From
Axel Schuessler
What Are Cognates and What Are Variants in
Chinese Word Families?
http://tinyurl.com/p8mmx
"
Chinese word families
It has long been recognized that the Chinese vocabulary
can to some extent be grouped into families of related
words. For the purposes of this paper, `allofams'
(members of the same word family) can be connected in
one of two ways: either they are derived by some
morphological mechanism (as English `song, sing, sang
sung, unsung', or `free, freedom'), or they are
variants of the same original etymon, as English `shirt'
and `skirt'. For Chinese this distinction is normally
only made in individual cases studies. Sorting these
out is important for etymological studies.
Investigators have differed significantly over the
range of sound alternations within a word family (wf).
At a minimum, there is general agreement on two types
of sound changes which had a morphological role in word
derivation. These are (1) change in tone, and (2) change
in the manner of articulation of the initial consonant.
Both have parallels in TB languages, particularly Written
Tibetan (WT) and Kuki-Chin languages, and are therefore
of ancient Sino-Tibetan (ST) provenance. For example:
(1)
zhì: .. / ts´j&k / *t&k `to weave' <>
zhì / ts´ïC / *t&kh (< *t&k-h < *t&k-s) `weaved material'
Compare:
WT `tHag- (< *N-tak), btags (< *b-tak-s) `to weave' <>
tHags (< *tak-s) `weaved material'
"
I would normally be wary of proposing cognacy with PIE
based on just one etymon, but this one was too tempting.
Did PIEers weave?
Maybe I can squeeze in another one here, on a recent subject:
(25) tán .. / dâm / *d`am `to speak' <>
WT gdam-pa `to advise, give council' <>
tán .. / dâ.m / *d`&m `to speak'
Torsten