Re: "As"

----- Original Message -----

From: Richard Wordingham

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 12:30 AM

Subject: [Courrier indésirable] [tied] Re: "As"

>
> ============ ==
>
> A.F
>
> I know Chinese reflexes to be palatal ny or plain nasal n.
>
> Which dialects are velar !?
>
> Please substantiate "include velar nasals". (Plural + velar)

Mark Rosenfelder gives Wu (Wenzhou) _ng 32_, Cantonese (Toishan) _ngei
31_, S. Min (Xiàmén) _nng 33_ (cf. E. Min (Fúzhou) lang 242) and Hakka
(Taoyuan) ngi 55 on his famous page http://www.zompist. com/numbers. htm
(ng = velar nasal).

=================

A.F

This page obvious mixes two words : er4 and liang.

So I would not trust this page too much.

=========

> Comments: For early OC a reconstruction *nit-s is also possible.
Viet. has an interesting opposition: nhị 'two' - nhì 'second' - the
basis for it within Chinese is not clear. For *n- cf. Xiamen Ê'i6, li6,
Chaozhou zi6, Fuzhou ne6, Jianou ni6.

In the Tai-Kadai dialect that have borrowed this word, the forms
usually reflect the palatal nasal, as in Vietnamese. However, Ahom (a
dialect broadly similar to Shan and formerly spoken in Assam) and
Northern Tai (i.e. Zhuang, Bouyei, ...) reflect (apparently not
uniformly) a velar nasal. I'm not sure of the significance - it may
just be that the initial palatal nasal is unstable in Tai dialects -
in many dialects it has lost its nasality. Note further that it is a
secondary word for 'two' in most Tai dialects - thus in Siamese it
chiefly occurs in the word for 'twenty'.

R.W.

======================

A.F

Apart from providing information,

what did you want to prove from the start ?

Where is this relevant as regards YueZhi being or being not Tokharians ?

=====================

> Tocharian
> does have words in kn-, e.g. _kna:_ 'know'.
>
> ============ =
>
> A.F
>
> Admittedly it makes sense, Do you have a Proto-Tibetan- Burmese
reconstruction starting with k-n ?

> You gave (possible) examples of gn-, what about k-n !?

No. Proto-TB roots do not begin with /gn/ or /kn/ - the /g-/ is a
prefix, and voiceless stops do not occur as prefixes in Proto-TB.

Richard.