ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese

3 MIDDLE CHINESE TONES AND THEIR OLD CHINESE EQUIVALENTS

3 MIDDLE CHINESE TONES AND THEIR OLD CHINESE EQUIVALENTS MC and LHan had three tones: tone A (pfngsheng ='even' or 'level' tone), tone B (shlingsheng ='rising' tone), and tone C (qusheng 'falling' or 'departing' tone), and, according to traditional Chinese phonological analysis, tone D (rusheng A~ = 'entering' tone) for words which end in a stop consonant (p, t, k), i.e., this short-stopped syllable type was toneless. These tonal categories are projected back to OC where tone A is thought to have been an open syllable or one ending in a nasal, tone B marked a syllable with a glottal stop in the final (or a glottolized syllable), and tone C a syllable with final *-s I *-h. Tones A and D are usually left unmarked as this causes no ambiguity. OC probably had no "tones" in the later sense but instead segmental phonemes. Nevertheless, we will here apply the term 'tone' also to OC in the sense of "later tonal category" for the sake of clarity and to sidestep arguments about their OC phonetic nature. Because MC tones are projected back to identical ones in LHan, subsequently examples will often be cited in simpler LHan forms. All three tones can belong either to a root or stem, or play some morphological role. The most common morphological tones are B shlingsheng and C qusheng. which together with initial voicing form a derivational system which marks direction and diathesis (§4). The contrast between allofams in the three different tones is exemplified by the following paradigm , where the form in tone A is the simplex, the derivation in tone B is endoactive (§4.5), and the derivation in tone C is exopassive (§4.4) (LHan after the graph): zhf tSg, *tg zhl 11::. tSgB, *tg? zhl ;~ tSgC, "'tgh 'to go, proceed' 'foot' « 'that which is doing the going') 'goal, purpose' « 'what is being proceeded to') 3.1 Middle Chinese tone A (pfngsheng :SV:~) Tone A ('even' or 'level' tone) reflects OC open syllables or ones with a nasal coda; they are assumed to be the basic unmarkd type and usually go back to equivalent ST forms, e.g., qii] IT [khU A] *khwg 'village' 3. Lushai khua H yu ~ [waA ] 'sacrifice with prayer for rain' 'Rain' yu is a widely attested ST word; it can be set up as ST *wa? (with final glottal stop) on the strength of Kuki-Chin and Chepang forms in addition to Me. This rules out the possibility that 'rain' is a tone B derivation from 'sacrifice for rain', which would also be semantically implausible. However, elsewhere tone B can be a morpheme which creates or marks endoactive verbs or words (§4.5); 'to rain' fits this pattern, so that tone B may have been felt to be this morpheme rather than part of the root. 'Sacrifice for rain' was then created as a back formation by removal of the alleged suffix tone B. 29 3.2 - 3.2.1 TONES Additional tone A derivations include the following items (LH forms after the character): Slave xi ~ geC 'to be bound' > xf ge 'slave, captive' Wine-master jill f@ tsiuB 'wine' >qiu @ dziu 'wine-master' Writing slip bian ..Fm! pianB 'narrow' > pian phian 'writing slip' Tally fil Ilf;j buoc 'to adjoin' > ftl r-0= buo 'a tally' Side by side bing :ill[ beIJB 'side by side' ., ~ > pIan "" ben 'two (horses) side by side' Corpse shr siB 'to display' > shf p 8i 'corpse, personator of a dead' In 'Corpse' the derivation process could also have been the reverse. In a few cognate sets, tone A may be the result of loss of a final consonant, as in: Bones he ~ [gek] 'kernel fruit' - hai ~ [gd] 'bones, skeleton'. He is a ST etymon: WT rag 'fruit stone, bead', Mikir rak 'fruit stone'; therefore he was the original form from which hiii was derived. 3.2 Middle Chinese tone B (sMngsheng phonology MC tone B probably derives from an OC *-? In some modern dialects tone B ends with glottal constriction (Branner 2000: 119) - note Min-Songyang pup? ('measure for books' ren :;$:; Branner 2000: 344). Glottal stop after nasal codas is also shown by variants like xJ;5t [seiBJ- [senB] 'to wash', as well as Shi]fng rimes such as *-an? / *-a? (Shi 30 I). *-UIJ? / *-u? (Shi 264,7); some rimes confirm that the phoneme in question was a stop consonant: *-ap J *-am? (Shi 265,3) and *-et / *-en? (Shi 265,5). The glottal feature can, however, appear elsewhere...