this post nearly two weeks ago but did not post it until I finished revising and expanding it.)

I found Zheng Rongbin's "The Zhongxian (中仙) Min Dialect: A Preliminary Study of Language Contact and Stratum-Formation" when Googling for 囝, the graph for the Min word for 'son', while writing my entry on a similar-looking Khitan small script character:

309 <ghó> 'he' (?)

The Zhongxian word for 'son' is kɯŋ with a nonlabial vowel. Most Min forms for 'son' also have nonlabial vocalism: e.g.,

Southern:

Taiwanese kiáⁿ

Chaozhouʿkán (Goddard 1883: 65), kĩã 42 (Hanyu fangyan cidian, vol. II, p. 1977; hereafter HFC)

海康 Haikang kia 31

中山隆都 Zhongshan Longdu kiɛn 24

Eastern:

Fuzhou kiaŋ 31 (HFC)

泰 順泗溪 Taishun Sixi kiẽ 44 (eastling.org)

Hainanese kjʌ (hainanese.net)

I wonder what Northern Min forms are like.

Norman and Mei (1976: 297) reconstructed Proto-Min *kian.

I only recently discovered two Min forms with labial vowels in HFC:

Puxian: 仙游 Xianyou kyã 53

Central: 三明 Sanming kyaiŋ 21

The word also appears without labial vocalism in non-Min languages (all data from HFC):

In Min-dominated Fujian:

南平 Nanping Mandarin ʿkiŋ

浦城忠信 Pucheng Zhongxin Wu kiãi 44

明溪 Mingxi Hakka kieŋ 5

In Jiangxi next to Fujian:

萬安 Wan'an Hakka kieŋ 21

The nonlabial vocalism of that word for 'son' in Chinese has bothered me for a long time because the word is supposed to be a substratal borrowing from Austroasiatic, and nearly all Austroasiatic forms I have seen have a labial vowel or at least a labial medial:

Aslian: Semnam kuoːn (but Jahai kɛn!)

Proto-Bahnaric *kɔːn (Sidwell 2011)

Proto-Katuic *kɔːn (Sidwell 2005)

Proto-Khasic *kʰɔn (Sidwell 2012)

Khmeric: Pre-Angkorian <kon> (the most frequent spelling; other Pre-Angkorian and Angkorian spellings also have labial vowels and/or <v> with the sole exception of one occurrence of <kven> in 1139)

Proto-Khmuic *kɔːn (Sidwell 2013)

Pakanic or Mangic: Do Bolyu qɔ³³je⁵³ and Mang van⁶ belong in this cognate set?

Monic: Dvaravati Old Mon *kɔːn (Diffloth 1984)

Nicobaric: koːən ~ kón ~ kúan (Shorto 2006)

Proto-Palaungic *kɔːn (Sidwell 2010)

Proto-Pearic *keːn (! - Headley 1985; why does SEAlang have parentheses around the vowel?)

Vietic: Vietnamese con [kɔn], Ruc kɔːn, perhaps Thavung kun (in words for 'man', 'woman', and 'children')

Shorto (2006) reconstructed Proto-Mon-Khmer *kuun ~ *kuən.

The reading of 囝 in the Middle Chinese dictionary tradition is *kɨənˀ which is close to Proto-Min *kian; both imply an Old Chinese *kanʔ.

Was Old Chinese *a an approximation of an Austroasiatic *ɔ, a vowel which did not exist in Early and Middle Old Chinese?

Is the -y- in Xianyou and Sanming from *-ɨ- with tertiary labialization transferred from the secondary labialization of the following vowel?

*kian > *kion > *kyon > Xianyou kyã 53, Sanming kyaiŋ 21

This hypothesis predicts that Xianyou and Sanming should have reflexes of Middle Chinese 建 *kɨənʰ 'establish' with -y-, and Xiaoxuetang lists such reflexes: Xianyou kyøŋ 52 and Sanming kyaiŋ 33. 建 is from Old Chinese *kan and never had a labial vowel. Its Northern Min readings have secondary or tertiary labialization:

松溪 Songxi kyŋ 33

建甌 Jian'ou kuɪŋ 33 ~ kyɪŋ 33

If the Northern Min word for 'child' is a homophone of 建 (disregarding tones), then it too should have a nonoriginal -y-.

Only now do I realize that the final glottal stop corresponds to nothing in Austroasiatic. Why the mismatch?

15.11.25.23:50: SAME PARENTS, DIFFERENT PRONUNCIATION: SORORAL VARIATION IN MAAP KRAAT NYAH KUR

One may find the synchronic variation that I reconstructed for Old Chinese to be implausible. However, I found an even greater degree of synchronic variation in มาบกราด Maap Kraat Nyah Kur presyllables among the three elderly informants in Diffloth (1984). Informants MKle and MKlu have different forms even though they are sisters! Colored cells indicate innovative forms. The most prominent vowel is indicated with a subscript symbol specifying register: a underline for clear voice (< *voiceless initials) and a diaresis for breathy voice (< *voiced initials).

It would be difficult to reconstruct Monic presyllabic consonants with confidence without premodern and comparative data. In one case ('seven'), none of the three informants preserved the original presyllabic initial.

And without more information on cross-generational phonology, I cannot understand how

[m]any of these differences probably represent unsystematic and limited adaptation, on the part of very old persons, to the rapidly changing speech of younger speakers, many of whom, including their own children, have now abandoned the language and speak Thai. We simply arrived twenty years too late to record sounds which have been preserved for more than fourteen centuries. (Diffloth 1984: 320)

With the exception of a monosyllabic form of 'seven', I don't see how any of the innovative forms are more Thai-like than the more conservative forms. (Thai favors monosyllables.)

Is the variation in Phan Rang Cham due to such adaptation?

11.26.15:36: And what is one to make of the variation in Hmongic forms for 'dog' (Ratliff 2010: 206)?

Proto-Hmong-Mien *qluwX

Hmongic

Pa-Hng (why a final nasalized vowel?)

Baiyun ta 1 ljɔ̃ 7

Tan Trinh ta 1 ljɔ̃ 7 ~ Baiyun ka 1 ljɔ̃ 7

West Hmongic:

Xianjin (Hmong) tl̥e 3

Fuyuan (Hmjo) qlei B

North Hmongic: Jiwei (Qo Xiong) qwɯ 3

Mienic: Liangzi Mun klu 3

If not the for the Pa-Hng forms, I would say that *ql- simplified to q- or kl- with assimilation in tl̥- (q- became dental like l which became voiceless like the preceding stop). Are the Pa-Hng forms stretched monosyllables - expansions of *klV and *tlV? Or do they contain *l-roots preceded by different prefixes? Or do they preserve the original disyllabic structure of their Proto-Hmong-Mien ancestor which might have been something like *qa.luwX? Would *qa- have changed to *ta- by analogy with some other word or even a compressed but now extinct form with an assimilated cluster like *tljɔ̃ 7?

11.26.20:45: If the root of 'dog' is *luwX, then Old Chinese *Cə.kˁroʔ (which has no internal etymology) could be a borrowing of a prefixed Proto-Hmong-Mien word that displaced the native word 犬 *[k]ʷʰˁ[e][n]ʔ.

What if the Old Chinese form was *təkˁroʔ from a Proto-Hmong-Mien *tV-qV-luwX with a doubly prefixed *l-root or *tV-qluwX with a singly prefixed *ql-root? Could Pa-Hng ta-l-be a simplification of an earlier *tV-ql-?

15.11.24.23:59: IS 'HE' A MAN IN A BOX?

309 <ghó>

as a word possibly meaning 'he' when by itself*. Unfortunately I cannot find a full argument for that interpretation in their book.

309 resembles Chinese 士 'officer, gentleman' with an added enclosure 囗. I am reminded of 囝, a graph for the Min word for 'son' composed of 子 'son' inside 囗. (There was no contact between the Khitan in the north and the Min in the south, so 309 did not influence 囝 or vice versa.)

Other potential forms of 'he' are

309-140 <ghó.en> 'he.GEN' = 'his'? (蕭仲恭 41.1, 46.6, 耶律詳穩 35.34)

11.25.0:06: Why isn't this <ghó.on> with vowel harmony?

309-205 <ghó.de> 'he.DAT' = '(to) him'? (興宗 21.15, 24.26, 許王 39.20， 蕭仲恭 5.58, 蕭敵魯 45.11）

Why isn't this <ghó.do> with vowel harmony?

309-254 <ghó.d> 'he.PL?' = 'they'? (耶律詳穩 32.6)

Wu and Janhunen (2010: 200) identified this as a possible dative which makes sense in the context of 耶律詳穩 32. Was *-de shortened to -d after gho?

Added 11.25.23:33:

309-341 <ghó.er> 'he.ACC/INST' = '(by) him'? (道宗 17.23)

Why doesn't this suffix have harmonic variants: e.g., *<or>?

309-339 <ghó.i> 'he.GEN' = 'his'? (蕭仲恭 48.10)

<i> does not harmonize; cf.

<b.qo.i> 'son.GEN'

Did <ghó.i> and <ghó.en> both mean 'he.GEN'?

If those blocks containing 309 plus characters for common case suffixes are forms of 'he', why are they so rare?

*11.25.23:40: 309 <ghó> also occurs as a phonogram in blocks such as

309-261-261-112-341 <ghó.l.l.e.er> (道宗 22.20)

Once again <ghó> appears next to e-graphs even though o and e typically do not mix in Altaic-type languages.

11.26.0:52: The transliteration of <ghó> seems to be based on the Chinese transcription 訛 *(ng)()o (Kane 2009: 72). It does not resemble the third person pronouns *i (singular) and *a (plural) that Janhunen (2003: 18) reconstructed for Proto-Mongolic. It is not currently possible to determine whether the Khitan and/or Proto-Mongolic pronouns are innovations. I doubt that the common ancestor of Khitan and Proto-Mongolic can ever be reconstructed in detail.

15.11.23.23:59: CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN THE EXTRA X IN AVESTAN AND OLD PERSIAN?

In Av. [= Avestan], we sometimes find x prefixed to ṣ̌, initial or internal, apparently without etymological value: e.g., ā-xṣ̌nuš 'up to knee', cf. Skt. abhi-jñu.

Another example in Jackson (1892: 136, 193) is the desiderative present participle zixṣ̌nā̊ŋhəmna- 'wanting to know' (cf. Skt jijñāsamāna-; Av xṣ̌n : Skt jñ < Proto-Indo-European *gn).

Was this x- added to by analogy with words with 'true' x-clusters corresponding to Sanskrit kṣ-: e.g., Avestan xṣ̌aϑrəm 'rule' (cf. Skt kṣatram).

Zoroastrian Middle Persian /šnās-/ 'recognize' (inchoative) lost it. (But is the `ayin in Manichaean Middle Persian <ʕšnʔs> a reflection of the extra x?)

Avestan and Persian belong to different branches of Iranian. Did the extra x indepedently 'grow' twice in Iranian, once in the east (Avestan?) and again in the west (Persian)?

11.24.23:27: I placed a question mark after "Avestan" since its classification as eastern is disputed. In any case, Avestan and Old Persian do not subgroup together. They are in northeastern and southwestern branches in this tree.

15.11.22.23:59: WHY DID KOREANS BORROW LATE MIDDLE CHINESE GRADE II VELAR-FINAL SYLLABLES IN TWO DIFFERENT WAYS? (PART 2)

（I originally meant to post this entry last night but noticed I had overlooked something essential and decided to upload a revised version. The title should be more specific since these posts are about *K- + nonhigh, nonlabial vowel + *K syllables, but I've retained the title for the sake of continuity.)

For over twenty years I had been assuming that Middle Old Chinese *ˀraK/ˀreK/ˀrəK-rhymes all merged into Late Middle Chinese (LMC) Grade II *æK which I recently revised as *ʌ̆eK. But I had known the evidence against such a merger all along!

In modern Sino-Korean, reflexes of Middle Old Chinese (MOC) *KˀreK/KˀrəK always end in -jəK (< *eK), whereas reflexes of MOC *KˀraK end in either -jəK (< *eK) or -aŋ (< *eŋ). I conclude that the northeastern LMC (NELMC) source dialect of Sino-Korean at least partly distinguished between reflexes of those two types of syllables unlike other LMC dialects. NELMC may have undergone a chain shift not found in other dialects (*ʌ̆a > *ʌ̆e > *e) without the stages in the Late Old Chinese and Early Middle Chinese columns. Hence NELMC is not descended from the prestige dialects in those columns.

In the prescriptive SK of 東國正韻 Tongguk chŏngun (1446), the reflexes of MOC *KˀreK/KˀrəK (KjəK) are always distinct from reflexes of MOC *KˀraK (KʌjK). That suggests the KjəK < *KeK reflexes of MOC *KˀraK were less prestigious and hence not worthy of inclusion in Tongguk chŏngun.

Were those KjəK-readings borrowed from a LMC dialect which had *KɛK instead of *Kʌ̆eK from MOC *KˀraK?

Were those KjəK-readings considered incorrect because Old Korean *e was a poorer match for the NELMC diphthong? Perhaps *ʌ̆e (short-long) had become *ʌĕ (long-short) which would have been better approximated by Old Korean *ʌj than by *e. But at least some *e-forms persisted and their reflexes are standard today,

Were those KjəK-readings considered incorrect because of a desire to keep a clear distinction between the Early Middle Chinese 庚陌 *-æŋ/*-æk and 耕麥 *-ɛŋ/*-ɛk categories that was muddied in the actual borrowings whose descendants are in use today? Were readings like kʌjŋ for 庚 artificial creations in Tongguk chŏngun?

*11.23.23:39: There is no Korean-internal reason to borrow a *k-word like 革 with h-. I suspect the h- reflects a NELMC initial *xʱ-. My theory of emphatic origins requires a lower vowel presyllable to condition emphasis in this word:

Early Old Chinese *Cʌ-krək > MOC *kˀrək

If that presyllable were *Nʌ-, it could have dropped in mainstream Chinese after emphasis whereas it fused with the *k- in the ancestor of NELMC:

Early Old Chinese *Nʌ-krək > *Nʌ-kˁrək > *ŋkˁrək > *ŋgˁrək > *gˁrək > *gʌ̆ək > *gʌ̆ek > *ɣʌ̆ek > NELMC *xʱek

The Tongguk chŏngun reading kjək may have an artificial k- based on the prestige dialectal base of the Chinese phonological tradition.

The Tongguk chŏngun readings as a whole may be an artificial compromise between that tradition and actual NELMC-based readings already in use in Korea since the 8th century AD.