From: tgpedersen
Message: 57098
Date: 2008-04-09
>Of?
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
> >
> > > Is Chinese the result of a TS + Tai-Kadai creolization?
> >
> > I don't think we can prove Old Chinese had verb inflection.
> >
> > Torsten
> > ================
> >
> > Old-Chinese (AD -1000) can be proved to have cases for pronouns.
> > At least three cases : subject, accusative, genitive.
> > It can be proved to have verbal morphology : #m-Root-s
> > It can be proved to have apophony : *nap "enter" *nop "interior".
> >
>
> I know, but no inflection for number and person in verbs.
> Torsten
>
> ================
> To have complicated conjugation paradigms is useless in the first
> place.
> Most languages do without them.
> It's not a proof of creolization.
>
> Now it's theoretically provable that Chinese could have verb
> inflection. As a rule, the earliest texts in Old Chinese do not show
> any morphology but this is because it's not written not because it
> did not exist. We have clear proofs of that.
> Variant readings of the same character kept by tradition are oftenWhat's stopping you?
> caused by little differences of shape, caused by morphology which
> was richer than now in Old Chinese.
> In order to prove verb inflection, one would have to sort out all
> variant readings in old texts, check if the traditional variants are
> valid and try to see if some variant readings display a constant
> pattern that can be traced to person or number. It's theoretically
> possible. This requires an amount of knowledge and patience that
> makes PIE studies a child's play. I suppose nobody so far has been
> bold enough to try this research. And it would also require a highly
> accurate reconstruction system for proto-Chinese 3500 years ago.
> It's like looking for a ghost's finger prints.
> Declension in pronouns is more obvious.So?
> ArnaudI feel your predicament. You're not quite sure what I'm saying, but
> ===========