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<p>Posted by <b><!--poster-->ranskaldan</b>
on <!--date-->10:18 8/2/02
<p>In reply to: <a href="484.html">The Chinese Language - or, ideas to steal</a> posted by John Minot</b> on 22:00 7/29/02
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Actually, I'm pretty sure that "Leyan" is simply a
result of the transcription of a difficult vowel -
most possibly of a variety of Chinese other than
Mandarin. There are a lot of weird vowels in other
Chinese varieties (e.g. /i~/ in Hokkien), but as far
as I know, none has ever taken two syllables and
combined them in that way. The "-r" suffixation is a
rarity among Chinese varieties, and even in Mandarin,
it is the only example of a recently merged syllable.
<p>As for cross-syllable features in Chinese:
<p>yes you're right about tone sandhi and the -r suffix,
but as for the "merged syllables", my understanding is
that it is the *other* way around. Most non-foreign
disyllabic lexemes (e.g. jiao3luo4 "corner" ) are
believed to be originally monosyllables with consonant
clusters that "split up" to create the CV and CVC
language that Chinese is today.
<p>You could be right. There aren't any consonant
clusters in Chinese however, so I have a hard time
imagining how it would work.
<hr><i>Mark responds:
<p>The examples I can easily find in Norman's book are all from
Old Chinese.
<p>bu3 (OC pj@g) 'not' + zhi1 (OC tj@g) '3p pron.' = fu2 (OC pj@t)
<br>wu2 (OC mjag) 'neg. imper.' + zhi1 = wu4 (OC mj@t) 'neg. imper. marker'
<br>yu2 (OC gwjan) prep. + n- (unattested pronoun) = yan1 (OC gwjan)
<p>Here's a few Middle Chinese ones:
<p>zuo4 (MC tsuo-) 'do' + mo4 (MC mu@t) = zen3 (MC zem), found in modern zen3me 'how'
<br>mei3 'each' + ren2 'person' = men 'pluralizer'
<br>zi4 (MC dzi-) 'self' + jia1 (MC ka) 'family' = za2, found in za2men 'inclusive we'
<br>ni3 'you' + men 'pluralizer' = nin2 'you' (now a polite form)
<br>bu2 'not' + yong4 'need' = beng2 'neg. imper.'
<p>Note that the fusions are all (naturally enough) normal Chinese
syllables, so they're not evident in any way from studying the modern
language. They have to be recognized by historical studies.
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