# A Hypothesis on the Origin of Old Chinese Pharyngealization

Laurent Sagart, William H Baxter

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## To cite this version:

Laurent Sagart, William H Baxter. A Hypothesis on the Origin of Old Chinese Pharyngealization. Bulletin of Chinese linguistics, 2016, 9 (2), pp.179-189. 10.1163/2405478X-00902002. halshs-05125482

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# A HYPOTHESIS ON THE ORIGIN OF OLD CHINESE PHARYNGEALIZATION*

---

Laurent Sagart and William H. Baxter

CNRS/INaLCO (Paris) and University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)

**ABSTRACT.** It is proposed that OC pharyngealized onset consonants—that is, ‘type-A’ onset consonants—arose out of Proto-Sino-Tibetan plain consonants followed by geminate vowels separated by a pharyngeal fricative. When the first copy of the geminate vowel fell, the initial consonants formed clusters with the pharyngeal fricative, evolving into the OC pharyngealized consonants we reconstruct. In the Kuki-Chin branch of Tibeto-Burman, the pharyngeal fricative fell, and long vowels resulted. This proposal supposes a statistical correlation between Kuki-Chin long vowels and OC type-A words on the one hand, and between Kuki-Chin short vowels and OC type-B words on the other, as originally proposed by S. Starostin. A significant statistic bearing on forty-three probable Chinese-Kuki-Chin cognates supports this correlation. Thus reconstructed, a precursor language of Proto-Sino-Tibetan was aligned with Proto-Austronesian and Proto-Austroasiatic in exhibiting a surface constraint against monomoraic free words: by that constraint, the vowel of an underlying monosyllable was realized as a geminate with an intervening parasitic consonant such as a glottal stop or a pharyngeal fricative, while the vowels of a disyllable remained nongeminate. After reduction of disyllables to monosyllables, this process resulted in a pharyngealized vs. nonpharyngealized consonant distinction in OC.

**内容提要。**本论文提出对上古汉语咽化声母(即“A类声母”)来源的一个假设,认为咽化声母来源于原始汉藏语的无标记辅音,并且此无标记辅音后跟随着由咽部擦音[∫]分割的双胞元音(geminate vowels)。在双胞元音的前半部分脱落后,辅音声母跟咽部擦音形成了复辅音。新形成的复辅音最终演变为上古汉语的咽化声母。而在藏缅语库基-钦(Kuki-Chin)语支中,则是咽化擦音脱落,使双胞元音变为长元音。本文解释了汉语与库基-钦语中一个统计学的显著相关性:一方面,库基-钦语含长元音的词与上古汉语含A类声母的词呈显著相关;

<footnote>* This is a reworked version of a paper presented at the Recent Advances in Old Chinese Historical Phonology Workshop held in London on 5 and 6 November, 2015 as part of the European Research Council Grant 'Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State'. We thank the participants at the workshop for their comments, and the participants in an Academia session on the same paper for their useful discussion, particularly South Coblin, Zev Handel, Doug Henning, Guillaume Jacques, Johann-Mattis List, Thomas Pellard, Adam Smith, Miguel Carrerasquer Vidal, Gong Xun, Lukáš Zádrapa. The first author's work is part of the program Investissements d'Avenir, overseen by the French National Research Agency, ANR-10-LABX-0083 (Labex Empirical Foundations of Language).</footnote>
另一方面,库基-钦语含短元音的词与上古汉语含B类声母的词呈显著相关,正如S·斯塔罗斯金所说。据此构
拟,我们提出原始汉藏语、原始南岛语与原始南亚语中的一个共同限制(constraint):禁止在语流中出现单音
拍 monomoraic)词。在这一限制的作用下,单音节词的单元音发生了双胞化(gemination),双胞元音中间
插入了喉塞音或咽部擦音之类的次声辅音。而同时,双音节词的元音无变化。汉语经过双音节词的单音节化,
就形成了无标记辅音与咽化辅音的音位对立。

English keywords

Chinese; Sino-Tibetan; Austronesian; Austroasiatic; pharyngealized consonants; morae; constraints.

Chinese keywords

汉语;汉藏语;南岛语;南亚语;咽化辅音;音拍;限制

1. The reconstruction of OC pharyngealized consonants

Old Chinese main syllables fall into two groups, called by Pulleyblank (1977-78) “type A” and
“type B”. With minor adjustments, type-B syllables are those traditionally classified as “division-
III” (sānděng 三等). In Karlgren’s reconstruction (e.g., in Karlgren 1954), type-B syllables are
reconstructed with a yod *-i- before the main vowel, and type-A words lack this yod; Li Fang-kuei
(1971) and Baxter (1992) adopted the same solution, using the notation *-j- instead of *-i-. But this
reconstruction is now widely regarded as unsatisfactory, and several alternative analyses have been
proposed (see Baxter & Sagart 2014:68-80 for details).

Inspired by the treatment in Norman (1994), Baxter and Sagart (2014) assign pharyngealization to
OC type-A words, and absence of pharyngealization to type-B words. The main argument for
reconstructing pharyngealization is a set of sound changes that occurred during the Hàn period (206
BCE - 220 CE), which affected type-A syllables and type-B syllables differently: original high
vowels remain high in type-B syllables, but are lowered in type-A syllables; and original low
vowels, which are raised in certain environments in type-B syllables, remain low in type-A
syllables. Also, initial consonants often underwent palatalization in type-B syllables, but escaped
such palatalization in type-A syllables. Reconstructing pharyngealization in the onset of type-A
syllables seems to provide a plausible explanation for these differences, more so than any of the
alternative proposals.<fnref n="1" /> Accordingly, Baxter & Sagart (2014) reconstruct Old Chinese with two
parallel series of initial consonants, nonpharyngealized and pharyngealized (Table 1).<fnref n="2" />

<table><caption>Table 1: Nonpharyngealized and pharyngealized onset consonants in Old Chinese. Source: Baxter and Sagart (2014:69).</caption><tbody><tr><td rowspan="5">plain (type B)</td><td>p</td><td>t</td><td>ts</td><td></td><td>k</td><td>kʷ</td><td>q</td><td>qʷ</td><td>?</td></tr><tr><td>pʰ</td><td>tʰ</td><td>tsʰ</td><td>s</td><td>kʰ</td><td>kʷʰ</td><td>qʰ</td><td>qʷʰ</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>b</td><td>d</td><td>dz</td><td></td><td>g</td><td>gʷ</td><td>G</td><td>Gʷ</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>m</td><td>n</td><td></td><td>l</td><td>r</td><td>ŋ</td><td>ŋʷ</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>m̩</td><td>n̩</td><td></td><td>l̩</td><td>r̩</td><td>ŋ̩</td><td>ŋʷ</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="5">pharyngealized (type A)</td><td>p§</td><td>t§</td><td>ts§</td><td></td><td>k§</td><td>kʷ§</td><td>q§</td><td>qʷ§</td><td>ʔ§</td><td>ʔʷ§</td></tr><tr><td>pʰ§</td><td>tʰ§</td><td>tsʰ§</td><td>s§</td><td>kʰ§</td><td>kʷʰ§</td><td>qʰ§</td><td>qʷʰ§</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>b§</td><td>d§</td><td>dz§</td><td></td><td>g§</td><td>gʷ§</td><td>G§</td><td>Gʷ§</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>m§</td><td>n§</td><td></td><td>l§</td><td>r§</td><td>ŋ§</td><td>ŋʷ§</td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>m̩§</td><td>n̩§</td><td></td><td>l̩§</td><td>r̩§</td><td>ŋ̩§</td><td>ŋʷ§</td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote n="1">1 Moreover, at least one Hán-dynasty commentator describes the difference between a type-A syllable and a type-B syllable by stating that the type-A syllable is “inside and deep” (nèi ér shēn 内而深), while the type-B syllable is “outside and shallow” (wài ér qiǎn 外而淺); “inside and deep” seems a natural way to describe the retraction of the tongue root that characterizes pharyngealization. See Baxter & Sagart (2014:72–73).</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 This proposal is slightly different from Norman's. Norman regarded pharyngealization as a feature of the entire syllable, not just the onset. But type-A and type-B syllables seem to rhyme with each other freely in Old Chinese poetry, which would be unexpected if pharyngealization was a feature of the rhyme as well as the onset. Norman also treated syllables with retroflexion as a third type, contrasting with pharyngealized and nonpharyngealized syllables; but in our reconstruction, the prevocalic *-r- that accounts for retroflexion can occur with and without pharyngealization of the onset.</footnote>
The sound changes supporting the reconstruction of pharyngealization are rather late as the Hàn period is generally considered to be at the end, or even after the end, of the Old Chinese period. Having no earlier direct evidence for the phonetic nature of the A/B distinction, we project pharyngealization all the way back to the earliest Old Chinese.

However, as Baxter and Sagart observe (2014:73-74), such a phonological system is typologically unusual: languages with pharyngealized consonants generally have more nonpharyngealized consonants than pharyngealized ones. We think of typologically unusual features as short-lived and unstable, though not necessarily impossible. It is entirely possible that the onset consonant inventory in Table 1 existed only for a short period of time at the end of the OC period.

## 2. A model of the origin of OC pharyngealization

Outlined below is a hypothetical model of how such a contrast may have arisen. Briefly, we propose that the pharyngealized consonants arose out of clusters of plain consonants followed by a pharyngeal fricative segment [], that is: \*CčV- > CčV-. We assume that such \*Cč- clusters would have existed for all Old Chinese onset consonants.<fnref n="3" /> At a still earlier stage, we derive these \*CčV-onsets from strings in which two copies of a vowel flanked [ch]: \*Cača-, \*Ciči-, \*Cuču- etc., or in other words, a geminate vowel interrupted by a pharyngeal fricative. The \*Cč- clusters, and ultimately the pharyngealized onset consonants reconstructed, were formed when the vowel’s first copy fell, as in Table 2.

<footnote n="3">3 Baxter and Sagart (2014:73) observe that an alternative to pharyngealized consonants, which “we did not retain yet do not wish to exclude”, are \*Cč- clusters having a pharyngeal fricative as their second segment.</footnote>
<table><caption>Table 2: A hypothetical model of the formation of the Old Chinese pharyngealization contrast.</caption><thead><tr><th>Type A</th><th>Type B</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>stage 1 > stage 2 > OC</td><td>stage 1 > stage 2 > OC</td></tr><tr><td>*Cas'a- > *C'i- > *C'i-</td><td>*Ca- > *Ca- > *Ca-</td></tr><tr><td>*Ci'i- > *C'i- > *C'i-</td><td>*Ci- > *Ci- > *Ci-</td></tr><tr><td>*Cu'i- > *C'u- > *C'u-</td><td>*Cu- > *Cu- > *Cu-</td></tr></tbody></table>

### 3. Lushai (Mizo) and Kuki-Chin vowel length and OC pharyngealization

Starostin (1989:327sq) made an observation that may be relevant to the origin of the Chinese A/B distinction. He argued that the Chinese A/B distinction was correlated with vowel length in Lushai (also known as Mizo), a Tibeto-Burman language of the Kuki-Chin group, as follows:

1. Lushai long vowel : OC type A

2. Lushai short vowel : OC type B

Assuming that this correlation is valid, how could one account for it?<fnref n="4" /> If the Proto-Sino-Tibetan precursor of correlation 1 above was *CVᵢVᵢ-, it is easy to derive the Lushai vowel length distinction simply through loss of the pharyngeal segment (figure 1).

<footnote n="4">4 Starostin accounted for the correlation by reconstructing a parallel length distinction for Old Chinese: long vowels in type A and short vowels in type B. While this reconstruction makes sense of the apparent correlation with Lushai, there is no direct Chinese evidence for it, and it does not help explain the Hán-time sound changes described above, which affected type A and type B differently.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1. a hypothetical model relating OC pharyngealization and Lushai vowel length.</figcaption></figure>

As for the origin of sequences like PST *CVᵢVᵢ-, we propose that they could arise from a constraint barring monomoraic free forms, for which there are typological parallels in both Austronesian and Austroasiatic.

4. Bimoraicity in Austronesian

The reconstructible free content morphemes of Proto-Austronesian overwhelmingly consist of
words of two syllables or more. Meaning-associated monosyllables exist too, but either
reduplicated, or as formatives at the end of longer words: Austronesianists call them ‘roots’ (for
collections of roots see Blust and Trussell, ongoing; Wolff 2010). For instance root *-sek ‘cram, crowd’ (Blust) occurs in PAN *seksek ‘cram in’, PMP *hasek ‘jam, cram, crowd’, *be(n)sek ‘overcrowded’, PWMP *dasek, *desek ‘compress’; as well as in words attested in a single language, e.g. Banjarese *barasak* ‘overcrowded’: but simple monomoraic monosyllables straightforwardly derived out of root *-sek ‘cram, crowd’ cannot be found. The fact that the root is preserved in recognizable form at the end of words in *hasek, *be(n)sek etc., while nonfinal elements in compounds are phonologically reduced, suggests that PAN was stress-final. In the examples above, the highly eroded lexical material preceding the root: *ha-, *be(n)-, *da-, *de-, *bara- is typically not recognizable. Evidently roots like *-sek once existed as free morphemes, without reduplication or compounding, and have been largely driven out of the modern languages.
Two languages: Bunun (Taiwan) and Cebuano (Philippines) preserve some of them: their phonetic shape in these languages indicates that as free morphemes they were realized with a geminate vowel interrupted by a glottal stop, presumably to satisfy a constraint against monomoraic free forms. For instance, Wolff (2007) argues that Cebuano *suʔúk* ‘remote corner, being deep inside’ is the regular reflex of the root *-sek. Bunun retains more of these ‘stretched’ monosyllabic roots as free forms, with geminate vowel and optional glottal stop (Table 3):

<table><thead><tr><th>PAN root</th><th>monomoraic bound forms (underlined)</th><th>Bunun bimoraic ('stretched') free forms</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>*-taq 'earth'</td><td>PWMP *buRtaq 'earth, ground, land', Amis <i>dita?</i> 'clay', <i>pota?</i> 'soil, dirt', <i>sota?</i> 'earth, dirt; mud; land'</td><td><i>ta(ʔ)aq</i> 'mud'</td></tr><tr><td>*-Ras 'nutritious substance'</td><td>PAN *beRas 'dehusked grain', Bunun <i>tilas</i> 'crops of cereal', Cebuano <i>lugás</i> 'grain'</td><td><i>la(ʔ)as</i> 'food substance; red meat; flesh of a fruit'</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><caption>Table 3: PAN monosyllabic roots, with bound forms (monomoraic) and corresponding Bunun free forms (bimoraic).</caption><tr><td>*-baw 'above'</td><td>PAN *babaw 'above', PAN *sabaw 'raise', PMP timbaw 'be at the top', Cebuano igbáw 'at the top of something'</td><td>ba(?)av 'high geographical location; up in the mountains'</td></tr><tr><td>*-Riq 'sword grass'</td><td>*eRiq 'Imperata cylindrica, sword grass'</td><td>li(?)iq 'sword grass'</td></tr></table>

Personal pronouns also show traces of this alternation. The root *-Su ‘2sg’ occurs unchanged as the last syllable of di- or polysyllabic forms Thao ihu ‘thou’, Atayal isuʔ ‘you’, Amis k-iso ‘you’, Kanakanabu ii-kasu ‘thou/you’; as a free form, however, it exhibits vowel gemination in Bunun su(ʔ)u ‘you’, Saisiyat shoʔo ‘you’, Tsou súu ‘thou’. Similarly, the root *-mu ‘2pl’ occurs unchanged in Atayal simu ‘you and he/she’, Saaroa ila-mu ‘you’, Bunun a-mu ‘you (pl.)’, Amis ka-mo ‘you (pl.)’, Kavalan i-mu ‘you (pl.)’, but has vowel gemination in the free forms Bunun mu(ʔ)u ‘you (pl.)’, Tsou múu ‘you (pl.).

## 5. Bimoraicity in Austroasiatic

A similar constraint against monomoraic free nominals was identified in Proto-Austroasiatic by Zide (2002), who termed it ‘the bimoraic constraint’. The strategies used by Austroasiatic and Austronesian speakers to make monosyllables compatible with the bimoraic constraint are very similar. This can be illustrated by Munda forms from Anderson (2004):

<table><caption>Table 4: The bimoraic constraint in Munda (source: Anderson, 2004)</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Gutob</th><th>Juang</th><th>Gorum</th><th>Sora</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>hand</td><td>titi</td><td>iti</td><td>siʔi</td><td>sʔi</td></tr><tr><td>foot</td><td>susuŋ</td><td>ijiñ/ŋ</td><td>jiʔiŋ</td><td>jʔeŋ</td></tr></tbody></table>

In Table 4 we see monosyllabic roots for ‘hand’ and ‘foot’ made bimoraic by reduplication in
Gutob, by the prothesis of i- in Juang, and by the gemination of the vowel with insertion of a glottal stop in Gorum. The Sora forms appear to have lost a vowel before the glottal stop: this makes them similar to Old Chinese type A forms, stage 2, in Table 2.

**6. OC type A/B as bimoraicity**

We propose that the A/B distinction, in the form that we attribute to Proto-Sino-Tibetan (Figure 1), continues an even earlier contrast in a language *ancestral* to Proto-Sino-Tibetan, where the same bimoraic constraint observed in Proto-Austroasiatic and in Proto-Austronesian existed. In that language, type-B forms would have had two syllables, and type-A forms would have had the ‘stretched monosyllable’ *CVᵢʔVᵢC structure found in Bunun and in Gorum.<fnref n="5" /> For instance, the OC pair type-B 入 *n[u]p ‘enter’ and type-A 内 *nº[u]p ‘bring or send in’, which at some stage contained the same monosyllabic root,<fnref n="6" /> would go back to PST type-B #nup vs. type-A #nuħup; these in turn would go back to pre-PST disyllabic #σ-nup (‘σ’ = ‘syllable’) vs. type-A #nuʔup, a stretched monosyllable. The bimoraic constraint can be formulated so as to prohibit not just free forms of one mora, but free forms with an odd number of morae (assuming that the bimoraic constraint applies to feet, and that words must have an integral number of feet). Under this formulation, if the language satisfied the constraint by ‘stretching’ both monosyllables and the last syllable of trisyllabic free forms, then PST *nuħup could go back to either of pre-PST *nuʔup or *σ-σ-nuʔup. Evolution into Proto-Sino-Tibetan would then involve (1) reduction of non-final syllables, and (2) change of intervocalic glottal stop to pharyngeal fricative *-VʔV- > *-V¿V-, in circumstances that have not been established.

<footnote n="5">5 Note that in this formulation, this structure includes an intervocalic glottal stop *-?-*, not a pharyngeal fricative *-¿-*.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6 According to the analysis of Baxter & Sagart (2014), type-B 人 *n[u]p ‘enter’ and type-A 内 *nº[u]p ‘bring or send in’, while evidently related historically, do not represent the same root synchronically at the Old Chinese stage; rather, they are “related roots”. A parallel case in English would be *foul* (< *fūl-) and *filth* (< *fūl-iph-), which historically come from a single root, but are not the same root in modern English. See the discussion of related roots in Baxter & Sagart (2014:60–61).</footnote>
## 7. Testing the correlation between Kuki-Chin vowel length and OC type A/B

The model described above presupposes the validity of Starostin's conjecture that the Chinese A/B contrast correlates with vowel length in Kuki-Chin. Below we describe a statistical investigation of that question. The null hypothesis tested is the following:

> *Null hypothesis: there is no positive correlation between PKC long vowel and OC type A on the one hand, and between PKC short vowel and OC type B on the other hand.*

We compare the Old Chinese A/B distinction in the reconstruction of Baxter-Sagart (2014) with vowel length, not in Lushai, but in Kuki-Chin, the subfamily of Tibeto-Burman to which Lushai belongs, using VanBik's reconstruction of Proto-Kuki-Chin (VanBik, 2009). The advantages of using reconstructed Proto-Kuki-Chin are twofold: (1) the reconstructed forms are a clearly circumscribed set, selected in advance for another purpose, and choosing examples from the extensive Lushai lexicon might introduce a selection bias; and (2) in the reconstructed forms, any single-language irregularities are likely to be ironed out.

The Proto-Kuki-Chin material was scanned to identify a list of likely Chinese cognates, which are listed in the Appendix. Although the precise correspondences between Old Chinese and Kuki-Chin are not fully understood, we were guided by known regularities of Old Chinese – Tibeto-Burman comparison and by Kuki-Chin phonological history: for example, PKC *th- appears to correspond regularly to Old Chinese *s-. Certain kinds of Kuki-Chin forms were omitted because the vowel length cannot be determined unambiguously. Because Kuki-Chin verbal morphology affects vowel length in ways that are only partly understood, the purview was limited to nominals: VanBik
provides a list of those (2009:451-515). We also excluded open-voweled syllables, as there is no length contrast: all syllables with open vowels are long in Proto-Kuki-Chin (VanBik, 2009:323). In addition, there is no length contrast among vowels preceded by /i/ or /u/, therefore these were excluded as well. The remaining forms are all CVC or CVVC monosyllables. Also excluded from comparison are

* PKC words with long and short variants, e.g. ‘elbow’ *ki(i)w 3, ‘egg’ *du(u)y 4, *tu(u)y 4, ‘yard, armspan, cord’ *la(a)m 4;

* OC words with A/B variants, e.g. 入 *n[u]p ‘enter’ and 内 *n[ʊ]p ‘bring or send in’; 糠 *[r]ɔ́ at and *[r]á t-s ‘dehusked but not polished grain’

* OC words of uncertain type, such as 彫 *s(פ)ram ‘long hair’;<fnref n="7" />

* probable loanwords: ‘silver’, PKC *ŋuun, OC 銀 *ŋrə[n]<fnref n="8" />

* comparisons requiring large semantic shifts: ‘pig’, PKC *wok 3 vs. 富 *pək-s > pjuwH > fù ‘rich; wealth’.

Forty-three comparisons in total were retained (see Appendix). A 2 x 2 contingency table was built from the words in the four possible categories (long-type A; long-type B; short-type A; short-type B), as follows:

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>PKC long</th><th>PKC short</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Chinese type A</th><td>6</td><td>6</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote n="7">7 The uncertainty arises from the fact that the phonetic feature represented in our Middle Chinese notation by “-j-”— whatever its precise phonetic nature—was in the process of being lost during the MC period after retroflex sibilants. For example, 生 shēng ‘bear, be born; live’ is represented as MC *sraeng in the *Guǎngyùn*, which would seem to imply that it is type A; but it is spelled as *srjaeng* an earlier version of the *Qièyùn*, showing that it was originally type B. (The loss of MC -j- also explains the development of MC -aeng from OC *-rəŋ, which has generally been regarded as irregular.) The absence of MC -j- after retroflex sibilants could therefore result from this late sound change, and does not guarantee that a word belongs to type A. See Baxter & Sagart 2014:74–75 and *passim*. It was probably this pattern that led Norman (1994) to treat syllables with retroflexion as a third type of syllable contrasting with plain and pharyngealized syllables.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">8 Silver metallurgy arises in Anatolia after 4000 BCE and reaches China no earlier than the first millennium BCE. Moreover the ‘cupellation’ technique necessary for separating silver from lead probably arose too late for ‘silver’ to be plausibly reconstructible at the Proto-Sino-Tibetan level; see Sagart (1999:202–203).</footnote>
<table><caption>Table 5: Contingency table for Chinese word type vs. Kuki-Chin vowel length.</caption><tr><td>Chinese type B</td><td>5</td><td>26</td></tr></table>

The P value, or significance of the deviation from the null hypothesis, was calculated from Table 5 using Fisher's exact test.<fnref n="9" /> Application of the test returns the P value 0.032. A P value under 0.05 is usually regarded as significant in scientific works. The P value 0.032 found here means that the probability under the null hypothesis of finding the same—or a smaller—proportion of forms that violate the proposed correspondence (long vowel ↔ tone A, short vowel ↔ type B) as in Table 5 is approximately 3.2%. In other words, on present evidence the null hypothesis should probably be rejected: there probably exists a positive correlation between Kuki-Chin long-short and Old Chinese A/B, as Starostin proposed. We are aware that this result could be different if other cognates were identified. It may be necessary in future to modify our list and to calculate the P value again. We invite replication or falsification of our results by other investigators on the basis of independently established cognate lists. Another avenue for replication or falsification would be to examine cognates of Old Chinese type A and B words in different Kuki-Chin languages like Tiddim or Lushai, for which significant lexical lists exist; or in Proto-Northern Chin (Button 2011).

## 8. Explanation of mismatches

Eleven comparisons in Table 5—almost one in four—behave contrary to prediction; they are italicized in the Appendix. The explanation for these mismatches is probably due to dealing not with exact cognates but with free forms having odd versus even numbers of syllables, yet both ending in the same monosyllabic root. For instance, PKC *raʔ ‘fruit’ and OC 糠 *[r]at-s ‘dehusked but not polished grain’ would both go back to the monomoraic final syllable of a pre-PST disyllable

<footnote n="9">⁹ Fisher's exact test (developed by R. A. Fisher) calculates an exact value for P from a 2 x 2 contingency table, and is more precise than the chi-square test, which provides only an approximation. See "Fisher's exact test" http://www.langsrud.com/fisher.htm. But the chi-square test applied to our data also gives a P-value less than 0.05 (0.022).</footnote>
#σ-ras, while OC *[r]§at would go back to the pre-ST stretched monosyllable #raʔas. Thus this explanation could account both for Chinese forms with A/B variation and for long-short variants in Kuki-Chin.

**Abbreviations**

AA: Austroasiatic

AN: Austronesian

MC: Middle Chinese

OC: Old Chinese

PAA: Proto-Austroasiatic

PAN: Proto-Austronesian

PKC: Proto-Kuki-Chin

PMP: Proto-Malayo-Polynesian

PST: Proto-Sino-Tibetan

PWMP: Proto-Western-Malayo-Polynesian.

**References**

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Baxter, William H. 1992. *A handbook of Old Chinese phonology*. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Baxter, William H. and Laurent Sagart. 2014. *Old Chinese: a new reconstruction*. New York: Oxford University Press.

Blust, Robert and Steven Trussell. "The Austronesian comparative dictionary". Last accessed 26 October 2016. http://www.trussel2.com/acd/.

Button, Chris. 2011. *Proto Northern Chin*. STEDT monograph #10. Berkeley: University of California.
Karlgren, Bernhard. 1954. "Compendium of phonetics in Ancient and Archaic Chinese." *Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities* 26.211-367

Li, Fang-kuei [Lǐ Fāngguì 李方桂]. 1971. "Shànggǔ yīn yánjiū" 上古音研究. *Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies* n.s. 9.1-61.

Norman, Jerry [Luó Jiéruì 罗杰瑞]. 1994. "Pharyngealization in Early Chinese." *Journal of the American Oriental Society* 114:397-408.

Langsrud, Øyvind. "Fisher's exact test". Last accessed 26 October 2016.
http://www.langsrud.com/fisher.htm.

Pulleyblank, Edwin G. 1977-1978. "The final consonants of Old Chinese." *Monumenta Serica* 33.180-206

Sagart, Laurent. 1999. *The roots of Old Chinese*. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Starostin, Sergei A. 1989. *Rekonstrukcija drevnekitajskoj fonologičeskoj sistemy* [A reconstruction of the Old Chinese phonological system]. Moscow: Nauka, Glavnaya Redakcija Vostočnoj Literatury.

VanBik, Kenneth. 2009. *A reconstructed ancestor of the Kuki-Chin languages*. STEDT monograph 8. Berkeley, University of California.

Wolff, John U. 2007. "Petrified prefixes in the Austronesian languages." *Studies in Philippine Languages and Cultures* 1,15:25-31.

Wolff, John U. 2010. *Proto-Austronesian phonology with glossary*. 2 vols. Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications.

Zide, Norman H. 2002. "Issues in Proto-Munda and Proto-Austroasiatic nominal derivation: The Bimoraic constraint." In *Papers from the 10th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society*, ed. Marlys Macken, 55-74 Tempe, Arizona State University, South East Asian Studies Program, Monograph Series Press.
<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>PKC gloss</th><th>PKC</th><th>Old Chinese > Middle Chinese > Modern Standard Chinese</th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1.</td><td>waist</td><td>taay 1</td><td>帶 *C.t̂a[t]-s > tajH > dài 'girdle, strap' (Lushai tai 'waist', tai-von 'wear in the belt'</td><td>l:A</td></tr><tr><td>2.</td><td>crab</td><td>?aay 1</td><td>蟹 *m-k̂reʔ > heaX > xiè 'crab'</td><td>l:A</td></tr><tr><td>3.</td><td>fat, grease</td><td>thaaw 3 / 4</td><td>臊 *[m.s]̂aw > saw > sāo 'fat of swine or dog'</td><td>l:A</td></tr><tr><td>4.</td><td>lip, beak, mouth</td><td>hmuur 3</td><td>門 *m̂ə[r] > mwon > mén 'gate, door'</td><td>l:A</td></tr><tr><td>5.</td><td>chaff</td><td>waay 4</td><td>簸 *p̂ajʔ > paX > bǒ 'winnow (v.)'</td><td>l:A</td></tr><tr><td>6.</td><td>layer</td><td>pleep 2</td><td>牒 *l̂ep > dep > dié 'tablet'</td><td>l:A</td></tr><tr><td>1.</td><td>monkey</td><td>ngaaw 4</td><td>禺 *ŋ(r)o-s > ngjuH > yù 'monkey'</td><td>l:B</td></tr><tr><td>2.</td><td>child</td><td>naaw 4</td><td>孺 *no-s > nyuH > rù 'child'</td><td>l:B</td></tr><tr><td>3.</td><td>appearance, face, shape</td><td>hmeel 4</td><td>面 *C.me[n]-s > mjienH > miàn 'face'</td><td>l:B</td></tr><tr><td>4.</td><td>snake</td><td>ruul 4</td><td>虺 *[r]u[j]ʔ > xjw+jX > huǐ 'snake-brood' (W dialect: *r- > MC x-)</td><td>l:B</td></tr><tr><td>5.</td><td>bat</td><td>baak 1</td><td>蝠 *[p]ək > pjuwk > fú 'bat'</td><td>l:B</td></tr><tr><td>1.</td><td>earth</td><td>lay 1</td><td>地 *[l]̂ej-s > dijH > dì 'earth, ground'</td><td>s:A</td></tr><tr><td>2.</td><td>bridge</td><td>lay 3<br>hlay 3</td><td>梯 *l̂[ə]j > thej > tī 'stairs'</td><td>s:A</td></tr><tr><td>3.</td><td>stump, base</td><td>bul 4</td><td>本 *C.p̂ə[n]ʔ > pwonX > běn 'tree trunk'</td><td>s:A</td></tr><tr><td>4.</td><td>ditch, hole, pit, well</td><td>khur 4<br>khor 4</td><td>款 *[kʰ]̂[o]rʔ > khwanX > kuǎn 'empty, hollow; hole'</td><td>s:A</td></tr><tr><td>5.</td><td>ruler, chief</td><td>mang (no<br>assigned tone)</td><td>猛 *m̂raŋʔ > maengX > měng 'fierce' (also 'eldest')</td><td>s:A</td></tr><tr><td>6.</td><td>dog</td><td>?uy 1</td><td>犬 *[k]ʰwĥ[e][n]ʔ > khwenX > quǎn 'dog' (probably *[k]ʰwĥ[e]rʔ)</td><td>s:A</td></tr><tr><td>1.</td><td>water</td><td>tuy 1</td><td>水 *s.turʔ > sywijX > shuǐ 'water; river' (E dialect: *-r > *-j)</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>2.</td><td>rope, cord</td><td>ruy 1<br>hruy 1</td><td>槮 *[r]ujʔ > lwijX > lěi 'a creeping plant'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>3.</td><td>tree</td><td>thing 1</td><td>薪 *[s]i[n] > sin > xīn 'firewood'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>4.</td><td>louse</td><td>hrik 3</td><td>蝸 *srik > srit > shī 'louse'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>5.</td><td>house</td><td>?im 1</td><td>窨 *q(r)[ə]m-s > 'imH > yìn 'subterranean room' (Shuo Wen 地室也)</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>6.</td><td>dream</td><td>mang 1</td><td>夢 *C.məŋ-s > mjuwngH > měng 'dream'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>7.</td><td>hair (body)</td><td>mul 1<br>hmul 1</td><td>眉 *mr[ə][r] > mij > méi 'eyebrow'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>8.</td><td>maggot, worm</td><td>lung 1</td><td>蟲 *C.lruŋ > drjuwng > chóng 'insect'</td><td>s:B</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>9.</td><td>thigh</td><td>phay 3</td><td>腓 *[b]əj > bj+j > féi 'calf of the leg'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>10.</td><td>tail</td><td>may 1</td><td>尾 *[m]əj? > mj+jX > wěi 'tail'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>11.</td><td>pillow</td><td>kham<br/>khum (no<br/>assigned tone)</td><td>枕 *[t.k][ə]m? > tsyimX > zhěn 'pillow'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>12.</td><td>bank, shore</td><td>kam 4</td><td>岑 *N-qʰ(r)[ə]m? > ngimX > cén 'high river bank'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>13.</td><td>mouth</td><td>kam 4</td><td>垮 *[k]ʰ(r)[ə]m? > khimX > qǐn 'pit'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>14.</td><td>land, country, forest</td><td>ram 4</td><td>林 *[r]əm > lim > lín 'forest'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>15.</td><td>mat</td><td>pher 4</td><td>編 *pe[r] > pjien > biān 'plait, weave'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>16.</td><td>three</td><td>thum 4</td><td>三 *s.rum > sam > sān 'three' (*s.r- > s-; infl. by 四 *s-?)</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>17.</td><td>bear</td><td>wom 4</td><td>熊 *C.[g]ʷ(r)əm > hjuwng > xióng 'bear (n.)'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>18.</td><td>inside, within, household</td><td>tshung 4</td><td>中 *truŋ > trjuwng > zhōng 'center' (on the initial correspondence see Benedict 1972)</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>19.</td><td>name</td><td>ming 4<br/>hming 4<br/>min 4<br/>hmin 4</td><td>名 *C.meŋ > mjieng > míng 'name'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>20.</td><td>door, gate</td><td>kot 3</td><td>闕 *kʷʰat > khjwot > què 'tower over gate'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>21.</td><td>bone</td><td>ruʔ 3</td><td>律 *[r]ut > lwit > lŭ 'law, rule (n.)' (semantics via 'long tubular bone' > 'pitch-pipe' see Sagart paper)</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>22.</td><td>armpit</td><td>yak 3</td><td>亦 *[c](r)Ak > yek > yì 'armpit'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>23.</td><td>deer (male), antler</td><td>yuk 3</td><td>鹿 *mə-rɔ́ok > luwk > lù 'deer'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>24.</td><td>two</td><td>niʔ 3<br/>hniʔ 3</td><td>二 *ni[j]-s > nyijH > èr 'two'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>25.</td><td>six</td><td>ruk 3</td><td>六 *k.ruk > ljuwk > liù 'six'</td><td>s:B</td></tr><tr><td>26.</td><td>eye</td><td>mik 3</td><td>目 *C.m(r)[u]k > mjuwk > mù 'eye'</td><td>s:B</td></tr></table>