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Recent work on the reconstruction of Old Chinese phonology and morphology (Sagart 1999, Pan Wuyun 2000) and the chronological layering of phonological developments (Zheng-Zhang Shangfang 2000, Schuessler 1999/2000) has led to a somewhat increased sensitivity with respect to the problem of differentiating between borrowings and inherited words in early Sino-Xenic lexical comparisons. In this paper I will look into two ancient Chinese fictional texts, containing scattered glosses in which Chinese terms, often related to trade and material culture, are matched with foreign words written in Chinese characters and vice versa. Both texts, the Mu tianzi zhuan 穆天子傳 (4th c. b.c.) and the Yuejue shu 越絕書 (1st c. a.d.) are only preserved in corrupt versions, share a rather convoluted editorial history, and have been little studied from a linguistic perspective. However, there is at least an emerging consensus on the datings of the included materials in the literature, as well as some good philological work on these texts (Wei Juxian 1925, Mathieu 1978, Yang Shangqun 1995, Frühauf 2000; Schuessler 1966, Yue Zumou 1985). Geographically, the so-called “western desert” (ximo 西膜) expressions of the Mu tianzi zhuan point to a loan source to the North-West of the Central plains language, possibly an early variant of “Bodic” (Unger 1986), while the words explicitly marked as foreign expressions in the Yuejue shu can be shown to be of Austroasiatic and/or Austronesian provenance. Rather than produce exhaustive lists and reconstructions for all non-sinitic items encountered in these texts, I will focus on a dozen words with well-definable semantics and associated character readings. These arguably provide a solid basis for the identification of the ultimate source of the borrowing proposed in this paper, and, a fortiori, a further shred in the tesselation of the linguistic contacts of Old Chinese.
Cahiers de Linguistique Asie …
History through loanwords : the loan correspondences between Hani and Chinese2001 •
Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale
A 250-item list of Old Chinese vocabulary in the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction2020 •
A 250-concept list was established for the purposes of a lexically-based study of Sino-Tibetan phylogeny (Sagart et al. 2019). This paper supplies the Old Chinese version of the list, in the Old Chinese reconstruction of Baxter and Sagart 2014. Chinese words attested in pre-Han times were selected based on their meaning as given in major lexica such as the Hànyǔ Dà Zìdiǎn. At times more than one OC item was found to match a concept in the list without it being clear which of the terms was the oldest. In such cases all the candidates were retained. As a result, the Old Chinese version ofthe list contains 301 words.
Two recent comprehensive studies of the phonology of Old Chinese (i.e. the language of the early and mid Zhou periods) have independently proposed a root structure for the reconstructed language, which is characterized, among other things, by the presence of a contrast between ”loosely attached”, schwa-epenthetic presyllables (also termed ”iambic forms” or ”ciyao yinjie”, ”secondary syllables”), and straightworward ”fused” cluster initials (Sagart 1999, Pan Wuyun 2000). Irrespective of the question whether all of these cluster types can be shown to be non-lexical, i.e. to represent genuine prefixation morphology or not, and ignoring whether non-fused iambic types are metrically true ”sesquisyllables” or not, it is likely that the proposed syllable typology, so reminiscent of that of Austroasiatic languages (on which see Haiman 1998), is one of the sources of ”dimidiated” or lento compounds scattered throughout the pre-Qin edited literature (Behr 1994). Adopting Sagart’s (1999) model of syllable typology and reconstruction, I will try to find evidence for the proposed set of prefixes (*s-, *p-, *t-, *k-, *m-, *N-, ?*q-) in the rich documentations of lento forms contained in Wang Guowei’s (1877-1927) Lianmian zipu, Li Weiqi (1985), and several other recent studies on the Huainanzi. Finally I would like to discuss the implications of these materials for a chronology of the rise and fall of prefixation in Old Chinese, and, if time permits, comment upon their bearing on the question of the origins of the Chinese writing system (cf. Boltz 2000/01). References: Behr, Wolfgang (1994), ”‘Largo forms’ as secondary evidence for the reconstruction of Old Chinese initial consonant clusters”, Paper presented at the 27ème Congrès International sur les Langues et la Linguistique Sino-Tibétaines, Paris, 38 pp. Boltz, William G. (2000/01). ”The structure of oracle bone characters”, Ms., Univ. of Washington, Seattle. Haiman, John (1998), ”Possible origins of infixation in Khmer”, Studies in Language 22 (3): 597-617. Li Weiqi (1985), ”Heyinci li”, in: Hunan Shifan Xueyuan Gu Hanyu Yanjiushi ed., Gu Hanyu lunji : 302-3018, Changsha: Hunan Jiaoyu. Pan Wuyun (1998), ”Han-Zangyu zhong de ciyao yinjie”, in: Shi Feng & Pan Wuyun eds., Zhongguo yuyanxue de xin tuozhan Hong Kong : City University of Hong Kong Pr. ——— (2000), Hanyu lishi yinyunxue, Shanghai : Shanghai Jiaoyu. Sagart, Laurent (1999) The Roots of Old Chinese (CILT; 184), Amsterdam & Philadelphia : J. Benjamins.
… : Morphology, phonology and the lexicon in …
Word formation in Old Chinese1998 •
The present paper illustrates some of the major known morphological processes of Old Chinese-roughly, the language of the Chinese classical texts of the Zhou E dynasty (llth-3rd centuries BCE). To speak of morphological processes in Old Chinese may surprise some ...
2008 •
Chinese Transcription of Foreign Words Prior to the 19th Century Geoff Wade Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore Abstract Chinese languages have, since their emergence, been in contact with the languages of non-Sinitic peoples. The resultant language contact has meant both representation and borrowing of non-Chinese lexical items in Chinese languages. This article provides a number of vignettes showing how nonChinese languages have either represented or borrowed from non-Chinese languages over the last 2,000 years. The influences of Indic, Persian, Arab, and Mongol languages on Chinese and the way new lexical items were represented are addressed in a chronological format. This is followed by a brief examination of the attempts to formalize Chinese knowledge of foreign languages, culminating in the emergence of various vocabularies of foreign languages represented phonetically in Chinese characters. This was the format adopted when the Chinese began representing ...
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