On comparative Proto-Mǐn Dʰ- and putting conjectural morphology in its place

Recent conjectural morphological (‘word family’) approaches to early Chinese assign the aspirated causative verbs of the Mǐn group to Jerry Norman’s comparatively reconstructed Proto-Mǐn voiced aspirated *Dʰ-, proposing on this basis that *Dʰ- reflects prefixation of Old Chinese provenance. In this...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPapers in Historical Phonology Vol. 6; pp. 1 - 24
Main Author Smith, Jonathan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published University of Edinburgh 26.03.2021
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Summary:Recent conjectural morphological (‘word family’) approaches to early Chinese assign the aspirated causative verbs of the Mǐn group to Jerry Norman’s comparatively reconstructed Proto-Mǐn voiced aspirated *Dʰ-, proposing on this basis that *Dʰ- reflects prefixation of Old Chinese provenance. In this article, I argue that comparative phonological work on Mǐn has never suggested *Dʰ- for these items. In this case as elsewhere, morphological models can be of use but require grounding in comparative results.
ISSN:2399-6714
2399-6714
DOI:10.2218/pihph.6.2021.5515