Essays on Writing and Language in Honor - Sino-Platonic Papers

Schniftfestschrifi: <strong>Essays</strong> in Honor of John DeFrancis
SOME RENARKS ON DIFFERING CORRESPONDENCES IN OLD CEINESE
ASSUMED TO RSPRESENT DIFFERENT CHINESE DIALECTS
Nicholas C. Bodman Cornell University
Professor Emeritus of Linguistics Ithaca, New Ygrk
This paper was presented first at the 21st International Conference
on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, University of Lund in October,
1988. It is repeated here virtually unchanged. I am very happy that the
opportunity has arisen to publish it in the collection of articles commem-
orating the eightieth birthday of John DeFrancis, a scholar whom allsino-
logists and linguists respect so highly. I submit tnis with all best wishes.
Many examples of word families in Old Chinese must reflect dialect
differences as well as morphologid derivations. Forms found in old
sources may be labelled as being from a specific location. When this
occurs, there is usually no corresponding form attributed to another
locality or to a standard form. Even the words listed in Yang Xiongls
Fang Yan are not often phonologically related. Of course information on
their provenience may be given, and is very useful.
In this paper I limit myself to cases of obvious relationship, and
particularly cite forms occurring in Sino-Tibetan, with reconstructions
attested in Tibeto-Burman. With this apprgach one can find instances of
multiple (usually dual) correspondences between the Tibeto-Burman or
Sino-Tibetan reconstructed forms and Old Chinese forms. These I
attribute to different dialect development in Chinese. (I have dealt
with this phenomenon in my 1980 monograph "Proto-Chinese and Sino-Tibetan,
.data towards establishing the nature of the relatianshipVpp.!4-199 in Con-
tributions to Historical Linwistics, Frans van Coettsem & Linda R. Viaugh, Eds.,
Leiden, E. J. Brill.)
Examples of such a dual development may in my view be found in ST
final* *-1 which has OC reflexes as -n and -1, and ST initial *sk- which
has OC reflexes in s- and glottal stop (?-). The most interesting
examples reflect both these elements in forms reconstructed as ST
*sk-V--1. One consequence of this procedure is that often one need not
posit more than one reconstruction and thus reduce the number of
phonological units that occur in the reconstruction.
There is no need, in view of the large number of examples, to give
many illustrations of Proto-Chinese or Sino-Tibetan *-1 which became
later -n, falling in with earlier *-no However, it is of interest to
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