Middle Chinese /m/ > Southern Min /b/ ?

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do_shahbaz
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Middle Chinese /m/ > Southern Min /b/ ?

Postby do_shahbaz » 2020-08-06, 17:31

/m/ in every other Sinitic languages (including every other Min ones) correspond to /b/ in Southern Min (Hokkien etc.) in many, if not most, of the cases:

(Note: Mandarin / Cantonese / Hokkien)
米 : mi3 / məi5 / bi2
木 : mu4 / muk6 / bok8
馬 : ma3 / ma5 / be2

Preceeding a nasal final, however, /m/ seems to be retained:

麵 = mien4 / min6 / mi7

However...

閩 = min3 / mən5 / bin5
明 = ming2 / ming4 / beng5

Any rule governing such /m/ > /b/ shift?

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Re: Middle Chinese /m/ > Southern Min /b/ ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-01-30, 15:58

do_shahbaz wrote:/m/ in every other Sinitic languages (including every other Min ones) correspond to /b/ in Southern Min (Hokkien etc.) in many, if not most, of the cases:

(Note: Mandarin / Cantonese / Hokkien)
米 : mi3 / məi5 / bi2
木 : mu4 / muk6 / bok8
馬 : ma3 / ma5 / be2

Preceeding a nasal final, however, /m/ seems to be retained:

麵 = mien4 / min6 / mi7

Wiktionary says this is also pronounced biān in Hokkien.
However...

閩 = min3 / mən5 / bin5

It also says this one can be either bân or bîn in Hokkien but is mang5 in Teochew.
明 = ming2 / ming4 / beng5

Any rule governing such /m/ > /b/ shift?

It gives a whole bunch of pronunciations for this one, with both /b/ and /m/.

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Re: Middle Chinese /m/ > Southern Min /b/ ?

Postby do_shahbaz » 2022-01-31, 18:39

I have had it figured out a long while ago -- /b/ and /m/ are allophones in Hokkien -- the former occurring only before non-nasalised vowels, and the latter after nasalised ones. In other words, one can analyse one of the pairs (usually /m/) as a surface realisation of the other under specific circumstances.

vijayjohn wrote:Wiktionary says this is also pronounced biān in Hokkien.


bian would be the literary reading for 麵, while mi (underlying analysis: biⁿ) would be colloquial one. The character 明 is read mia (for underlying biaⁿ) in the colloquial reading, and beng in the literary one.

The same applies to the pairs /g/ and /ŋ/ (henceforth ng in transliteration) and /l/ and /n/; the nasal in each pair being the surface/phonetic realisation before nasalised rhymes.

Sounds straightforward enough ... until one encounters nasalisation occuring in literary readings (where nasalisation is not supposed to happen) or colloquial readings with no historical evidence of a nasal coda.

It seems that /ŋ/ is a regular outcome in characters from Qieyun syllables ŋɑ (我) and ŋuo (吾五), hardly occuring elsewhere. Nasalisation sporadically occurs elsewhere -- this deserves further scrutiny.

Ciangciu/Zhangzhou 漳州 sporadically adds nasalisation to characters read without nasalisation in the other two major Hokkien accents: 奴艾. A plausible explanation is extra-dialectal inmixture from Sinitic varieties which have fully retained nasal consonants, especially Teochew.

火 has the literary reading hɔⁿ (note the nasalisation) in all three accents -- suggesting the possibility of 'ghost nasals' occurring in syllables not deriving from Old Chinese syllables with nasal initials.

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Re: Middle Chinese /m/ > Southern Min /b/ ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-01-31, 20:46

do_shahbaz wrote:It seems that /ŋ/ is a regular outcome in characters from Qieyun syllables ŋɑ (我) and ŋuo (吾五), hardly occuring elsewhere. Nasalisation sporadically occurs elsewhere -- this deserves further scrutiny.

I think at least in 我, the nasal was there even in Old Chinese (and still is in cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages) and was subsequently lost or changed in many varieties of Chinese.

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Re: Middle Chinese /m/ > Southern Min /b/ ?

Postby do_shahbaz » 2022-02-01, 4:06

vijayjohn wrote:I think at least in 我, the nasal was there even in Old Chinese (and still is in cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages) and was subsequently lost or changed in many varieties of Chinese.


The thing is, the OC nasal /ŋ/ was denasalised into the voiced stop /g/ in an overwhelming majority of cases (while the original OC /g/ was, like in most Sinitic varieties, devoiced) -- save for the few exceptions I have mentioned. Odd thing is that:

a) other rhymes have /g/ in literary readings: 月 guat, 迎 ging. 元原 guan, 義 gi

b) 我吾五 are read ngo only in the literary readings -- the colloquial ones are, respectively, gua gɔ gɔ.

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Re: Middle Chinese /m/ > Southern Min /b/ ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-03, 0:20

I thought it was usually just lost altogether. :hmm: Or maybe I'm mixing things up.

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Re: Middle Chinese /m/ > Southern Min /b/ ?

Postby do_shahbaz » 2022-02-04, 21:11

vijayjohn wrote:Or maybe I'm mixing things up.


You might be -- /ŋ/ was lost in Mandarin and Sino-Korean.

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Re: Middle Chinese /m/ > Southern Min /b/ ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-06, 21:46

do_shahbaz wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Or maybe I'm mixing things up.


You might be -- /ŋ/ was lost in Mandarin and Sino-Korean.

Do you mean word-initially?

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Re: Middle Chinese /m/ > Southern Min /b/ ?

Postby do_shahbaz » 2022-02-09, 13:43

vijayjohn wrote:Do you mean word-initially?


Indeed.

Just though of a possible solution to the "/ŋ~g/ problem" I had posted several weeks ago: the initial introduced by the Tang koine (c.a. 600 AD), and subsequently adopted as the literary pronunciation, may have been /ŋ/. At some point in the evolution of Hokkien, /ŋ/ generated therefrom is denasalised before close vowels, glides, and /a/.

五 lit: ngò ; col: gò
義 lit: ngi > gi ; col: gi

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Re: Middle Chinese /m/ > Southern Min /b/ ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-09, 15:39

Why specifically close vowels when the vowel in your first example isn't close? :hmm:


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