Katana VentraIP

Proto-Min

Proto-Min is a comparative reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Min group of varieties of Chinese. Min varieties developed in the relative isolation of the Chinese province of Fujian and eastern Guangdong, and have since spread to Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world. They contain reflexes of distinctions not found in Middle Chinese or most other modern varieties, and thus provide additional data for the reconstruction of Old Chinese.

Proto-Min

Fujian

c. 4th century AD

原始閩語

原始闽语

Yuánshǐ Mǐnyǔ

Yuánshǐ Mǐnyǔ

Goân-sí Bân-gí

Nguòng-sṳ̄ Mìng-ngṳ̄

Ngé̤ng-sî Máng-gṳ̂

Ngûing-sǐ Mâing-ngṳ̌

Jerry Norman reconstructed the sound system of Proto-Min from popular vocabulary in a range of Min varieties, including new data on varieties from inland Fujian. The system has a six-way manner contrast in stops and affricates, compared with the three-way contrast in Middle Chinese and modern Wu varieties and the two-way contrast in most modern Chinese varieties. A two-way contrast in sonorants is also reconstructed, compared with the single series of Middle Chinese and all modern varieties. Evidence from early loans into other languages suggests that the additional contrasts may reflect consonant clusters or minor syllables.

The finals *-jaj and *-je merged after velar initials. This merger is reflected in a change in poetic rhyme between the Western Han (206 BC to 9 AD) and Eastern Han (25–220 AD) periods.[7]

Old Chinese

Old Chinese velar initials in certain environments during the Western Han period.[8] For example, Middle Chinese tsye 'branch' / is believed to reflect palatalization of an Old Chinese initial *k- because other words written with the same phonetic component, such as gjeX 'skill' /, have velar initials. The Proto-Min form *kiA 'branch' retains the original initial.[9]

palatalized

Middle Chinese has two series of initials that are not found in Proto-Min.[34][35]

retroflex

Whereas Middle Chinese obstruents have a three-way manner distinction, proto-Min has a six-way distinction: both voiced and voiceless stops may be aspirated or unaspirated, and also have an additional series that Norman called "softened".

[36]

Proto-Min has two series of sonorants.

[37]

Proto-Min distinguishes voiced fricatives *ɣ and *ɦ.

[36]

The initials *z and *ɣ have the same tonal reflexes as aspirated nasals and voiced aspirated stops.

The initial *ž follows voiced unaspirated stops.

The initial *ɦ follows softened voiced stops.

Proto-Min had four tone classes, corresponding to the four tones of Middle Chinese: syllables with vocalic or nasal endings belonged to class *A, *B or *C, whereas class *D consisted of the syllables ending in a stop (/p/, /t/ or /k/).[74] As with Middle Chinese and other languages of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, each of these classes split into upper and lower registers, depending on whether the original initial was voiceless or voiced.[75] When voicing was lost,[b] the register distinction became phonemic, yielding tone classes conventionally numbered 1 to 8, with tones 1 and 2 naming the upper and lower registers of Proto-Min class A*, and so on.[74] All 8 classes are retained by the Chaozhou dialect, but some have merged in other varieties. Some northern varieties, including the Jianyang dialect, have an additional tone class (tone 9), reflecting a partial merger of tone classes that cannot be predicted from Middle Chinese forms.[77]


Stop and affricate initials at other points of articulation produce the same tonal reflexes as the dental examples in the above table. Voiceless fricatives have the same tonal reflexes as voiceless aspirated and unaspirated stops. Voiced fricatives are more varied:[82]


The zero initial has the same tonal development as plain sonorants.[83]

an optional medial *i, *u or *y,

a nuclear vowel *i, *u, *y, *e, *ə, *o, *a or *ɑ, and

an optional coda *i, *u, *m, *n, *ŋ, *p, *t or *k.

[84]

Norman reconstructs Proto-Min finals as consisting of:


The possible combinations were:


The close vowels *i, *u, *y, *e and *ə were short, with stronger following consonants, whereas the open vowels *o, *a and *ɑ were longer, with weaker following consonants.[97][98]


Proto-Min also had a single word with a syllabic nasal, the usual negator *mC (cognate with Middle Chinese mjɨjH 'not have').[99][100]

In , Pu-Xian and Hainan varieties, nasal codas disappeared after open vowels, leaving nasalized vowels.[97][98]

Southern Min

In Southern Min, Pu–Xian and Hainanese, nasal initials became voiced stops or flaps except before nasalized vowels or nasal codas. In Hokkien, denasalization also occurred before nasal codas, but not before nasalized vowels.[76] In Pu-Xian, these initials later devoiced, merging with the voiceless unaspirated stops.[102]

[101]

Vowels subsequently lost their nasalization in Putian and Hainan.[103]

[98]

A later merger of nasal codas as /ŋ/ occurred in Pu–Xian and some Eastern Min dialects, including Fuzhou, Fuding and Gutian, but not Fu'an and Ningde.[104] A partial merger occurred in Chaozhou, Jieyang and Shantou, where -n merged with -ŋ.[102][42]

[98]

Most inland varieties have reduced the nasal codas to a single category.[42] Coastal varieties went through a series of changes that each affected part of the area, and interacted with nasal initials:


In most inland varieties stop codas have disappeared, but are marked with separate tonal categories.[42] In coastal varieties, stop codas underwent changes corresponding to those affecting nasal codas:

*tiaŋB 'wok'. The Min form preserves the original meaning 'cooking pot', but in other Chinese varieties this word (MC tengX > dǐng) has become specialized to refer to ancient ceremonial tripods.[34]

*dzhənA 'rice field'. In Min this form has displaced the common Chinese term tián .[108][115] Many scholars identify the Min word with chéng (MC zying) 'raised path between fields', but Norman argues that it is cognate with céng (MC dzong) 'additional layer or floor', reflecting the terraced fields commonly found in Fujian.[116]

*tšhioC 'house'.[117] Norman argues that the Min word is cognate with shù (MC syuH) 'to guard'.[8][118]

*tshyiC 'mouth'. In Min this form has displaced the common Chinese term kǒu .[88] It is believed to be cognate with huì (MC xjwojH) 'beak, bill, snout; to pant'.[8]

Most Min vocabulary corresponds directly to cognates in other Chinese varieties, but a significant number of distinctively Min words can be reconstructed in proto-Min. In some cases a semantic shift has occurred in Min or the rest of Chinese:


Norman and Mei Tsu-lin have suggested an Austroasiatic origin for some Min words:


In other cases, the origin of the Min word is obscure. Such words include *khauA 'foot',[123] *-tsiɑmB 'insipid'[99] and *dzyŋC 𧚔 'to wear'.[118]

Mei, Tsu-lin (2015), [The 'Wu dialect' of Southern dynasties and the origin of modern Min; plus an exegesis of Yan Zhitui's dictum, 'The South is tainted by Wu and Yue features, and the North is intermixed with barbaric tongues of Yi and Lu'] (PDF), Language and Linguistics (in Chinese), 16 (2): 119–138, doi:10.1177/1606822X14556607, archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-08-06, retrieved 2016-12-07.

"Shì shì "Yánshì jiāxùn" lǐ de 'nán rǎn wúyuè, běi zá yí lǔ' – jiān lùn xiàndài Mǐnyǔ de láiyuán" 試釋《顏氏家訓》裡的「南染吳越,北雜夷虜」 ──兼論現代閩語的來源

Zheng, Zhijun (2018), "A new proposal for Min subgrouping based on a maximum-parsimony algorithm for generating phylogenetic trees", Lingua, 206: 67–84, :10.1016/j.lingua.2018.01.008.

doi