From: tgpedersen
Message: 50261
Date: 2007-10-11
>This subject seems to cause you a great deal of concern. Have you
> 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"
>