--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
wrote:
> I am rather dubious of a process such as you describe.
(Presumably referring to the quoted text below:)
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Richard Wordingham<mailto:richard@...>
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com<mailto:cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2007 5:28 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Anser (was: swallow vs. nighingale)
> 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].
This stage is currently, or at least recently, exhibited in many of
the Wu dialects. To quote from p201 of Jerry Norman's 'Chinese
(Cambridge Language Surveys)':
"The Shanghai tonal system is not typical for the Wu dialects, most of
which have seven or eight tones (Chai 1967). To give some idea of the
tones of Wu dialects, I have charted the tonal systems of several
different dialects in Table 8.12. It is clear from the table that the
Wu dialects as a whole maintain a very strict distinction between the
upper (yin) and lower (yang) registers in all tonal categories. This
is not surprising in view of the fact that the feature which gave rise
to different registers, namely a contrast of voiced and voiceless
initials, is still retained in Wu; in many Wu dialects the lower
register is characterised by a breathy aspiration or murmur, even with
sonorant initals. In some northern Wu dialects the shang tone behaves
as in Mandarin: words with sonorant initials merge with the upper
shang, while those with obstruent initials go over to the lower qu
category."
I've dropped all the accents. I presume the intereseted parties are
aware that Wu has preserved the three-way contrast between voiced,
unaspirated voiceless and aspirated voiceless stops. The pinyin
notation for the voiced consonants seems to be to double the voiced
consonant - I've seen this used for Yi.
Incidentally, are you and Arnaud paying attention to the Chinese tone
correspondences? Thus the 'calf' word (U+4414) Mandarin bin4,
Cantonese baan3 must derive from Middle Chinese *p rather than *b (or
*bH if you prefer), but the 'thigh' word (U+9AC0) Mandarin bi4
Cantonese bei2 makes no sense - unless of course there is a typo in
what I am using for a Cantonese dictionary.
Richard.