Re: Anser (was: swallow vs. nighingale)

Richard:

I am rather dubious of a process such as you describe.

I confess my familiarity with Sino-Tibetan languages is mostly with Mandarin, and I am only passably familiar with it.

However, I take, for example. Beijing bìn, 'calf of the leg'. which I consider a possible cognate with PIE **bhein- (Germanic *baina), 'leg'.

This suggests to me that *bh corresponds to Mandarin b ([p]), which contrasts with Mandarin p ([pH]).

I think it likelier that Sino-Tibetan *PinH shows us that rather than from *bh, the likelier antecedent is something like *P?F, where the glotalization and spirant (deaffrication) were dropped.

The Proto-Language form I reconstruct for PIE **bhein- is *P?FO¿N.

Patrick

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

From: Richard Wordingham

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2007 5:28 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Anser (was: swallow vs. nighingale)

--- In cybalist@... s.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@ ...>
wrote:
>
> Richard:
>
> Thank you for the information.
>
> But no one has reconstructed them for Sino-Tibetan, right?

There's no certainly sign of them in Matisoff's 'Handbook of
Proto-Tibeto- Burman: System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan
Reconstruction' (accessible via
http://repositories .cdlib.org/ ucpress/ucpl/ vol_135/ ), though some
languages have acquired them. Incidentally, its Appendix A seems a
good reference for reconciling reconstructions of Chinese phonology.

> What do you think?

I'll take advice from the expert phoneticists here, but [bH] might not
be an unreasonable representation of a stage in which the voicing of
stops is being transferred to breathiness of the following vowel, as
happened in most of mainland East Asia. The stop usually ends up as
[p], but in some langauges it ends up as [pH].

Richard.