The Chronological Strata of Sino-Thai Corresponding Lexical Items(汉泰关系词的时间层次）

Description

This is a monograph on the chronological strata indentification of Sino-Thai corresponding lexical items or lookalikes, with special reference to Chinese historical phonology (esp. Old Chinese and Middle Chinese) and a Chinese dialect(Shantou[Swato] dialect, a variety of Min dialects) .corresponding wordlists of Swato loans in Thai, and Sino-Thai lookalikes are listed in the book, too. Abstract A Study of Sino-Thai Chronological Strata This is a study of the chronological strata of Sino-Thai corresponding lexical items. After sorting up the corresponding lexical items found by other scholars and the writer himself, with the aid of sound laws of correspondences and chronology-specific sound changes from Old Chinese to Middle Chinese, the writer identifies and analyzes the 3 distinctive strata reflected in the Chinese and Thai corresponding lexical items: Old Chinese (OC) stratum, Middle Chinese (MC) stratum and the recent stratum from southern Chinese dialects, together with some minor identifiable strata. In part 1, the writer introduces the aim of this research, Thai and its position in the relationship of Asian languages, earlier studies by other scholars in this area. The principle, approach and procedure of this research are also introduced in this part. In part 2, tables are used to illustrate Zhengzhang-Pan’s reconstruction systems of OC and MC, Fang Kuei Li’s Proto-Tai reconstruction system, Thai transcription convention and Modern Thai phonological system. In Part 3, the writer discusses the sound laws concerning initials, finals and tones between the Chaozhou-Shantou loanwords in Thai and the Shantou dialect, the semantic categories of the loanwords, a comparison of the words with loanwords from the South Min dialects in Indonesian, the localization of the loanwords. In addition to this, the writer also discusses to some length the chronology and stratification with regard to the loss of -n and -t codas in Chaozhou-Shantou dialects. In Part 4, the writer uses Thai doublets(or triplets) to prove the identification of the two significant strata, OC and MC strata, of Sino-Thai. Some doublets reflect clearly the distinctions of OC and MC phonological forms in a minimal pair. Some even seem to reflect the features of word families. Part 5 is about the identification of initial strata. The writer first lists and discusses briefly the overall sound laws and the stratifications reflected in the set of lexical items with regard to MC initials, then lays the emphasis on the detailed discussion of OC stratum along the line of Written Thai (WT) initial forms: WT CLinitial cluster vs. MC Division-II ( 二 等 ), MC Division-III of Chongniu (重纽三等), MC Division-III of the Geng rhyme class (庚 韵三等), MC Laimu *l (来母), MC Yusi *j (喻四) and MC dentals, etc.; WT hN- vs. MC nasals or fricatives; WT r- vs. MC *l or *j-, ABSTRACT 3 WT l- vs. MC *j- etc.. Questions such as the nature and sound change features of such initial types, the chronologies of the loss of initial consonant clusters and hN- initials in Chinese are also addressed respectively in this part. The identification of strata in finales and tones are discussed in part 6. Topics in this part include: Old strata of Tone Qusheng (去声) reflected in Sino-Thai, Old strata of Sino-Thai corresonding to the OC rhymes such as Yu (鱼), Duo (铎), Yang (阳), or Ge (歌), the /o/ and // strata in OC rhymes with –n -t -b -m codas, whether the MC Yinsheng rhyme classes (阴声韵) had codas of voiced stops in OC, whether the Rusheng (入声) ending stops were voiced or voiceless in OC, and the possibility of a reconstructible Proto-Tai 6 vowel system, the strata of tones, etc. In part 7, the writer discusses some relevant questions: the nature of Old Yue language(s), which is believed to be the ancestor of Tai or Kam-Tai languages, early territories of the Tai languages, substratum of old Yue in Southern Chinese dialects, Sino-Thai in the perspective of Thai-related languages, etc.; questions such as synonymous， polysemous and disyllabic correspondences in Sino-Thai are also addressed in this part. Table of Contents Chapter 1 Research aims and methodology 1 1.1 Questions and aims 1 1.2 The Thai language and Sino-Thai studies 2 1.3 Background, research method and procedure 6 Chapter 2 Phonological systems of Old Chinese, Proto-Tai and Written Thai 17 2.1 Phonological systems of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese 17 2.2 Written Thai transcription, phonological systems of Modern Thai and Proto-Tai 22 Chapter 3 Chaozhou-Shantou loanwords in Thai 33 3.1 Introduction 33 3.2 Phonological correspondences 34 3.3 Semantic categories of the loanwords 49 3.4 A comparison with Minnan loanwords in Indonesian 53 3.5 Related discussions 55 Chapter 4 Basic strata of Sino-Thai corresponding lexical items 57 4.1 Theoretical approximation of the chronology of Sino-Thai early contact 57 4.2 Strata corresponding to Old Chinese and Middle Chinese 58 4.3 Doublets and chronological strata 61 Chapter 5 Strata of initials 77 5.1 General correspondences 77 5.2 Detailed discussions: Initial correspondences and strata 97 Chapter 6 Strata of finals and tones 141 6.1 Final strata corresponding to Old Chinese 144 6.2 Some final-related questions 174 6.3 Strata of tonal correspondences 184 Chapter 7 Discussions on related issues 195 7.1 Thai ancestral language viewed from received documents and Chinese dialects 196 7.2 Sino-Thai words and and other related languages 216 7.3 Homophonous and polysemous correspondences 227 7.4 Disyllabic correspondences 234 7.5 Concluding remarks 235 References 237 Major sources of language form citations 237 References 237 Appendix 1 List of Chaozhou-Shantou loanwords in Thai 251 Character index 252 Word list 257 Appendix 2 List of Sino-Thai corresponding lexical items 281 Acknowledgement 359