Combinatory Sound Alternations in Proto-, Pre-, and Real Tibetan

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-thirty-first issue: “Combinatory Sound Alternations in Proto-, Pre-, and Real Tibetan: The Case of the Word Family *Mra(o) ‘Speak,’ ‘Speaker,’ ‘Human,’ ‘Lord’,” by Bettina Zeisler. (free pdf)

Among many other terms, discusses the Eurasian word for "horse" often mentioned on Language Log (see "Selected readings" below for examples).   Gets into IIr and (P)IE.

ABSTRACT At least four sound alternations apply in Tibetan and its predecessor(s): regressive metathesis, alternation between nasals and oral stops, jotization, and vowel alternations. All except the first are attested widely among the Tibeto-Burman languages, without there being sound laws in the strict sense. This is a threat for any reconstruction of the proto-language. The first sound alternation also shows that reconstructions based on the complex Tibetan syllable structure are misleading, as this complexity is of only a secondary nature. In combination, the four sound alternations may yield large word families. A particular case is the word family centering on the words for speaking and human beings. It will be argued that these words ultimately go back to a loan from Eastern Iranian. —–   This and all other issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are available in full for no charge. To view the SPP catalog, visit here.

 

Selected readings

• "'Horse Master' in IE and in Sinitic" (11/9/19)
• "Some Mongolian words for 'horse'" (11/7/19)
• "Mare, mǎ ('horse'), etc." (11/17/19)
• "The earliest horse riders" (3/25/23)
• "Horse culture comes east" (11/15/20)
• "'Horse' and 'language' in Korean" (10/30/19)
• "An early fourth century AD historical puzzle involving a Caucasian people in North China" (1/25/19)
• "Of horse riding and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (4/21/19)
• "Of reindeer and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/23/18)
• "'Mulan' is a masculine, non-Sinitic name" (7/15/19)
• "Ethnogenesis of the Mongolian people and their language" (8/19/20)
• "Idle thoughts on 'gelding'" (8/3/20)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 5" (3/28/16)
• "Of dogs and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (3/7/18)
• "Of jackal and hide and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/16/18)
• "Galactic glimmers: of milk and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/8/19)
• "The emergence of Germanic" (2/27/19) — ditto; Don Ringe on the origins and associations of the Proto-Germans
• "Lactase and language: the spread of the Yamnaya" (7/16/20)
• "Galactic glimmers: of milk and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/8/19) — with a long list of relevant posts
• "The geographical, archeological, genetic, and linguistic origins of Tocharian" (7/14/20)
• "Genetic evidence for the peopling of Eastern Central Asia during the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age" (4/9/21)
• "Eurasian eureka" (9/12/16)
• "The Wool Road of Northern Eurasia" (4/12/21)
• "Indo-European religion, Scythian philosophy, and the date of Zoroaster: a linguistic quibble" (10/9/20) — with an extensive bibliography
• "Once more on Sinitic *mraɣ and Celtic and Germanic *marko for 'horse'" (4/28/20)
• "Some Mongolian words for 'horse'" (11/7/19)
• "'Horse Master' in IE and in Sinitic" (11/9/19)
• "Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19) — details how the akinakes and other attributes of Saka / Scythian culture penetrated to the far south of what is now China; excessive sacrifices of horses in the south and in Shandong
• "Old Sinitic reconstructions and Tibeto-Burman cognates" (4/18/16)
• "'Horse' and 'language' in Korean" (10/30/19)
• "Of horse riding and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (4/21/19)
• "Of reindeer and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/23/18)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 5" (3/28/16)
• "Of armaments and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 6" (12/23/17)
• "Indo-European 'cow' and Old Sinitic Reconstructions: awesome" (1/16/20)
• "Of dogs and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (3/7/18)
• "Of jackal and hide and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/16/18)
• "'Skin' and 'hide' ('pelt') in Old Sinitic and Proto-Indo-European" (11/7/20)
• Of felt hats, feathers, macaroni, and weasels" (3/13/16)
• "The dissemination of iron and the spread of languages" (11/5/20)
• "Indo-European religion, Scythian philosophy, and the date of Zoroaster: a linguistic quibble" (10/9/20) — with a bibliography of numerous relevant previous posts
• "Sword out of the stone" (8/9/08) — see especially this comment
• "Trefoils across Eurasia: the importance of archeology for historical linguistics, part 4" (10/11/20)
• "Headless men with face on chest" (9/28/20)
• "The geographical, archeological, genetic, and linguistic origins of Tocharian" (7/14/20)
• "Galactic glimmers: of milk and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/8/19)
• "'The old man at the pass loses his horse'" (5/2/20)
• "The importance of archeology for historical linguistics" (5/1/20) — with a list of more than a dozen previous posts related to archeology and language
• "The importance of archeology for historical linguistics, part 2" (5/11/20)
• "The importance of archeology for historical linguistics, part 3" (6/3/20)
• "Archeological and linguistic evidence for the wheel in East Asia" (3/11/20)
• "Xina" (11/26/18)
• "Blue-Green Iranian 'Danube'" (10/26/19)
• "Bronze, iron, gold, silver" (1/29/21)
• "The role of long-distance communication in human history" (1/26/23)
• Victor H. Mair.  "The Horse in Late Prehistoric China:  Wresting Culture and Control from the 'Barbarians'."  In Marsha Levine, Colin Renfrew and Katie Boyle, ed.  Prehistoric steppe adaptation and the horse, McDonald Institute Monographs.  Cambridge:  McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research,  pp. 163-187.
• A. F. P. Hulsewé, Remnants of Ch'in Law: An Annotated Translation of the Ch'in Legal and Administrative Rules of the 3rd Century B.C., Discovered in Yun-meng Prefecture, Hu-pei Province, in 1975,  Sinica Leidensia. 17 (Leiden: Brill, 1985).
• Barry Cunliffe, By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2015)
• Andrew Sherratt, "The Trans-Eurasian Exchange: The Prehistory of Chinese Relations with the West," in Victor H. Mair, ed., Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World (Honolulu:  University of Hawaii Press, 2006), pp. 30-61.
• Kristen Pearson, "Chasing the Shaman’s Steed: The Horse in Myth from Central Asia to Scandinavia" (free pdf), Sino-Platonic Papers, 269 (May, 2017), 1-21.
• Victor H. Mair, “Horse Sacrifices and Sacred Groves among the North(west)ern Peoples of East Asia”, Ouya xuekan 欧亚学刊 (Eurasian Studies), 6 (Beijing:  Zhonghua shuju, 2007), 22-53; also available as chapter 11 in Victor H. Mair, China and Beyond:  A Collection of Essays (Amherst, NY:  Cambria, 2013).
• Wan, Xiang.  "The horse in pre-imperial China."  Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2013.
• David W. Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2007).
• Pita Kelekna, The Horse in Human History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
• Prods Oktor Skjaervø, "The Horse in Indo-Iranian Mythology", review of Philippe Swennen, "D'Indra à Tištrya: Portrait et évolution du cheval sacré dans les mythes indo-iraniens anciens", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 128.2 (April-June, 2008), 295-302.
• Saikat K. Bose, "The Aśvamedha: in the context of early South Asian socio-political development", Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, 25.2 (2020).
• Victor H. Mair, "The North(west)ern Peoples and the Recurrent Origins of the 'Chinese' State", in Joshua A. Fogel, The Teleology of the Modern Nation-State:  Japan and China (Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), pp. 46-84.
• Ursula Brosseder, Ernst Pohl, Damdinsüren Tseveendorzh, Lkhagvadorzh Munkhbayar, Alexandra Osinska & Sven Linzen, "The innovation of iron and the Xiongnu – a case study from Central Mongolia",  Asian Archaeology (3/15/23).
• Bettina Zeisler, “Combinatory Sound Alternations in Proto-, Pre-, and Real Tibetan: The Case of the Word Family *Mra(o) ‘Speak,’ ‘Speaker,’ ‘Human,’ ‘Lord’” (free pdf), Sino-Platonic Papers, 331 (March, 2023), 1-165.