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Article published In: Language and Linguistics
Vol. 24:2 (2023) ► pp.325–344

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Old Chinese ‘egg’

More evidence for consonant clusters

 | Kyoto University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 9 April 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00133.noh
Abstract
This paper attempts to reconstruct the onset of the word for ‘egg’ in Old Chinese (OC). Based solely on Middle Chinese (MC), *rˤonʔ would be the default OC reconstruction. However, philological evidence such as a phonetic relationship (also called Xiéshēng connections), annotations, and variant characters show the relationship between the word for ‘egg’ and words with the velar onset in MC. (Interestingly, most of them belong to the so-called Division-II rhyme in MC.) In addition, comparative data from Proto-Min (*lh-), Proto-Hmong-Mien (*qr-), and Proto-Tai (*qr-) indicate the possibility of reconstructing the consonant cluster *k.rˤ- for the onset of the word for ‘egg’. In § 4, I shall provide some additional evidence from the excavated documents, such as oracle bone inscriptions 甲骨文, Chǔ bamboo slips 楚簡, and Qín bamboo slips 秦簡. In Chǔ bamboo slips, the characters having 䜌 luán as a phonetic element represent the words having onset *k-, such as 關 guān, 卷 juǎn, and 宦 huàn (seen in Ān Dà Jiǎn 安大簡, which is also categorized as Chǔ bamboo slips 楚簡). Furthermore, the character luán, which has 䜌 luán as an additional phonetic element, represents the word for ‘egg’ on Qín bamboo slips 秦簡. As noted above, the character 䜌 luán can represent the words having onset *k-. This all constitutes evidence supporting the reconstruction of the word for ‘egg’ with the initial consonant cluster *k.rˤ- in OC, confirming the reconstruction of T’ung-ho Tung, T’ung-ho. 1944. Shanggu yinyun biaogao [Tentative archaic Chinese phonological tables] (Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica Monographs Series A21). Taipei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar and Baxter, William H. & Sagart, Laurent. 2014. Old Chinese: A new reconstruction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Early studies
  • 2.Reconstruction based on philological evidence
  • 3.Reconstruction methods in Chinese linguistics
    • 3.1Reconstruction based on comparative evidence and loan words
    • 3.2Proto-Min
    • 3.3Proto-Hmong-Mien
    • 3.4Proto-Tai
  • 4.The characters for ‘egg’ in the excavated documents
    • 4.1Oracle bone inscriptions
    • 4.2Bamboo slips
    • 4.3卝 guàn and 卵 luǎn
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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