STAN vs DCA : round 2

..

>
> >Archaic chinese script was clearly not a syllabary, but it was still
> >95% phonetic. Characters written with the same phonetic

(xie3sheng1)>had

> >the same initials (unregarding voicing, aspiration, -r- infix, -s
> >suffix) and the same final. MC sam has word-families relationship
>with
> >words that belong to a lateral series.
>
> Like what exactly, I dare ask?

If you find a copy of Karlgren's grammata serica recensa (1967, The
museum of Far eastern antiquities), I will tell you the references to
related phonetic series (this book gives old reconstructions that
nobody on earth believes, but puts together words with the same
phonetic, which makes this book an unvaluable reference.

>
>
>
> No, of course not. No real reconstructions like SinoTibetan or

anything that

There are NO real reconstructions for Sino-tibetan. The only I am aware
of are Starostin & Pejros 1995, South Coblin 1986 and Benedict 1972.
The only interest of these works is that they gather words together, so
we don't have to do the tedious part of the work, but their
reconstruction is not quite rigorous.

> pop up in every book I can find in Canada... (rolling the eyes)... I

can

> tell you have a long, long way to go yet before this theory ever

becomes

> seriously entertained. You know your Chinese, it would seem, and

there's no

> doubt that Austronesian, MonKhmer and other languages in the area had

an

> effect on Chinese.

Of course. It might be that STAN 'cognates' are in fact loanwords. I
can't tell for sure yet. STAN is only a hypothesis. I think it is the
best available theory for external relationship of chinese and TB.

>
> Regardless, you're denying alot for nothing. You deny SinoTibetan,

which is

> certainly established in North America and correct even if it's not

perfect,

> all for what? What is the advantage? It seems we just end up with

less and

> even shakier information than before.

I don't really deny ST. I think some words in TB languages are real
cognates with chinese words. TB is even probably more related to
chinese than AN. I just want to emphasize that their relationship is
most unclear.

>
> Let me ask you then how you go about explaining the pronominal

system? Let

> me guess, "it's all too difficult to determine", "it's a hodgepodge

of a

> whole bunch of random Austronesian cognates", "it's too complex to

talk

> about"... Please, be gone with you lest I get my fly swatter.

In fact, there is a theory, but it is not yet published, and I gave my
word to the author not to tell anybody.

>
> The forms that I recognize are the forms I see from many sources

together

> with much direct and self-evident justification: *nga "I" and *nei

"you". No

OK, look at Chunqiu chinese pronominal system :

1sg a/nga 1pl b/ngaj? MC : ngu ngaX
2sg b/na? 2pl b/naj? MC : nyoX nyeX

Now look at Shang oracle bone chinese :

1sg a/la 1pl b/ngaj? MC : yo ngaX
2sg b/na? 2pl b/naj? MC : nyoX nyeX

Notice anything : the pronominal pattern is more regular in later
chinese. How come ? That is a clear case of analogy, although some such
as Karlgren thought is was a trace of inflexion. initial ng- in nga is
modeled after ng- in ngaj?, to make is to correspond neatly with the
n-a? / n-aj? pattern.
nga is not to be found on any oracle bone inscription. How do you
explain that ?
If analogical change created this nga, is was not inherited from ST, it
must be loaned into TB languages (ngaj? also was loaned, into kachin
for instance). Notice that TB languages have another 1person pronom :
qiang qa-, lepcha ko / ka.

> doubt others on this list have seen the same reconstruction. I'd

rather not

> subject myself to what I view as bad linguistics and read these alien
> conspiracies. What's more, so far no one wiser than I has said

otherwise on

> the subject on this list to make me feel to the contrary.

> Oh god, no...

mais si !

>
> >TB,WT'phur AN,paiwan mi-perper (to fly), Chinese MC phjien < b/phen <
> >b/pher (to fly quickly)
>
> Gee, why *r > *n? Is this supposed to be regular? Is (MC -ie-)=(AN u)

a

> regular thing?

It is indeed. the AN word has -e-, it marks a central vowel (AN had
only three), Written tibetan has -u-(although, let me say it again, few
is know of proto-TB sound correspondances, and I can't tell you the pTB
vocalism for this etymon.)
There is no use to compare MC with AN. Old chinese is well
reconstructed. It has a 6 vowel system, with finals -m, -n, -ng, -l,
-r, -j, -w, -?, -s. It is not a good idea to compare directly MC with
other languages because a single vowel in MC can correspond to several
vowels in other languages.

r > n is a regular change in chinese. Starostin reconstructs it also
this way, but the idea is not from him.

>
> >TB,lushai lu "head", AN,paiwan qulu "head", Chinese syuwX < b/lhu?
> >(shoudu de shou)
>
> Ah, yes the infamous voiceless lateral which when used properly can

yield

> amazing cognates such as found in NEC but, when used with a bad or

naive

> heart, can make any connection look good (such as what Bomhard does

in his

> version of Nostratic). Why does Paiwan have a /qu-/ might I ask

naively? My,

STAN words reduced to one syllabe with preinitals in becoming ST. we
compare chinese with final syllabes, or with monosyllabic roots (see
Blust 1982).
Notice that AN underwent the same change in becoming thai, eg bulan >
blan > siamese ?dyan. (y = high back unrounded)

> how easy it is to link anything with a voiceless lateral like
> /k/,/s/,/s^/,/z/,/z^/,/t/....
>
> And why isn't this TibetoBurman Lushai language with /lu/ for head

not, say,

> relatable to Mandarin & Cantonese /lao/ and /lou/ "brain"? Is the

connection

> too direct for you STANkees?

That is a very intelligent remark. MC l- goes back to r- except in some
word-class, to whick, incidentally, lou belongs.
the full word is ku1lou2 "skull" or du2lou2 < duwk luw

Or maybe you are talking about naodai de nao "brain" ? nao3 < nawX <
a/naw? or maybe a/nu?. This one is unrelated to the AN word.

kulou < MC khu luw < a/kha a/lu (in fact, in my opinion, rather a/k-lu,
with a prefix. The aspiration of preinitial is frequent in asian
languages such as khmer. It was sometimes so in AC). However, most
chinese researchers systematically reconstruct r-. I follow here Sagart
1999. You won't find that in Baxter, Starostin or Zhengzhang's work.
I think these words, syuwX and khu luw, are very likely to belong to
one word family. luw belongs to a series with many words ending with a
glottal stop, such a luwX < lu? (as in mandarin da4lou3 de lou3,
written with the same phonetic, you can check it up).
The aspirated prefix explains the aspiration in the initial.
Now here are the correspondances for l / lh from AC to MC :
b/l > y-
a/l > d-
b/hl > sy-
a/hl > th-
There are many such lateral series, although it is difficult to
differentiate them from dental series. y-, sy- and absence of d- are
major criteria for segregation. notice that b/s- > sj-, so sy- come
either from b/hn- or from b/hl-, it cannot come from an s- in AC.

> Dual, Trial? Only numerals up to six?? What on earth are you babbling

about.

> This is an assertion of a negative that is unprovable. The items in

question

> may not be satisfactorily reconstructed in your view and that's where

your

provable : australian or papuan languages often lack numerals above
three. Besides, many languages such as Austro-asiatic count in base 5.
There is a trace of this in chinese :
"two" nyijH < b/nits
"seven" tshit < b/s-hnit

> It's as bold if not bolder to believe in STAN and dismiss SinoTibetan

for a

> few VERY scanty, monosyllabic (or in some cases non-syllabic)

connections

I do not believe in STAN as some people still believe in gods. It is
just a remote issue in my research activity.

>
> No, this is why I use grammatical analysis to put weight on my

theories.

> SinoTibetan *nga "I" and *nei "you" are from DeneCaucasian *ni "I"

and *ngu

> "you" respectively. You see, DeneCaucasian *i in closed syllable or

enclitic

> regularly drops to SinoTibetan *a as in *mnrit "eight" -> SinoTibetan
> *bryat, similar to, although independantly in, Basque bederatzi

"nine" (from
AC : baet < a/brat
tibetan loaned it strangely, it added a yod. Anyway, it might be due to
the coloration of the vowel by -r- by the time of loaning. Compare
bjenH < bron-s siamese plian.

> *minrac, whose reasons for the semantic shift have already been

explained).

> Plus, medial *m regularly becomes Vasconic *w and then often

disappears

> altogether in Basque as in *sulmu -> *hirwu -> hiru or *limu -> *lawu

->
funny, it "looks like" AN lima, paiwan rima "5". But it is the wrong
number.

>
> DeneCaucasian *m-hutL "eye":
>
> SinoTibetan (OChin myök, Tibetan myik)

mjuwk < AC b/mriwk (This word is nasty, Sagart proposed b/mr-liwk to
explain word family connections but I am not convinced)
the tibetan word is mig, not "myik".

> >On the contrary, they want to prove that chinese is related to TB,
>thai
> >and miao-yao in order to justify their colonialist policies.
>
> Nonetheless, all the more disturbing when you yourself admit it and

fail to

> raise an eyebrow. Free thought can be found elsewhere other than

China et

> al.

Well, I support Tibet's independence, as anyone studying tibetan does,
I guess.

>
>
> First, I'm not American. I'm Canadian. Perhaps you non-NorthAmerican

folk

> have a tendency towards offensive stereotyping? :P And besides, I for

one,

No, only french people. I am sorry. My countrymen do not like
anglosaxon people (especially in the higher spheres of the society). I
am not that hexagonal et américanophobe.
Anyway America refers to your continent, doesn't it ?

If you are canadian, the best specialist in chinese linguitics is Edwin
Pulleyblank in Vancouver; you should read his book on MC phonology.
Besides, his articles on AC phonology in monumenta serica 1961 and 1977
if I remember well.

> of linguistics, where theories like STAN and North Caucasian can go

unabated

> just because there is a reference and degree behind them without any
> emphasis placed on reasoning nor on attaining a broader, general

picture

> needed to get any good grasp whatsoever on reconstructive linguistics.

STAN is not taught at the uni. Anyway, my work is centered on chinese
reconstruction, tay comparative linguitics and modern tibetan phonetics
and phonology. I think I do reason, but I restrict myself to studying
languages that are closely related to each other, so the irregalrities
in sound laws can be more easily accounted for.

> 3. You show vague and scarce attestations of this STAN that are
> quite frankly, much more sketchy than Starostin's North
> Caucasian using, among other things, only ONE example of

Please, don't be rude until you haven't read work published on STAN.
Just read Journal of Chinese linguistics 1993. Then, in the monogrph
series of this journal "The ancestry of the chinese language", 1995,
ed. William S.Y. Wang. I can't be bothered to copy all the cognates on
my computer, OK ?

> Is there anything more you care to convey in opposition to yourself?
>
> >whereas wheat was imported from occident by IE / "altaic" peoples.
>
> Ah, maybe there's more... Erh, beg pardon, tongzhi, but we _are_

talking

> _after_ 3500 BCE right? IndoEuropean speakers themselves had no

direct

> contact with SinoTibetan, I hope you will agree.

Well, Wheat got imported very late, in the late shang period (1000 BC).
the word meak < b/mryk appears only at that time. It could be loaned
from some "proto-turkic" language (Starostin's explanation, that
compares it with mürki).

Anyway, there were early contacts with IE (tocharian, for examples), as
the word for honey seem to prove.

>
> By the way, that we have an Austronesian word for "rice" doesn't

really say

> anything other than an interesting borrowing between Austronesian and
> SinoTibetan or Chinese itself. I would like to see alot of

grammatical

I am agnostic as regard the origin of the etymon that comes up in
tibetan as 'bras. It is probably loaned into AN, I admit.

> connections before I'm convinced that we should talk of Chinese as

more

> Austronesian than SinoTibetan. I'm not seeing this yet.
>
> >What archeological evidence are there for Dene-caucasian ?
>
> My research is linguistical _first and foremost_ and that's the way

it will

> stay, with archaeological research being only a non-requisite support

to my

> theory. Your research is in the wrong places, digging up bones that

can't

> speak. Have fun with the corpses.
>

That exactly the kind of things Starostin told me (I met him in Leiden
last year) when I asked him about the plausibility of Sino-caucasian.


Guillaume