to establish the Chinese civilization; as claimed by a Taiwanese
scholar.
M. kelkar
Indo-Eurasian Research msg#8041
"Re: Indo-European Vocabulary in Old Chinese ... byTsung-tung Chang
(SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS Number 7 January, 1988)
Mod. note. Didn't Victor go off to that conference in Beijing,
Francesco? -
Steve.]
Mata Kimasitayo wrote:
> Perhaps of interest.
>
> http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp007_old_chinese.pdf
>
> SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS
> Number 7 January, 1988
>
> Indo-European Vocabulary in Old Chinese -- A New Thesis on the
> Emergence of Chinese Language and Civilization in the Late
> Neolithic Age
>
> by Tsung-tung Chang
Perhaps Victor, who is the editor of _Sino-Platonic Papers_, would
like to comment on the Indo-European migration (or, better,
invasion?) theory proposed in this paper, which I find quite odd.
http://www.sino-platonic.org/abstracts/spp064_tai_kadai.html
"Tsung-tung Chang believes that Proto-Indo-European vocabulary
became dominant in Old-Chinese, caused by contact with IE peoples in
the third millennium B.C. It is suggested that IE-people had the
leadership in the Old Chinese main language center. He presents 200
words, but claims to have registered 1500."
http://www.geocities.com/dipalsarvesh/rigHistory/ch7.htm
"Tsung-tung Chang, a scholar of Chinese (Taiwanese,) origin, has
shown, on the basis of a study of the relationship between the
vocabulary of Old Chinese, as reconstructed by Bernard Karlgren
(Grammata Serica, 1940, etc.), and the etymological roots of Proto-
Indo-European vocabulary, as reconstructed by Julius Pokorny
(Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 1959), that there was a
strong Indo-European influence on the formative vocabulary of Old
Chinese. He provides a long list of words common to Indo-European
and Old Chinese, and adds: 'In the last four years, I have traced
out about 1500 cognate words, which would constitute roughly two-
thirds of the basic vocabulary in Old Chinese. The common words are
to, be found in all spheres of life including kinship, animals,
plants, hydrography, landscape, parts of the body, actions,
emotional expressions, politics and religion, and even function
words such as pronouns and prepositions, as partly shown in the
lists of this paper.' This Indo-European influence on Old Chinese,
according to him, took place at the time of the founding of the
first Chinese empire in about 2400 BC. He calls this the 'Chinese
Empire established by Indo-European conquerors,' and identifies
Huang-ti (the 'Yellow Emperor'), traditional Chinese founder of this
first empire, as an Indo-European (suggesting that his name should
actually be interpreted as 'blond heavenly god', in view of his
identity)."
An old comment on Tsung-tung Chang's work by our listmember Wolfgang
Behr:
http://tinyurl.com/27o37m
"[An] anti-Sino-Tibetan scholar who has been quoted widely in
the literature surrounding the Xinjiang mummy-findings is Tsung-tung
Chang (Frankfurt). Contrary to Pulleyblank, who thinks that P[roto-]I
[ndo-]E[uropean] is remotely related to O[ld] C[hinese] _as part of S
[ino-]T[ibetan]_, Chang totally rejects the validity of ST [...].
[T]he controversy around remote connections with IE has been covered
in a massive (and in parts rather violent!) exchange between EG
Pulleyblank and Victor Mair in the inaugural issue of _The Int'l.
Review of Chinese Linguistics_ (1996, pp. 1-50, [...])."
I am a layman in Chinese pre-/proto-history and Old Chinese
linguistics, but it is hard for me to believe that blond-haired IE-
(= Germanic-?) speaking "conquerors" were the founders of the
Chinese Empire about the mid-third mill. BCE.
(Victor?)
Best,
Francesco"