Oc *P- Revisited
Creators: name: Behr, Wolfgang
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2010

description: <strong>Abstract:</strong><br>
<br>
Although it had been noticed early on by the Qīng kăozhèng 考證 philologists, that certain pre­do­minantly lái 來-, yĭ以-, and xié 邪-initial phonetic series contained anomalous labial mem­bers, as in<br>
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(1) 䜌 luán &lt; *lwan &lt; *-ron :: 變 biàn &lt; *pjenH &lt; *p-ron-s<br>
彔 lù &lt; *ljowk &lt; *-rrok :: 剝 bō &lt; *paewk &lt; *p-rrok<br>
勺 sháo &lt; *dzyak &lt; *s-[l]eʷk :: 豹 bào &lt; *paewH &lt; *p-[l]eʷk-s etc. <br>
[Mandarin &lt; *MC &lt; *OC, following the notation of the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction <br>
system of OC, outlined in Gassmann &amp; Behr 2006], <br>
<br>
it was only Maspéro (1935), who observed the same phenomenon in heterophonophoric (a.k.a. “word family”, “allofamic”) relationships, such as <br>
<br>
(2) 凌 líng &lt; *ling &lt; *-rəŋ :: 冰 bīng &lt; *ping &lt; *p-rəŋ.<br>
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He went on to argue that *p- in such cases is best interpreted as a “moribund” prefix, for which he considered residual “factitive-transitive”, “deverbal”, and, later on (Maspéro 1952), even “cau­sative” functions. Sagart (1999: 87-9) showed that literary OC di- or sesquisyllabic lento forms (con­ve­nient­ly collected in Liú Cuì 2000), as well as some modern Jìn dialects had pre­served traces of the same preinitial *p-, without any synchronically transparent function. Zhèng-Zhāng (2005) offered a comprehensive catalogue of internal and external evidence constellations and their Middle Chinese reflexes pointing towards ear­ly and pre-OC *p-, but he left the question open, of whether we are dealing with lexical clusters including a functionally void pre-initial, or ra­ther with a derivational prefix. <br>
Genuine prefixal *p- occurs with a variety of functions in Tibeto-Burman languages, in­clu­ding at least Tibetan, Lepcha, Bodo-Garo, Kachinic, several Kiranti languages, Burmese, Trung, Darang, Geman and Anong (Benedict &amp; Matisoff 1972, Matisoff 2003, Lĭ Dàqín 2002, Sūn Hóngkāi et al. 2008, Lù Shàozūn et al. 1980, Sūn Hóngkāi &amp; Liú Guāngkūn 2009, Zhāng Jìchuān etc.). In a fine recent review of the evidence encountered in the better part of these languages, Mazo (2004: 97-122) differentiates be­tween nominal, verbal, and adjectival usages of TB *p-, and argues that verbal *p- emerged as a prefix marking the presence of a non-animate object noun, i.e. signalling typically, but not necessarily, the transitivity of a divalent verb in Sino-Tibetan, but that its function was already obsolescing in OC (see already, in a similar di­rec-tion, Wolfenden 1929: 32-37). According to her, the nominal prefix *p-, on the other hand, oc­cur­red with deverbal nouns, most­ly plant and animal names, often nomina passiva. Yet Zhāng Jìchuān (2009: 250-1) shows that at least in Tibetan there are plenty of counterexamples where *p- is marking denominal verbs. <br>
In this talk, I will (a) reorder and revise some of Zhèng-Zhāng’s evidence, (b) com­ple­ment it with new paleographical data from excavated bamboo inscriptions, (c) look at Mazo’s theo­ry for verbal *p- through ±prefixed minimal pairs occurring in OC literature, (d) consider al­ter­na­tive theories of verbal *p- as a marker of non-presence or “aorist”, (e) speculate about its rela­tion­ship to the verbal classifier bɯ35 “once” in the Deng languages, and (f) explore a theory that verbal *p- once marked definiteness of the object NP with transitive verbs.<br>
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References:<br>
Benedict, Paul K. &amp; J.A. Matisoff (contributing editor) (1972), Sino-Tibetan: a conspectus. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.<br>
Gassmann, Robert H. &amp; Wolfgang Behr (2006), Antikchinesisch — Ein Lehrbuch in drei Teilen (Schweizer Asiatische Studien, Studienhefte; 18), vol. III.: Grammatik des Antikchinesischen, Bern, Frankfurt etc.: Peter Lang. <br>
Maspéro, Henri (1935), “Préfixes et dérivation en chinois archaïque”, Mémoires de la Société Lin­guistique de Paris 23: 313-327.<br>
———— (1952), “Le chinois”, in: A. Meillet &amp; M. Cohen ed., Les langues du monde: 589-608, Paris: CNRS.<br>
Lĭ Dàqín 李大勤 (2002), Gémàn yŭ yánjiū 格曼語研究 (Zhōngguó xīn fā­xiàn yŭyán yánjiū cóngshū 中國新發現語言叢書), Běijīng: Mínzú 民族.<br>
Liú Cuì 劉翠 (2000), “Gŭ Hànyŭ ‘bù’ de yīlèi tèshū yòngfă” 古漢語‘不’的一類特殊用法, Ānhuī Dàxué Xuébào 安徽大學學報 24 (3): 96-99 &amp; 117.<br>
Мазо, Ольга Михайловна [Mazo, Ol’ga Mixajlovna] (2004), Сравнительная морфология си­но-тибетских языков [Comparative morphology of Sino-Tibetan], Дисс. канд. фил. наук, Москва: РГГУ.РУ.<br>
Matisoff, James A. (2003), Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman : system and philosophy of Sino-Ti­betan reconstruction (University of California publications in linguistics; 135), Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Pr.<br>
Shī Yùméi 師玉梅 (2007), “Qiàn [l] cí bìng fēi yuán yú shăoshù mínzú yŭyán” 嵌[l]字並非源於少數民族語言, Xuéshù Yánjiū 學術研究 (6): 154-55.<br>
Sūn Hóngkāi 孫宏開 (1982), Dúlóngyŭ jiănzhì 獨龍語簡志 (Zhōngguó shăoshù mínzú yŭyán cóng­shū 中國少數民族語言叢書), Běijīng: Mínzú 民族.<br>
———— , Lù Shàozūn 陸紹尊 et al. (1980), Mánba, Luòba, Dēngrén de yŭyán 門巴、珞巴、僜人的語言, Běijīng: Zhōngguó Shèhuì Kēxué 中國社會科學.<br>
————  &amp; Liú Guāngkūn 劉光坤, Ānóngyŭ yánjjiū 阿農語研究 (Zhōngguó xīn fā­xiàn yŭyán yánjiū cóngshū 中國新發現語言叢書), Běijīng: Mínzú 民族.<br>
Wolfenden, Stuart N. (1929), Outlines of Tibeto-Burman Linguistic Morphology. With special re­ference to the prefixes, Infixes and Suffixes of Classical Tibetan and the Languages of the Ka­chin, Bodo, Nâgâ, Kuki-Chin and Burma Groups (Royal Asiatic Society Prize Publication Fund; XII), London: The Royal Asiatic Society.<br>
Zhèng-Zhàng Shàngfāng 鄭張尚芳 (2005), “Yuánshĭ Hànyŭ p-lèi fùshēngmŭ zài zhōnggŭ de biăo­xiàn xíngshì” 原始漢語 p- 類複聲母在中古的表現形式, in: Anne O. Yue 余靄芹, Ting Pang-hsin &amp; Hoh Dah-an 何大安eds., Hànyŭshĭ yánjiū — jìniàn Lĭ Fāngguī xiānshēng băisuì míng­dàn lùnwénjí 漢語史研究—紀念李方桂先生百歲冥单誕論文集 [Studies in the Hi­story of the Chinese Lan­guage — Memorial Collection on the Occasion of Mr. Li Fang-kuei’s 100th Birth­day]: 95-110, Taipei: Academia Sini­ca. <br>
Zhāng Jìchuān 張濟川 (2009), Zàngyŭ cízú yánjiū — gŭdài Zàngzú rúhé fēngfù fāzhăn tāmen de cíhuì 藏語詞族研究—古代藏族如何豐富發展他們的詞匯 (Zhōngguó Shèhuì Kēxuéyuàn lăo­nián xuézhě wénkù 中國社會科学院老年學者文庫), Běijīng: Shèhuì Kēxué Wénxiàn 社會科學文獻.
description: Organization: invited lecture, 18th International Conference on Chinese Linguistics, Harvard