Re: "Bauhinese" [was: Re: I was wondering...]

Eamon Graham nevesht:>
>Phonology
>---------
>I'm starting with Middle Chinese and studying how sounds evolved in
>the various Chinese languages and how these sounds evolved when
>Chinese words were borrowed into Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and
>Thai.  (I'm roughly half way through an etymological dictionary but
>then I have to complete my comparisons in Korean, Vietnamese and
>Thai)  Therefore the phonology doesn't necessarily reflect the
>native forms, but rather how these forms evolved in the so-called
>Sino-Xenic languages (note: Sino-Xenic is not necessarily a term I
>adore)  I'm then looking for common forms in all of the languages
>involved and using population or historical linguistics as a tie
>breaker.  An illustration: unlike Mandarin, the consonant finals m,
>p, t and k are retained here because they are retained for the most
>part in other Chiense languages and because they are retained in
>Korean and Vietnamese, and their historical presence is often
>reflected if not entirely retained in Japanese.
>
>Studying sound change patterns has been a rather complex task, as
>I'm doing most of it from scratch (although I'm sure some source
>exists and I just don't have access to it).  To quote my a.l.a post:
>"This process has become so complicated as to bring up the following
>error message: 'Brain not ready.  Abort, retry, fail' But there is a
>system involved, and I will derive the vocabulary in a systematic
>way that reflects actual sound changes."
>
>Tones are an iffy situation.  Japanese and Korean do not use tones
>as Chinese does (or as Vietname and Thai do), so I'm against using
>an elaborate tone system.  Tones, however, are an important part of
>the phonology of Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese so I would like their
>presence to be reflected somehow, if possible.  Some suggestions
>I've been considering are: 1) having tone affect vowel
>length/quality; 2) using high and neutral; 3) using level, rising
>and falling contours.  Did the tone of a word in Chinese have any
>effect at all on how it was borrowed in to Japanese or Korean?
>
You may wish to check out the work of Geoffrey Pulleyblank(of UBC), who has
published reconstructions of Middle Chinese and Archaic Chinese, using in
part the ways they were borrowed into neighbouring languages.
There are also other reconstructions, which of course disagree, available as
well.



-Wayne Chevrier


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