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TIMESTAMPS

11.12.2.23:56: GOLDEN BONES AND TIGERS

The 阿什河 Ashi River in Heilongjiang was once known as

1. 安車骨水 *ʔan tɕha kot ɕwiʔ (晉 Jin to Tang Dynasties)

2. 按出虎水 *an tʃhu xu ʃui (金 Jin Dynasty)

3. 金水河 *kin ʃwi xo (Ming Dynasty)

4. 阿勒楚喀河 *a lə tʃhu kha xo (early Qing dynasty; Ashi dates from 1725)

in Chinese. The first, second, and fourth names are transcriptions of a Jurchen word for 'gold' plus a second morpheme (a suffix?). The third name is literally 'metal water river' in Chinese.

The oldest river name may reflect a word like *alca < ?*altya with *a as a second vowel instead of the *u in the later names. *altya is closer to Written Mongolian alta(n) than Turkic altun-type forms or Jurchen ?alcun.

The last transcription character of the first name (骨 *kot 'bone') may have represented a morpheme *kʊr which later became *xʊr (transcribed as 虎 *xu 'tiger') due to Vovin's  (2010: 31) *-k-lenition rule. If the final morpheme ended in *-t or *-d, I would expect later transcriptions to end in Chinese *t(h)-initial characters since final *-t had been lost in the northeast after the Tang Dynasty: e.g., *按出虎忒 *an tʃhu xu thə for *alcuxʊt.

The fourth river name implies that the Jurchen word for 'gold' was *alcun rather than *ancun. If the word were *ancun, a post-Jurchen form would not begin with al-. There was no sound change *-n- > -l- in Manchu. I now regard the *-n- in the Chinese transcription 安春 *anchun as an approximation of Jurchen *-l-.

The fourth transcription may have represented Manchu Alcuka with an unlenited -k- and an open final syllable. This -ka may have nothing to do with the earlier *kʊr. Manchu medial -k- implies an earlier *-Nk- or could be an irregular archaism. Does anyone know the Manchu name(s) of the river?

Could the final name Ashi be an irregular transcription of aisin, the native Manchu word for 'gold'? (The regular transcription is 爱新 Aixin.)

12.3.21:39: I'm glad I didn't upload this entry on time last night because I found even more Chinese transcriptions of the river name this afternoon. Unfortunately, none are dated, so I'm not sure how to reconstruct the readings that were current when they were devised. I'll list their modern standard Mandarin pronunciations followed by an approximate archaization.

Names with -l- for Jurchen *-l-

5. 阿禄阻 Aluzu / *a lu tsu

(6. Baidu baike has 阿禄祖 Aluzu / *a lu tsu)

Names with -n- for Jurchen *-l-

7. 按出滸 Anchuhu / *an tʃhu xu

8. 安珠胡 Anzhuhu / *an tʃu xu

9. 安出虎 Anchuhu / *an tʃhu xu

10. 按春(水) Anchun(shui) / *an tʃhun + Chn 'water, river'

Names with zero for Jurchen *-l-

11. 阿觸胡 Achuhu / *a tʃhu xu

12. 阿赤阻 Achizu / *a tʃi tsu

13. 阿之古 Azhigu / *a tʃi ku

14. 阿注滸 Azhuhu / *an tʃu xu

15. 阿芝(川) Azhi(chuan) / *a tʃi + Chn 'river' 

16. 阿脂(川) Azhi(chuan) / *a tʃi + Chn 'river' 

17. 阿術滸 Ashuhu / *a ʃu xu

18. 阿術火 Ashuhuo / *a ʃu xwo

1. Transcriptions of *-c-: *tʃh ~ *tʃ ~ *ʃ

Perhaps the distinction between Jurchen *c and *j was one of voicing which did not match the Chinese distinction between unaspirated *tʃ and aspirated *tʃh.

Could the *ʃ-transcriptions be due to confusion with aisin 'gold'? None of the *ʃ-transcriptions have an *l or *n before *ʃ.

2. Transcriptions of the vowel after *-c-: *u ~ *i

Could the word for 'gold' have been *alcïn or even *alcin in some Jurchen dialect(s)?

Cf. the vowels of Turkic forms like modern Turkish altın and Kazakh and Tatar алтын and perhaps Manchu aisin (which may not be native after all, but a loan from some ancient Turkic or para-Mongolic language into Proto-Tungusic)

I don't mean to imply that Jurchen got the word from Turkish, Kazakh, or Tatar, but that those languages have words for 'gold' whose second vowels may resemble the lost ancient source of Jurchen *alcïn ~*alcin.

3. Transcription of final *-n

Only one transcription (按春 Anchun) has a final -n. I presume 'gold' was *alcun in isolation and this isolation form got confused with the stem form *alcu- used in compounds like *alcu-kʊ (phonetically *[altʃuqʊ].

4. The final syllable (morpheme? suffix?) *-KU

- is sometimes absent

- is transcribed as *ku ~ *xu ~ *xwo (and the oldest transcription is *kot)

The *k-transcriptions represent more archaic forms that had not undergone *k-lention.

The vocalic variation could indicate that the Jurchen vowel was *ʊ corresponding to later Manchu ū [ū]. There was no phoneme *ʊ distinct from *u or *o in the 金 Jin, Ming, and/or Qing Dynasty dialects underlying these transcriptions.

No transcription other than the very first one (安車骨 *ʔan tɕha kot) reflects a final consonant.

11.12.1.23:59: DYE AND DRY

In "From Alcun to Aisin Again", I proposed that Jurchen

~

alcun 'gold'

"was a borrowing from some extinct para-Mongolic language like Xianbei" but didn't clarify whether I thought alcun was related to Altaic alt-words for gold. Let me add a few more details to my scenario:

- The alt-word originated in Turkic and was something like *altuun (Clauson 1972: 131)

- *altuun was borrowed into a para-Mongolic language (Xianbei?).

- At some point it became something like *alcun.

- Are there any cases of Xianbei *c : Mongolic t, particularly before u?

- Was the word originally *altün before being harmonized to *altun? Could *alcun be from preharmonized altün with t palatalizing before a palatal vowel?

- Jurchen speakers borrowed this word which was not related to the native Tungusic word aisin 'gold'.

- a variant like *altïn (cf. modern Turkish altın) was borrowed from some other early Turkic language into Proto-Mongolic or some direct ancestor of PM as *altan. (I assume the second vowel was delabialized to account for the nonlabial second vowel of PM *altan. I would expect Turkic *altuun to have been borrowed as PM *altun. T *ï could have been borrowed as PM *a since PM lacked *ï which had merged with *i.)

- the mismatch between Turkic *altuun and Mongolic altan reminds me of the mismatch between Khitan

<qid.un> 'Khitan'

and exonyms like Middle Chinese 契丹 *khɨttan and Korean 거란 kŏran < *kətan.

If Jurchen borrowed 'gold' from Xianbei rather than Khitan - which had at least one non-alt word for 'gold'

  <n.i.gu>

 - what other Xianbei loans could be in Jurchen and, by extension, Manchu? Last night it occurred to me that Manchu nikan 'Chinese' might be from the Xianbei word for 'Chinese' transcribed in Late Old Chinese as 染干 *ɲiemʔkan, lit. 'dye dry'. The sequence *ɲe was not possible in LOC, so perhaps LOC *ɲiemʔkan represented a Xianbei *ɲemkan (without vowel harmony?).

12.2.2:01: Alexander Vovin (1996 class handout; 2010: 31) proposed that

Manchu n- < Proto-Tungusic *ɲ- as well as *n-

Manchu i < Proto-Tungusic *e as well as *i

(Manchu e is from PT *ä, not PT *e.)

Manchu -k- < *-Nk-

so the sound correspondences between the two words are perfect if we assume the word entered some ancestor of Manchu prior to the application of those three sound laws.

By coincidence, Xianbei *ɲemkan and Manchu nikan were both personal names:

賀蘭染干 Helan Rangan, brother of 賀蘭太后 Princess Dowager Helan, mother of 道武帝 Emperor Daowu, founder of Northern Wei

禿髮染干 Tufa Rangan, son of 禿髮傉檀 Tufa Rutan of Southern Liang

尼堪 Nikan, son of 褚英 Cuyen, son of 努爾哈赤 Nurhaci, founder of the Qing Dynasty

Rangan and other Xianbei names are modern Mandarin pronunciations of their LOC transcriptions.

I recall that Vovin proposed that Manchu nikan was from Middle Chinese 人間 *ɲinkɛn. Although this etymology is phonetically plausible, 人間 means 'human world' (lit. 'person-space'), not 'Chinese'. (人間 does mean 'human being' in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, but I presume this is a modern meaning.)

I have no idea what Xianbei *ɲemkan originally meant. It does not resemble any Chinese word for 'Chinese'. I wonder if it's like Russian немец 'German' (no relation to *ɲemkan!) derived from нем- 'mute': i.e., a completely native word describing some attribute of the Chinese. This original Xianbei meaning would have been lost in Manchu many centuries later. Was Nikan, the son of Cuyen, called 'The Chinese', or was his name unrelated to nikan 'Chinese'?

Next: Golden Bones and Tigers

11.11.30.23:59: ENIGMA OF THE EIGHT BOWMEN

In "Baffled b-ai Beauty", I mentioned the Khitan large script (KLS) graph sequences

<k.ai> (line 2) and <k.ai> (line 10)

from 耶律褀墓誌. The first graphs for <k> (also <ka>, <ke> in Kane 2009: 179) look like combinations of 八 'eight' and 人 'person' atop 弓 'bow'. In "*Ai<-mbiguity", I proposed that these graphs were derived from Liao Chinese 兮 *xi with a slightly different bottom element.

The second KLS <k> graph looks exactly like the Jurchen graph

I'm surprised that Jin (1984: 231) did not list any derivation for it. It must either have been borrowed from the KLS or from some common ancestor of the KLS and Jurchen (large) script. I doubt that the Jurchen literate in Khitan reinvented the character out of Chinese parts without remembering that such a character already existed in the KLS.

One might guess that the Jurchen character

- was read something like <k> or <x>

- and/or meant 'eight', 'person', or 'bow'

But it turns out that it is an apparently meaningless phonogram for the Jurchen syllable <jan>. Why? I cannot think of any Chinese character pronounced like <jan> with a similar shape, and none of the graphs' components have <jan>-like readings in Liao or Jin Dynasty Chinese:

八 *ba 'eight'

人 *zhin 'person'

弓 *giung 'bow' (*gi is close to <k> and <ke>)

There is a Manchu word jan defined by Norman as 'a whistling arrow with a bone head with holes in it'. Is it a coincidence that

contains 弓 'bow'? Was it originally a logogram for a hypothetical Jurchen cognate jan 'a kind of arrow' before being recycled for writing the syllable jan in other contexts?

(12.1.2:48: There are only about 1400 known graphs in the Jurchen [large] script including variants. What is the proportion of logograms to phonograms? The number of logograms must be less than 1400. Would a logogram have been devised for such a specific kind of arrow instead of thousands of other words? Were jan-arrows particularly important to the Jurchen in spite of their absence from extant texts? A Jurchen military historian might know.)

Could the 人+弓 graph also have had a Khitan logographic reading <jan> in addition to phonogram readings <k(a/e)>? If so, could the Jurchen word jan be a loan from Khitan, or would Khitan <jan> have meant something completely different?

Could Jurchen jan be a translation of a Khitan word like ka or ke?

Next: Dye and Dry

11.11.29.23:36: BAFFLED B-AI BEAUTY

In "*Ai-mbiguity", I asked if the Khitan large script (KLS) graph

<ai>

was a variant or damaged version of

<ai> 'year'/'father'

If it were either of those things, the two <ai> might not coexist in the same text, though there's no guarantee someone would spell consistently. And more importantly, if the damaged hypothesis were correct, there should only be one instance of the first <ai> because it's unlikely that <ai> would be damaged the same way more than once.

Neither of those predictions were correct. Andrew West pointed out that the first <ai> appears a total of 15 times in just four KLS texts, and I'm embarrassed to admit that one of them was 多蘿里本郎君墓誌銘, the only KLS text I've ever had a good look at. Moreover, the second <ai> also appears in all four texts. So the two <ai> are distinct. But why were two characters devised when one would have sufficed to write [ai] in all contexts? The first <ai> appears in two spellings I predicted on Sunday

<k.ai> (耶律褀墓誌 line 2) and <k.ai> (耶律褀墓誌 line 10)

which may represent a Liao Chinese syllable *kai. What would have been wrong with using the other <ai> to write that syllable as

<k.ai> and <k.ai>?

The mysteries don't end there. It's well known that there is graphic and even semantic overlap between the Khitan large script and the Jurchen (large) script: e.g., 'year':

:

Khitan <ai> : Jurchen <aniya>

Can Jurchen help us understand the KLS better? Jin Qizong (1984: 223) derived Jurchen

(with a variant )

<hojo> 'beautiful' (cf. Manchu hojo 'id.')

from KLS

<ai>

If there is a relationship between the two graphs, did the KLS graph also represent a Khitan word ai or even have a second reading like xojo or qojo 'beautiful'?

Khitan q in

<qa.ɣa> 'qaghan' (in the small script; is the KLS spelling known?)

corresponds to Jurchen h [x] in

<ha.an> ha(a)n [xa(a)n] 'qaghan'.

Cincius (1975 II: 468) lists no cognates for hojo outside Jurchen and Manchu, so it may be a Jurchen innovation (and a loan from Khitan?).

I still have not found the right side of

as an independent KLS character, but the right side of

<hojo>

is an independent Jurchen character

<dalba> 'side' (cf. Manchu dalba 'id.')

which Yamaji derived from Chinese 半 *ban 'side' (Jin Qizong 1984: 60). Is <dalba> related to <hojo>?

What is the function of the left sides of <hojo> which are not in any other Jurchen characters I've seen?

Next: Enigma of the Eight Bows

11.11.28.23:58: FROM ALCUN TO AISIN AGAIN?

In my last post on Jurchen ?alcun 'gold' and Manchu aisin 'gold', I left out the comparative evidence for these words.

Neghidal aysịn

Oroch aisi(n-)

Udehe aisi

Ulchi aịsị(n-) ~ aysị(n-)

Orok aysị(n-)

Nanai dialects: aysị̃, aịsị(n-) ~ aịs^ya(n-)

Manchu aisin

Sibe aishin

Altaic alt-words for 'gold'

Tungusic (Cincius 1975 I: 33):

Evenki dialects: altan 'gold' or 'copper', aldun 'tin'

Solon altã, altá ~ altán

Neghidal altan 'copper'

Oroch akta (with -k- < -l-!) 'tin, zinc'

Udehe alta ~arta 'tin, zinc'

Ulchi alta(n-) 'tin'

Nanai dialects: altã, alta(n-) 'tin'

Manchu Altahatu 'name of a mountain'

Written Mongolian alta(n)

Clauson (1972: 131): Early Turkish altuun

The Jurchen word for 'gold'

~

was transcribed in Chinese as 安出 *anchu and 安春 *anchun. It is impossible to tell whether Chinese *-n- represented Jurchen *-n- or was an approximation of an *-l or *-r that would have been impossible after a vowel in that variety of Chinese.

I have already explained in my earlier post that sound correspondences rule out Jurchen alcun (or ancun or arcun) being an ancestor of Manchu aisin. The comparative evidence indicates that aisin can be reconstructed at the Proto-Tungusic level. I would rather not claim that Jurchen preserved *alcun while all other languages including Jurchen's closest relative Manchu shifted *alcun to aisin in precisely the same irregular manner.

I think the Tungusic alt-words are borrowings from Mongolian with Tungusic-internal semantic shifts from 'gold' to other metals. Mongolian alta(n) in turn is a borrowing from Turkic.

Perhaps Jurchen alcun was a borrowing from some extinct para-Mongolic language like Xianbei. Khitan had a different word for 'gold':

  <n.i.gu>

Or maybe Khitan was the source of Jurchen alcun. The Khitan logograms

~~

<GOLD> (large script) ~ <GOLD> ~ <GOLD♂> (both small script)

could have been pronounced alcun (possibly with modification for the masculine form), but there is no way to determine their readings.

11.11.27.21:14: *AI-MBIGUITY

In "Ten-Point Evenings", I mentioned four Khitan large script characters with the right-hand element 十  'ten' +丶.

The first two may be variants of each other. I don't know their meanings or readings.

The second two are transcriptions of Liao Chinese 聖 *shing 'sage, sacred, holy'.

Later last week I found a fifth KLS character with the same right side:

I have not seen the left side in any other KLS character. It looks like a compromise between Chn 爿 'bed' and丬'split bamboo'. Kane (2009: 181) lists it as 5.160 "[ai] (開 final)" and as an equivalent of the small script

<ai>

There is another <ai> in the KLS which represents both ai 'year' and ai 'father':

When did the Khitan use one <ai> instead of the other? Was one reserved for the native words 'year' and 'father' while the other was reserved for transcribing Liao Chinese syllables like 開 *kai which might've been written as

~

<k.ai> ~ <k.ai>

The KLS graph for <k> (also listed by Kane 2009: 179 as [ka] and [ke]) resembles Liao Chinese 兮 *xi. The Khitan small script transcriptions

~

<k.ai> ~ <x.ai>

for 開 imply that the initial *k- ([kh] in strict notation) may have had a lenited variant *x-. Is there any northeastern dialect of Chinese that has x- < *kh-? Such lenition did independently occur in Cantonese and Vietnamese which are far from Khitan territory: e.g.,

Ct 開 hoi < *khai

Viet 開 [xaaj] < *khai [khaaj] (still spelled khai today)

Perhaps <x> reflects Khitan perception/approximation of a Liao Chinese [kx] as x. If the Khitan were uncertain about the initial of 開 as *k- ~ *x-, perhaps the creator of the KLS used a hypercorrect (and therefore wrong) k-reading of 兮 as the basis for the <k>-graphs

~

Or maybe the above graphs should be interpreted as <x> ~ <xa> ~ <xe> - or <x> plus (certain?) unwritten vowels. The readings of many Khitan large and small script graphs are currently ambiguous. Perhaps a better understanding of the structure of both scripts will reduce this ambiguity in the future.

Andrew West suggested that Written Mongolian on 'year', Khitan ai 'year', and Jurchen aniya 'year' are cognate.

I recall seeing an ai-aniya connection suggested somewhere, but I can't remember the source. Given how Khitan words often do not have final vowels or syllables found in their cognates elsewhere, I think it's possible that a pre-Khitan *aña could have become ai. (Another possible case of *ñ > i in Khitan might be the Kitai-type variants of the name 'Khitan'.) The pre-Khitan form could have been borrowed from some descendant of Proto-Tungusic *añŋa 'year'.

I don't think WM on is related because it lost a x- present in other Mongolic languages. Like some unnamed scholars Kane mentioned (2006: 131), I regard WM on < *xon as being cognate to Khitan

~

<TIME> *po 'time' (in the large and small scripts*)

~

<po.on> ~ <po.on> *pon 'time'

and ended up as fon 'time' in Manchu.

Kane (1989: 16)  wrote,

"There are also cases where the meaning of an ideographic character is nown, but not the pronunciation; in some cases it is possible to guess the reading of an ideogram [in the Khitan small script], for example, means 'year'; and the word for year in the vocabulary appended to the History of the Liao Dynasty is transcribed by the Chinese character 桓 (Modern Standard Chinese huan); on the basis of this the tentative reading *hon has been given to this character."

If there was a Khitan word *hon 'year', then

*po 'time' is not cognate to *hon 'year', and Jurchen *pon cannot be from *hon 'year'

or *po 'time' is from a *p-preserving dialect whereas *hon is from a *p-leniting dialect, but there is no other evidence for *p- ~ *h-variation in Khitan

However, I can't find 桓 as a transcription "in the vocabulary appended to the History of the Liao Dynasty", and I don't recall Kane mentioning 桓 in his 2009 book.

Next: From Alcun to Aisin Again?

11.27.21:45: Ai-ddendum II: Could

<ai>

be a variant of

<ai> 'year'/'father'

with missing top and top right strokes? Or is the first <ai> a damaged version of the second <ai>? In other words, was there only one KLS <ai> graph with or without damage?

*po 'time' was written with a logogram <TIME> in the small script, whereas its homophone (?) 'monkey' was written as polygrams

~

<p.o> ~ <p.o.o>

Did 'time' and 'monkey' respectively have short and long vowels?

11.11.26.23:36: *MO THAN ONE READING A 日 DAY?: A SERPENTINE SOLUTION?

If the Khitan large script character 日 'day' was read as 捏咿兒 <neir> (as transcribed in the History of the Liao Dynasty), why did Cong, Liu, and Chi (2005: 55) interpret

in the 多蘿里本郎君墓誌銘 epitaph for Lord Duoluoliben as 莫聖哥 <mo.shing.go> rather than 捏咿兒聖哥<neir.shing.go>? I don't know, but I can guess that they might have been influenced by the use of 日 in the KLS spellings for 'snake'

~~~

corresponding to

<mu.ɣo.o> (Kane 2009: 118; Liu Fengzhu 1983: <mehai>, Chinggeltei: <mogo>)

in the small script and Written Mongolian moɣai. Did 日 have two readings?

<neir> as a logogram 'sun/day'

<mV> as a phonogram used to write polysyllabic words that had nothing to do with suns or days

If 日 had two readings, what was the reasoning behind the second reading? Was there some other 'sun/day' word in Khitan with the syllable <mV>?

Perhaps I should interpret 日 as <mVɣ(V)> with a second consonant and maybe even a second vowel. The use of the 牛-like KLS graph for <o> in

~

<p(o).o> ~ <p(o)o>

'monkey'

written as

~

<p.o> ~ <p.o.o>

in the small script leads me to analyze the KLS spellings of 'snake' as

~~~

<muɣ(o).o> ~ <muɣo> ~ <muɣo> ~ <muɣo>

莫 was read as *mak in Middle Chinese and could have been *moɣ (= moh in Kane's transcription) in early Liao Chinese. So was the name

莫聖哥

Could 日 as a KLS phonogram for <mVɣ(V)> have originated as an abbreviation of early Liao Chinese 莫 *moɣ? I cannot think of any other reason for reading 日 with <m>. Turkic words for 'sun/day' have initial k-/g-, not m-. The native Korean word associated with 日 is 날 nal 'day', perhaps ultimately connected to Khitan <neir> and Written Mongolian nara(n) 'sun'. The Parhae word for 'day' could have been something like Korean nal. The Jurchen reading for

~

was inenggi 'day' and 'sun' was

shun (whose graph is obviously derived from 日).

11.27.3:09: For completeness, I should add that I can't think of any Japonic word for 'sun' or 'day' with initial m-. It is remotely possible that a Japonic language was still spoken in Koguryo and brought to Parhae. However, Vovin has argued against such a late survival on Japonic on the continent and I have yet to see any instance in which Japonic elucidates the structure of the Khitan or Jurchen scripts. And this one instance of what might be potential Koreanic influence on a Jurchen character could just be a coincidence.

(11.27.20:39: I forgot about this other Koreanic-based explanation for a Jurchen character.)

The vowel of the first Khitan small script graph for 'snake'

is uncertain since I can't find it in any Khitan small script transcriptions of Chinese. I presume Kane didn't read it as <mo> in spite of its correspondence to the first syllable of Written Mongolian moɣai because he had already assigned <mo> to

which is the first graph in

<mo.ri> 'horse'

corresponding to Written Mongolian mori(n) 'horse'.

11.11.25.12:45: *MO THAN ONE READING A 日 DAY?

Both the Khitan large and small scripts have graphs that have been mostly interpreted as logograms for 'day', 'month', and 'year':

Gloss	day	month	year
Khitan	?*neir (transcribed as 捏咿兒 *nieiri; cf. Written Mongolian nara(n) 'sun')	?*sair (transcribed as 賽離 *saili, 賽咿唲*saiiri; cf. Written Mongolian sara(n) 'moon, month')	*ai (used to transcribe Liao Chinese *-ai; no Mongolian cognate?)
Khitan large script
Khitan small script
Chinese	日	月	年

The Khitan large 'day' and 'month' graphs are identical to their Chinese counterparts. The Khitan small 'year' graph may be derived from a mirror image of Chn 年. The other three graphs have nothing to do with Chinese.

The Khitan large and small 'year' graphs have also been used to write 'father'. This implies that 'year' and 'father' were homophones, though some have reconstructed the two words differently (Kane 2009: 33):

Like Kane, I prefer to assume that Khitan characters have only one reading each. However, Cong, Liu, and Chi (2005: 55) interpreted

in the 多蘿里本郎君墓誌銘 epitaph for Lord Duoluoliben as a name 莫聖哥 <mo.shing.go>. Why didn't they read it as 捏咿兒聖哥<neir.shing.go>? Is Liao Chinese 莫聖哥 *moshinggo attested for a Khitan name in any Chinese text? <mo> is not like Written Mongolian edür 'day', and even if there were a similar Mongolian word for 'sun' and/or 'day', one cannot assume a Khitan word was cognate to its Mongolian translation without external evidence: e.g., the Chinese transcriptions of the Khitan words for 'day' and 'month'. Did the Khitan large script character 日 have two readings <neir> and <mo>?

Next: A Serpentine Solution?

11.11.24.23:54: RIDDLE OF THE ROOFED DOTS

~

'sixty'

It belongs to a set of KLS characters for 'fifty' through 'eighty' which consist of 仒 plus additional strokes. None bear any resemblance to the KLS characters for 'five', 'six', 'seven', 'eight', or 'ten'. (There are no Chinese characters for 'fifty' through 'ninety'.)

Gloss	Khitan large script	Sinography	Gloss	Khitan large script	Sinography
five		五	fifty		五十
six	~	六	six	~	六十
seven		七	seventy		七十
eight		八	eighty		八十
ten		十	hundred		百

Could 'fifty' through 'eighty' (readings unknown) have shared a common morpheme symbolized by 仒?

Next: *Mo than One Reading a Day?

11.25.1:45: 仒 is a kugyŏl character for the Korean syllable ŏ. I presume it's simplified from the Chinese character於 (pronounced ŏ in Korean). The Unihan database also lists a reading sya. Could 仒 also have been a simplification of an earlier Sino-Korean 舍 sya? For other made-in-Korea characters, see the Wikipedia page on Korean transcription and kugyŏl characters. Wikipedia and zdic also list a Chinese reading bing without any meaning.

Although the KLS graph for 'sixty' resembles 扵, a variant of Chinese 於 (more variants here), I am not sure that 扵 or 於 have anything to do with KLS 仒-graphs because the KLS has other graphs with two dots beneath components with 人-shaped bottoms: e.g.,

uul 'winter' (identical to Chn 冬 'winter')

also used to write the stem of

uul-? 'married'

with completely un-Chinese second and third KLS characters.

The 仒 in KLS numeral graphs could be a reduction of some 'roofed' sinograph like 舍 or 冬 rather than a direct borrowing from 於 ~ 扵.

11.11.23.23:59: TEN-POINT EVENINGS

I don't know of any other KLS [Khitan large script] character with the components 歹 and 十+丶/卞. Perhaps Viacheslav Zaytsev has seen such KLS characters in the long manuscript he is studying.

I don't know the readings or meanings of the first two. I guessed that the third is a variant of

<shing> (transcription of Liao Chinese 聖 *shing 'sage, sacred, holy')

with a left-hand element resembling Chn 夕 'evening' instead of Chn 歹 'bad' and Cong, Liu, and Chi (2005: 55) confirmed this by interpreting

in the 多蘿里本郎君墓誌銘 epitaph for Lord Duoluoliben as a name 莫聖哥 <mo.shing.go>.

I still haven't seen any other KLS 歹-characters, but there are at least three other KLS 夕-characters:

The second looks like Chinese 外 'outside', but there is no guarantee that KLS 外 meant 'outside' or was pronounced anything like Liao Chinese *ngwai 'outside'.

11.24.1:57: The first of the KLS characters with 十+丶 has a left-hand component shared with at least 15 other graphs:

This フ+丨element resembles Chn 扌 'hand' which has an exact lookalike in the KLS character

'sixty'

as written in Kane (2009: 177). Both

and

occur in numeral contexts, so I assume they are variants. Do 扌-variants exist for at least some of the other フ+丨graphs above?

Not all instances of フ+丨may be variants of 扌.

<siang> 'general'

is a variant of

and both are related to Liao Chinese 将 *tsiang. (The Chinese initial *ts- was Khitanized as <s>. Note how the KLS characters have a bottom right component with a flat top unlike Chn 寸 whose vertical stroke intersects its horizontal stroke.)

has a unique (?) left side and may be a variant of

Coming Soon: Sixty Days (in less than sixty days, I hope)

11.11.22.23:40: BADLY CAPPED RED SAGES

I've long wondered what the reasoning for the Tangut character

2544 2ʃɨẽ 'sage'

was. Currently I am inclined to derive it from the 耳 'ear' at the top left of Chinese 聖 'sage', but earlier this fall, I thought it vaguely resembled the Khitan large script character

transcribing Liao Chinese 聖 *shing 'sage, sacred, holy' (Kane 2009: 181).

This KLS character resembles Chn 歹 'bad' (earlier 'bone fragment') and 十 'ten' plus a dot 丶 (which is close to 卞 'cap'). Could it also have been read as the native Khitan word for 'sacred' written in the small script as

<mu.u.ji>?

I don't know of any other KLS character with the components 歹 and 十+丶/卞. (11.24.1:59: I do now!) Perhaps Viacheslav Zaytsev has seen such KLS characters in the long manuscript he is studying.

One could subtract strokes from 歹+卞 to create something not far from メ+丨, the cursive form of 2544 (see Grinstead 1972: 300, 302, 303, 304, 305 for examples). But I don't think メ+丨 is derived from 歹+卞. Seeing characters in other characters can border on pareidolia.

The Jurchen graphs for achiburu 'holy' (no Manchu cognate) bear no resemblance to any of the above:

<achi.buru>

Jin Qizong (1984: 234) derived <achi> from Jin Chinese 赤 *chi 'red', though it looks more like 寺 *sï 'temple' with a 人 roof over it to me. The earliest form

of <achi> doesn't look much like 赤 either.

Jin listed no instances of <achi> without a following <buru>. Nonetheless, he glossed achi as 聖, presumably because -buru is a known derivational suffix. Neither Jin nor I know the derivation of <buru>.

Is <buru> in Jason Glavy's font? I can't find it, so I made a 'frankengraph' out of

+

<gushin> 'thirty' + <ma>

11.23.4:30: There is another

<buru>

in the Jurchen script for the first two-thirds of

<buru.we-> 'to lose'

11.11.21.23:59: DID TANGRAPHY BORROW FROM KHITAGRAPHY?

I wish to thank Viacheslav Zaytsev for Kychanov's 1964 article "К изучению структуры тангутской письменности". On p. 135, Kychanov wrote (my translation),

The comparison of Khitan characters with Tangut characters indicates that the Tangut could have borrowed some graphic elements of the Khitan script which probably in turn go back to sinography. In our opinion, these [elements] are

I will refer to these eleven elements as I-XI. If one were to prove that tangraphy were derived from khitagraphy* (Khitan writing), one would have to find shared innovations that set the two scripts apart from sinography. How many of these elements are shared innovations?

Element I is in the Khitan small script

<ún>

but only appears as a cursive variant of the element

'mouth'

in Tangut (Kolokolov & Kychanov 1966: 131). Both elements resemble Chn 及 minus the left stroke.

Element II (乚) is in both Khitan and Tangut, but is also found in sinography (e.g., 礼, 札), so it could have been inherited independently from sinography.

I cannot find elements III-V, VII, IX, and X in Khitan. My unfamiliarity with the Khitan large script may be at fault.

The closest Khitan character to element V that I know of is the small script graph for <g>

which is not an exact match for the Tangut element (alphacodes: cua, cix) only appearing in

Element VI looks almost like a Khitan small script logogram

corresponding to Chn 后 'ruler'. It resembles a surrounding radical 'silk' (alphacode diu)

in Tangut: e.g., in

Both resemble Chn 介 'armor; to lie between', so independent derivation cannot be ruled out.

Element VIII resembles an abbreviated variant of the Tangut element

listed in Kolokolov & Kychanov (1966: 128) but I haven't seen it in Khitan.

Element XI is more or less in both scripts:

Khitan small script <dú> and its Tangut near-lookalike

It is similar to Chinese 几 but the 丿on the right could have been a Khitan innovation emulated by the Tangut.

Although I haven't been able to confirm all eleven elements, I cannot rule out khitagraphic influence on tangraphy. The small number of matches above probably reflects my ignorance of khitagraphy. In any case, tangraphy is not structurally like either Khitan script in spite of some degree of graphic similarity.

*11.22.2:36: I previously preferred the term khitanography but I left out the -no- since 'Khitan' appears in small script texts and in borrowings like Китай and Cathay without -n. A similar term for the Jurchen script(s) is Jurchigraphy with a Jurchi- based on Mongolian Jürchid. On the other hand, these new terms are harder to remember than khitanography or jurchenography, and neither of those terms is any shorter than Khitan script or Jurchen script.

11.11.20.23:59: EIGHT GREAT RICE HORDES

The Khitan small script version of the reign title from my last post looks almost nothing like its large script or Chinese equivalents:

Khitan small script	Khitan large script	Chinese
<HEAVEN>	<HEAVEN>	重 *chung 'repeated'
<ú.dû.l.ɣa.a.ar>	'ordu-?':	熙 *hi 'splendor'

Almost, because the small script character for 'heaven' (pronunciation unknown) is a derivative of Chinese 天 'heaven' like its large script equivalent. In , the horizontal top stroke is broken in two, resulting in what looks like 八 'eight' over 大 'great' to Chinese eyes. The Khitan small script characters for 'eight' and 'great' not only do not look much like their Chinese equivalents but are actually more complex:

<EIGHT> ~ <EIGHT♂>; <GREAT>

KSS <EIGHT(♂)>' has four or five more strokes (王 added around 八?) and KSS <GREAT> has one more stroke.

The KSS forms above were taken from the eulogy for Emperor Xingzong written in 1055. In the 耶律迪烈 Yelü Dilie epitaph written 37 years later in 1092, the second half of the reign title was written as

<ordu.l.ɣa.ar>

with the logogram  <ordu>* (resembling Chn 米 'rice' - why?) in place of <ú.dû> and no <a>. What might this substitution suggest?

1. <ordu> and <ú.dû> had become homophonous by 1092 in the speech of the scribe.

Presumably <r> was lost, though the (later?) Chinese transcription 斡魯朵 *woludo must be based on a dialect with [r].

2. <ordu> and <ú.dû> were synonyms.

Were they unrelated words or dialectal variants?

The various undated KSS spellings of 'ordu' in Kane (2009: 64. 77) suggest possible dialectal variation and/or vowel changes over time:

<ORDU.u> (does the final <u> indicate a long vowel or just clarify the final vowel of <ORDU>?)

<ORDU.ú>

<ORDU.ó> (with a surprising final vowel)

<o.ORDU.u> (does the initial <o> indicate a long vowel or just clarify the initial vowel of <ORDU>?)

<o.ORDU.ú>

11.21.1:13: Note that none of these variants begin with an <u>-like vowel.

The diacritics in Kane's transcription system (which I use here with slight modifications: e.g., <ɣ> instead of <h>) may or may not indicate phonetic distinctions (Kane 2009: 26).

3. <ordu> and <ú.dû> were neither homophones nor synonyms but were phonetically close enough for the scribe to substitute the former for the latter.

I think 3 is most likely to be correct, so my gloss of 'ordu-?' for the Khitan large script character is most likely to be incorrect.

Next: Did the Tangut Borrow Graphemes from the Khitan?

*<ordu> is related to Mongolian ordu, the source of horde (with an inexplicable, nonetymological h-).

11.11.19.21:31: HEAVEN AND EARTH WATER NINETEEN

Having just mentioned a word written with nothing but ambiguous Khitan small script characters

<s.l.b> = [(e)s(e)l(e/o)b(o)]?

four days ago, I felt like seeing it in context. So I found it in the 興宗皇帝哀冊 memorial for Emperor Xingzong which begins with the reign title known in Chinese as 重熙 Chongxi 'repeated splendor' (in Kane 2009's translation; 1032-1055). One might expect the Khitan version of the reign title to be a translation or a transcription of Liao Chinese 重熙 *chunghi, but of course it was neither. In the large script it is

'heaven' (reading unknown?): cf. Chn 天 'heaven' and 土 'earth'
'ordu-?': cf. Chn 氵 'water', 一 'one', 九 'nine' (not 'nineteen' as in the title, but close)

The first graph must be related to Jurchen

~

abka 'heaven'

and even more strongly resembles

Vietnamese 𡗶 trời ~ giời 'heaven' < Chn 天 'heaven' over 上 'top'

Zhuang 𡗶 gwnz [kɯn] 'top' (identical in shape to the Vietnamese character)

and is a near-lookalike of

Zhuang dienh [tiin] 'imperial palace'* < Chn 夭 'to die young' (! - not 天 'heaven'?) over 土 'earth'

the word [tiin] is probably borrowed from a form like Cantonese 殿 [tiin] 'palace'

I don't think the similarity between the Khitan and Jurchen graphs and the later southern graphs indicates that the latter are derived from the former. Different peoples familiar with the Chinese script could have independently created 天 'heaven'-based graphs for non-Chinese words associated with 'heaven', 'top', etc. What truly indicates a relationship between the Khitan and Jurchen large scripts are similar graphs that have no known Chinese sources: e.g.,

 and

Khitan ai 'year' and Jurchen aniya, both 'year'.

If one asked two sinographically literate people to create a new character for 'year' unlike Chinese 年, they would not both come up with more or less the same shape. (The absence of this shape and the presence of 年 in the Parhae script may suggest that the graph is a Khitan innovation rather than a carryover from Parhae.)

The second graph has nothing that suggests 'ordu'. The function of its three elements resembling Chn

氵 'water'

一 'one'

九 'nine'

are unknown. These elements may or may not be sinified replacements for non-Chinese elements found in these variants:

The third variant has a left-hand component of unknown function also in

Could this C-like component have influenced the shape of the Tangut component ? See Kychanov's list of "eleven elements that are common to both Liao [Khitan] and Tangut" scripts reproduced in Grinstead (1972: 14). (My copy of Kychanov's 1964 article "К изучению структуры тангутской письменности" in Краткие сообщения Института народов Азии 68 is missing several pages, including p. 135 with the original version of that list.)

Next: Eight Great Rice Hordes

*Zh dienh also has a variant that looks like 户 'door' + 电 'lightning'. Is this a modification of the left side of 殿 'palace' with Cantonese 电 [tiin] as phonetic instead of 共 on the bottom?

11.11.18.3:19: OLD WOMEN ON THE GOLDEN MOUNTAIN

There are three forms for 'gold' in the Khitan small script:

~~

<GOLD> ~ <GOLD♂> ~ <n.i.gu>

The first two resemble Chinese 山 'mountain' and presumably represent words sharing a root which may or may not be shared with <n.i.gu>. This may be a rare case of a word family with both logogram and polygram spellings. If the three words do not share a root, the first and/or second may be

<g.m> = [gim] 'metal, gold' < Chn 金 *kim

plus native gender suffixes. In any case, <n.i.gu> is not related to Jurchen

~

<alcu.un> 'gold'

from my last post.

Kane (2009: 54) wrote,

Aisin Gioro suggests that the underlying word [of <n.i.gu>] is a form of 女古 *nügu, the Kitan word for 'gold' corresponding to Chinese 金 jin [the modern Mandarin reading] in the Liaoshi [History of the Liao Dynasty] glossary. This would mean <nu.i.gu> for and <gu> for .

And perhaps <u.i> was [ü]. But is there any other case in which was [nu]? My reversible-reading graph hypothesis predicts that was [en] ~ [n] ~ [ne] but not [nu]. But I could be wrong.

Let's suppose was <n>. How could <n.i.gu> be reconciled with its Chinese phonetic transcription 女古 *nüku? (女 is 'woman' and 古 'old'. Chinese unaspirated *k may have sounded like [g] to Khitan ears.) There is no guarantee that the Chinese transcribed the dialect of Khitan underlying written Khitan. Perhaps proto-Khitan *nügu became [nigu] in that dialect but remained [nügu] in the dialect recorded in the History of the Liao Dynasty.

Another possible example of *ü > [i] shift might be

~

<us.g> = [usig]? 'writing': cf. Written Mongolian üsüg 'id.'

Perhaps the later WM form preserves an ü lost in written Khitan. The common ancestor of WK [usig] and WM üsüg might have been *usüg without vowel harmony.

There are several different earlier Chinese names for the 西喇木伦 Xar Moron 'yellow river' whose Khitan name might have contained 'gold' (i.e, 'yellow'):

Pre-Tang names

饒樂 Early Middle Chinese *ɲewlak

弱樂 EMC *ɲɨaklak

如洛瑰 EMC *ɲɨəlakkuy

Post-Tang names

裊羅個 Liao Chinese *niawloko

女古 LC *nüku

These are different transcriptions of the same name. The first syllable should be something like *nyu. The second syllable should be *lak or *lo, and the third syllable should be something like *gu or *gui. It is difficult to account for the *r/l implied by the earlier transcriptions [and even post-Tang 裊羅個], and for the -r- in forms like Jürčid [Mongolian for 'Jurchen'], unless we presume a form like *nirugu and a reading like *urgu for .

I wonder if these transcriptions reflect different Khitan dialects at different periods. The earliest form might have been something like *niulagu-i which then developed into *nyawlag(u), *nölagu-i, *niulgo, *nü(l)gu, and <n.i.gu>. How these forms relate to Jurchen (< Mongolian Jürcin) and related forms is unclear to me.

I know of no other VCCV Khitan small script readings, so I prefer to interpret as <gu> instead of <urgu>. I know of no CCV KSS readings, so I also rule out <rgu>. This graph appears in at least five other words:

<t.gu> (word introducing a quotation)

<x.?.gu>

<gu.u> (this word seems to rule out <rgu> if Khitan had no initial <r>)

<ɣa.gu.il>

<t.?.gu>

Next: Heaven and Earth Water Nineteen

11.11.16.23:39: FROM ALCUN TO AISIN?

Mentioning the Khitan word

<g.m> = [gim] 'metal, gold' < Chn 金 *kim

last night reminded me of this post which I advertised as "next" on October 30 but didn't get around to writing until now.

According to Kane (2009: 165), the Jurchen word for 'gold' (and for their state) was alcun:

~

<alcu.un>

But Kane (1989: 350) reconstructed it as ancu (transcribed in Chinese as 安出 *anchu) for the late Jurchen dialect recorded in The Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary of the Bureau of Interpreters. As far as I know, Ligeti (1953) was the first to reconstruct this word with -lc- as alcu. I have not seen that article, so I don't know why Ligeti reconstructed -l- instead of -n-. (Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae is not easy to find around here in Nowhere, NJ.)

The corresponding Manchu word is aisin. At a glance, its segments line up nicely with those of alcun

and one would be tempted to propose the following sound changes:

J l > M i

J c > M s

J u > M i

These changes are phonetically plausible in isolation, but do not occur in any other words that I know of.

In Starostin's database, Proto-Tungusic *-lc- corresponds to Manchu -lc-, not -is-.

In Kane (1989: 115), late Jurchen -lc- ~ -nc- (transcribed in Chinese as *-nch-) corresponds to M -lc-, not -is-.

u : a (4 cases)

u : e (2 cases)

u : o (4 cases)

I conclude that J alcun and M aisin are not cognate, though it is possible that aisin is a loan from some aberrant Jurchen dialect which had undergone the sound changes that I proposed above.

Next Time for Sure: Old Women on the Golden Mountain

11.11.15.21:21: DID KHITAN HAVE INITIAL R-?

Khitan is typologically an 'Altaic' language with subject-object-verb, modifier-modified word order, suffix-based morphology, and vowel harmony. Altaic languages lack r- except in loanwords. I would have predicted that Khitan would have no r-words at all since its chief source of loanwords was northeastern Chinese which did not have an initial *r- during the Liao Dynasty. However, in the Khitan small script texts that I have on hand, two of the three known <r>-initial characters appear in initial position:

Khitan small script character	Transcriptions of words containing this character in first position
<ra>	<ra> x 2 = [ar]? <ra.b> = [arob]? <ra.b.úŋ> = [arobúŋ]? <ra.?.ɣa.a.ar> = [ar?ɣaar]? <ra.er> = [arer]? <ra.én> = [arén]? <ra.ul> = [arul]? <ra.ul.ge.mó> = [arulgemó]?
<ri>	<ri> = [ir]? <ri.úr> = [irúr]? <ri.l.úr.ún> = [irelúrún]? <ri.g.d> x 2 = [irigid]?; pl. of <ri.g.en> = [irigen]? 'tribal chief' <ri.e> = [ire]? <ri.én> = [iren]?
<rí>	None?

As the above table implies, I suspect that <rV>-graphs could also double as <Vr>-graphs in initial position. Unfortunately, I know of only one Chinese transcription that confirms this:

夷離堇 *ilikin for  <ri.g.en> 'tribal chief'

These <rV>/<Vr>-graphs in turn belong to an even larger set of graphs with 'reversible' readings: e.g.,

<s(e)> in  <s.en> = [esen]? 'long life', transcribed in Chinese as 義信 *isin

1. have inherent vowels (Kane 2009: 30, 32):

a. [o] with labial consonants

b. [e] with dental/alveolar consonants (exception: <ri>)

c. [i] with palatal consonants

d. [e] or [i] with velar consonants

This predicts reading pairs like

[ob] ~ [bo]

[ed] ~ [de]

[ij] ~ [ji]

[ek] ~ [ke]

[ig] ~ [gi]

but not, say,

[eb] ~ [be]

[od] ~ [do]

[aj] ~ [ja]

[ug] ~ [gu]

I wonder if is really [er] ~ [re]. If so, then <ne.ra> 'tomb' should be reinterpreted as [nere], and the anomalous stem-locative ending sequence [nera-de] becomes harmonious [nere-de].

2. are read as [(V)C]

a. before <V>:

<s.en> = [esen]? 'long life'

<r>-graphs in initial position must be read as [Vr] to avoid initial [r]:

<ri.g.en> = [irigen]? 'tribal chief'

b. after <C> (to avoid a consonant cluster [CC]):

~

<us.g> = [usig]? 'writing': cf. Written Mongolian üsüg 'id.'

Kane 2009: 127 interpreted this as [usgi] with a final vowel

3. are read as <CV> before <C> (to avoid a consonant cluster [CC])::

<g.m> = [gim] 'metal, gold' < Chn 金 *kim (unaspirated Chn *k was borrowed as voiced [g])

<m.ri> = [mori] 'horse': cf. Written Mongolian mori(n) 'id.'

The readings of 'metal' and 'horse' lack question marks because they are more certain than those of the other words above.

The readings of words like

<c.c> and <s.l.b> = [(i)c(i)c(i)]? and [(e)s(e)l(e/o)b(o)]?

which are written entirely using reversible-reading graphs are especially uncertain without external evidence: e.g., possible Mongolian cognates, Chinese transcriptions, and/or borrowings into Jurchen.

If I am correct and

was [ra] ~ [ar] or [re] ~ [er], then when was it preferable to

<ar> and <er>

for writing [ar] and [er]? Both <ar> and <er> can appear in word-initial position or even together in

<er.ar.en>

from the 興宗皇帝哀冊 memorial for Emperor Xingzong. Could that word also have been written with ?

11.11.14.00:59: (O)ROGAN-DE ESEN-ER!

Today is Rogan Hazard's birthday. I wish

<or.o.g.an-de> = Orogan-de 'to Rogan'; <-de> = indirect object suffix like Jpn に (not で!)
<s.en.er>: <s.en> = esen 'long life'; <-er> = direct object suffix like Jpn を

in the extinct Khitan language.

ロー <ro.o (ー represents a lengthening of the preceding vowel)
ガン ga.n>

It's unlikely that any words could begin with r- in Khitan, so Rogan was written as <or.o.g.an> with an extra <o>:

	Or	o
	g	an

Mongolian, a distant living relative of Khitan, also didn't allow initial r-, so 'Russia' was borrowed as Oros with an extra o. (This Oros was then borrowed into earlier Mandarin as 俄羅斯 Olosï, whose first syllable became modern standard Mandarin 俄 E 'Russia'.)

The first character 소  looks like Korean 소 so, but the resemblance is wholly coincidental. King Sejong invented the Korean hangul alphabet five centuries after Yelü Diela invented the Khitan small script in 925. The stacking principle of hangul - e.g, 소 <so> consists of ㅅ <s> atop ㅗ <o> - might have been influenced by the Khitan small script.

The characters, 及 <o> and 出 <an> look exactly like Chinese characters but have readings unique to Khitan. Perhaps the Khitan translation for 及 'to reach' (or some other Chinese word written with 及) was o. Similarly, the Khitan translation of 出 'to go out' (or some other Chinese word written with 出) might have been an.

The third character <g> (also <gi> in other contexts) might be derived from Chinese 几 whose 10th century reading sounded like gi to Khitan ears.

11.11.13.23:45: PATERNAL AID, ANNUAL ICE, AND A HUNDRED MOTHERS

In "Sometimes Sensitive", I mentioned Khitan <ai> 'father, male'. <ai> can also mean 'year'. The two <ai> are identical in the singular but have different plurals:

<ai.d> 'fathers' vs. <ai.s> 'years'

<-d>-plurals

<aú.ui.d> 'royal ladies' (cf. the Sanskrit masculine plural noun daaraas 'wife [sg.!], wives')

<x.iŋ.d> 'capitals' - [xiŋed]?

presumably from Chn 京 *kiŋ 'capital', though the initial is unexpected

Two other <-d>-plural suffixes follow biologically masculine nouns or nouns that might be grammatically masculine: e.g. (Kane 2009: 140-141),

<REGION.a.ad> 'regions'

<po.od> 'hours'

<-ud> in <ei.ra.u.ud> 'Yelü' may be a masculine plural ending.

<-s>-plurals

There is no distinction in the small script between <s> and <se> and no known character for <es>, so <ai.s> might have been [ajse] or even [ajes].

Kane (2009: 141-142) lists other examples of <-s> plurals:

<ui.s> 'matters'

<qid.s> 'Khitans'

<g.úr.s> 'countries' (< Old Chinese 郡 *gurs 'district'?)

<MONTH.s> 'months'

<n.on.s> 'generations'

<qi.t ai.s.er> 'those years' (<-er> is an accusative ending)

with <qi> 'that' plus the feminine plural ending <t>, >qid.s> 'Khitans' is likely to be masculine. But 'year' may be feminine and 'matter', 'country', 'month', and/or 'generation' could also be feminine. Perhaps <-s> is both a masculine and feminine plural ending.

A tentative scheme of Khitan plural suffixes

The irregular plurals (Kane 2009: 142)

<bo.ɣu.an> 'children' < <bo.qo> 'child'

<ń.iau.ń.er> 'siblings' < <ń.iau> 'sibling'

do not fit into this scheme. Are they ever preceded by <qi.t> 'those' (f.)?

The small script graph

<mó> 'mother, female'

reminds me of 百 'hundred', the right side of 陌洦蛨袹貊銆, all read mo in modern Mandarin. Could <mó> be from 百? The trouble is that the expected Sino-Khitan reading of such sinographs would be maɣ, not mo. What if the small script graph were originally read maɣ which became maw and then mo, transcribed in the History of the Liao Dynasty (1343) as 麼 *mo? In any case, the transcriptions in the 14th century History probably do not all represent Khitan as it was spoken in the early 10th century when the small script was devised. My guess is that the transcriptions were copied from texts from different eras such as the lost Liao Dynasty Veritable Records and the Jin Dynasty History of the Liao Dynasty.

<mó> resembles three other small script graphs:

The phonetic value of the second is unknown.

Kane (2009: 40) transcribed the third  as <ɣor>. I am not sure about the consonants. Its Chinese transcriptions are 曷魯 ~ 何魯 *xolu, which could also have represented a Khitan *ɣol, *xol, or *xor.

There are no other <Cor> or <Col> graphs. Such syllables would have been written with graph sequences like  <C.or> or <Co.l>. (There is no known graph <ol>.) Why did *GoR have its own special graph?

11.11.12.23:48: SOMETIMES SENSITIVE

I was unaware of grammatical gender until I started studying German at age 12. I've wondered if I would have been scared of it if I hadn't been exposed to the concept at a young age. It wasn't in any language I had been exposed to up to that time: English, Hawaii Creole English, Japanese, or Mandarin. And it hasn't been in any East Asian language I've ever seen until I saw Kane's 2009 book on Khitan.

Khitan words that Kane translated as English adjectives may or may not have gender concord: e.g.,

With concord (Kane 2009: 126)

<WHITE (f.) eu.ul> 'white cloud (f.)'

<WHITE♂ m.em> 'white ice (m.)'

<♂> corresponds to a dot added to the default feminine graph.

The pronunciation of

<WHITE (f.)> and <WHITE♂>

is unknown.

Without concord (?) (Kane 2009: 90, 105, 108, 126)

<ai.d bo.hu.án> 'sons' = 'male children'

cf. <ai.d> 'fathers'

<mó bo.qo> 'daughter' = 'female child'

<mó bo.hu.án> 'daughters' = 'female children'

<mó ku> 'wife' = 'female person'

cf. <mó> 'mother'

True Khitan adjectives

I hypothesize that Khitan adjectives - as opposed to all Khitan words that are translated as adjectives - have gender concord. This concord may be indicated

with distinct suffixes:

usually <-er> (m.) and <-én> (f.), but other suffixes exist:

<-d.o.ɣo> in <tad.o.ɣo> ~ <tod.o.ɣo> 'fifth'; cf. <taw> 'five'

<-qó> ~ <qu> (m.) and <-qú> (f.) for <m.as-> 'first, eldest, great'

Are there other adjectives with these suffixes? Are there other suffixes? Are these rarer suffixes remnants of an earlier, more complex adjectival declension system?

with distinct words (?):

<m.o> 'first, eldest, great' (m.)

<GREAT> 'first, eldest, great' (f.; not known if this word is similar to <m.o> or <m.as->)

the <o> ~ <as> alternation reminds me of how Sanskrit -as becomes -o before voiced consonants and a-, though I doubt a similar process had occurred in the history of Khitan

Khitan pseudo-adjectives

I consider <ai.d bo.hu.án> to be nouns in apposition due to the double plural marking (<-d> and the irregular plural of <bo.qo> 'child').

<mó bo.hu.án>, on the other hand, is a compound noun with plural marking on the second half only. A equivalent sequence of nouns in apposition would be<mó. t bo.hu.án> with the feminine plural suffix <-t>. (Is that suffix cognate to the masculine plural suffix <-d>? Did <-d> originate as a <-t> that voiced before a following vowel?)

<mó. bo.qo> and <mó ku> are also compound nouns in spite of the fact that neither is written as a single polygram: i.e., as <mó.bo.qo> or <mó.ku>.

Is the compound noun <ai bo.qo> attested, or is it redundant since <bo.qo> by itself can mean 'son' as well as 'child'?

I presume that if one wanted to specify 'father's child' or 'mother's child', one would have said

<ai.en bo.qo> 'father-GEN child'

<mó.on bo.qo> 'mother-GEN child' (is <mó.on> attested? why not <mó.ón>?)

'Seventh'

<da.lỏ> 'seven' can also be translated as 'seventh' before masculine nouns. (Kane 2009: 144 lists no examples of 'seventh' before feminine nouns.) I presume 'seventh' is the first half of compound nouns, not a true adjective. But I am surprised because all ordinals from 'first' through 'sixth' and 'eighth' exhibit gender agreement. Why is 'seventh'exceptional? Were <da.lỏ.er> (m.) and <da.lỏ.én> (f.) possible? Or were there noninflecting adjectives in Khitan?

'Left' and 'right'

<ci.g.en> ~ <dzi.g.en> 'left' and <bo.ra.(i)a.an> 'right' have no known gender endings before <(u.)ur> 'division'. <-en> and <-an> are known genitive endings for consonant-final and -a stems. Are 'left' and 'right' really NOUN-GEN morpheme sequences? Were the nouns for 'left' and 'right' cig ~ dzig and bora(y)a?

Next: Paternal Aid, Annual Ice, and a Hundred Mothers

I write birthday wishes not only to honor those whom I respect, but also to practice the Khitan small script and Khitan grammar. Reading about Khitan isn't enough for me; I want to use it to learn it, even if I embarrass myself in public.

All my postings on extinct languages - and especially those on TJK (Tangut / Jurchen / Khitan) - are probably full of errors. No reconstruction of a language - a highly educated guess at best - is equivalent to the real thing, though one can come close.

It's particularly hard to write in languages that lack both native speakers and established grammars. Khitan has no Panini or even a Whitney; its structure must be extracted from a limited number of texts by modern scholars who still can't completely read either of its two scripts.

A number of things about my attempts at Khitan constantly bother me. Perhaps gender agreement is at the top of the list.

Khitan has multiple past tense suffixes. More on these later. There is a pair of suffixes that indicates the gender of the subject of the verb:

<XX born.én> 'XX (female) was born' (cf. Kane 2009: 174)

<XY born.er> 'XY (male) was born' (cf. Kane 2009: 86)

<XX-GEN BORN.én DAY> 'the day XX (female) was born' = 'XX's birthday' (cf. Kane 2009: 86)

(GEN = genitive)

but what is the construction for 'the day XY (male) was born'? Last night I assumed it was

<XY-GEN BORN.er DAY>

with masculine <er> instead of feminine <én>. But what if 'day' is a feminine noun whose gender-sensitive modifiers must also be feminine? Do all sensitive adnominal forms (forms before nouns) match the gender of the following nouns, or do verbs and adjectives behave differently: e.g.,

VERB + gender of preceding/implied subject + NOUN

ADJECTIVE + gender of following noun + NOUN

Is <BORN.er DAY> attested? I can't find it in the few texts that I have on hand.

Next: Sometimes Sensitive

11.11.10.22:35: GRANT JONS-EN ...-ER ...-DE ESEN-ER!

Tonight's birthday wish is in one long vertical line of Khitan:

<g.ra.n.t>
<j.o.n.s.en>: <-en> = possessive suffix
  <BORN.er>: <-er> = masculine past tense suffix
<DAY.de>: <-de> = temporal suffix: 'on the day ...'
<s.en.er>: <s.en> = esen 'long life'; <-er> = object suffix

Grant Jons-en ...-er ...-de esen-er! (The readings of <BORN> and <DAY> are unknown.)

'On the day Grant Jones was born, [I wish him] long life!'

All character components except <g> have been covered in previous birthday posts, though the polygrams (component combinations) for Grant's name are new.

The Khitan small script allows writers to combine consonants in un-Khitan combinations like Gr-:

	G	ra
	n	t

The e in Jones is silent, so it's not written:

	J	o
	n	s

The component is <j> here but was <ji> in  <go.ji.ra>. I assume that it was <j> before vowels and <ji> elsewhere.

11.11.9.23:19: LONG LIFE TO DEATH!

Today is

<m.or.t t.od.en BORN.er DAY>

Mort Todd's birthday (see the breakdown of his name here*)

and this time I want to do something different. I can't help but try to translate a name like that into Khitan:

<tu.úr.bo.ń.de s.en.er>

'death-to long-life-(object)'

= '(I wish) long life to death'

tuúr-boń is an honorific word for 'died' but might also mean 'death' since -boń can also be a suffix that turns verbs into nouns (Kane 2009: 91, 155).

I wanted to use the imperial word for 'die' but I'm not sure (a) how it was pronounced and (b) more importantly how to form a noun from it.

-de after tuúr-boń 'death' indicates that death is a recipient.

isen or esen (spelled <s.en> without i or e) is followed by the suffix -er indicating that it is the object of a verb (that I've left out).

Summing up, the pattern in this phrase is

indirect object-de direct object-er

Here are the breakdowns of the polygrams (multi-part characters) for Mort Todd:

	M	or
	t

The t character appears again in the polygram for Todd. Khitan has no distinction corresponding to upper or lower case, so the same t character can be used at the beginning or end of a polygram.

T

od

The Khitan spelling reflects the pronunciation of Todd with a single [d]. Hence there is no need for an extra d character.

11.11.8.20:16: THE EN-IGMA OF THE KHITAN G-EN-ITIVE

In last night's post, I introduced the Khitan genitive endings. A very simple (and of course inaccurate) pair of rules accounts for most cases in Kane (2009: 132-136):

If a word ends in a vowel, it takes a genitive ending with that vowel plus -n.

If a word ends in a consonant, it takes the genitive ending -en.

Now let's look at the genitive endings one by one and examine exceptions solely using the very limited data in Kane (2009: 132-136).

1a. -an

All -an follow -a nouns.

However, not all -a nouns take -an:

poŋca 'investigation commisioner' (< Chn 訪察 *foŋcha) takes -en

1b. -en

-en generally follows consonants other than

-ŋ after rounded vowels

-w

See 1d-1e below.

-en also follows the vowel-final noun śarí 'court attendant'

I would expect -en to also follow -e nouns, but Kane listed no examples of -e-en.

The two -e nouns that Kane lists have surprising genitives. See 2 below.

See 3-4 below for more exceptions.

1c. -in

All -in follow -i nouns.

However, not all -i nouns take -in. See 1b above and 3 below.

1d. -on

All -on follow -o(ŋ) nouns.

However, not all -o nouns take -on. See 4 below.

1e. -un

All -un follow -u(ŋ) and -w nouns.

Unlike 1a-1e, -n apparently replaces the final -e of a noun if one takes the Khitan small script spellings at face value:

<ún.e> 'now' ~ <ún.n> 'of the present'

Did Khitan really have a phonemic geminate /nn/ in final position?

<û.e> 'the tribal title 于越  yuyue' ~ <û.n> 'of a yuyue'

Yuyue is the modern Mandarin reading of the old transcription for this title.

于越 was read as something like *üwiet in Late Middle Chinese and as üüe in Liao Dynasty Chinese.

Wittfogel and Feng (1949: 432) propose Turkic ögüt 'counsel' as a possible source, but neither the Khitan small script spelling nor the Chinese transcription point to a -g-. Did medial *-g- lenite to zero in early Khitan between the period when this word was borrowed and the period when the word was written in Chinese and the Khitan small script? The lenition of medial *-g- would not be surprising given the lenition of medial *-b- in 'five':

*tabu > taw 'five' (cf. Written Mongolian tabun, Daur taaw [Todaeva 1986]; more Daur and other Mongolic forms here)

If the word ever had a final -t, that consonant was lost by the time the word was written in the Khitan small script texts available to us. It's possible there was a <t>-spelling back in the earliest KSS texts, but we have no dated KSS inscriptions between 925, the year of the creation of the KSS, and 1052. Andrew West has a chronological list of KSS inscriptions. This Wikipedia list is sortable.

3. -iń

Follows plurals ending in -r, -iii (sic), -d.

But 'two (people)', probably ending in -r, takes -en, not -iń.

dalo non 'seven generations' also takes -en, perhaps because it lacks a plural ending and is literally 'seven generation'.

but 'seven' is followed by a plural noun in SEVEN pood 'seven hours'; see Kane (2009: 139-142) for other examples of numeral + noun-PL.

4. -i

Follows Qid(un) 'Khitan' (with an odd second vowel) and boqo 'son, child'

The expected genitives are *Qid(un)-en and *boqo-on.

boqo also has an irregular plural boɣuan (instead of the expected *boqo-d)..

Are -i nouns remnants of a declension class that was once larger?

I suspect we are seeing the collapse of an earlier, richer system of declension and vowel harmony. So far, it seems that scholars speak of Khitan as if it were a stable, single, unchanging language. However, the two Khitan scripts were in use for about 270 years (if their origin dates are accurate) - including about 65 years under Jurchen rule - over a wide area. Thus variation may have at least three sources other than random errors:

1. Chronological variation: was 10th century Khitan like 12th century Khitan?

2. Geographic (i.e., dialectal) variation

3. Jurchen influence during the Jin Dynasty: Did Jurchen first language speakers make mistakes in Khitan? Did Jurchenisms become acceptable in late standard Khitan even among Khitan first language speakers?

A Khitan morphological database with the date and location (if known) of the text for each word may help to resolve apparent irregularities - and introduce new mysteries to be solved.

11.11.7.23:11: MAKER-DE TUMU EUÚR!

Today is

Maker-en BORN-er DAY (the Khitan readings of BORN and DAY are unknown)

'Macker's birthday'

so I wish to tell him in Khitan,

Maker-de tumu euúr!

'Macker-to ten-thousand years-of-life'

'To Macker, ten thousand years of life!' = 'Long live Macker!'

	M	a
	k	er

But wait. Don't the Khitan phrases above have five-character spellings for 'Macker'?

Yes.

Those of you who've read other entries in my birthday series will recognize the ending -de 'to':

In English, one says "to X", but in Khitan one said "X-de".

Although it can be translated as '-'s', not all instances of '-'s' correspond to -en. Khitan possessive endings vary depending on the preceding word (Kane 2009: 132-136):

-an after -a

-en after consonants

-in after -i

-on after -o

-un after -u

and in some cases, -n, -iń, -i

I've only outlined the general pattern. I'd like to examine exceptions later.

11.11.6.21:43: MEN WITH HATS

In these three tangraphs from "A Tangut Qua-ndary"

3966 1vɨị 'taste'

3968 2khɪ 'taste'

4243 1vɨị 'pear'

the vertical line (alphacode: bae) of

+bae + hem (or pix if bae is under the 그 of hem)

was placed under the 'roof' of

alphacode: jui

What was jui? It appears on the left or right of 23 tangraphs:

jui on the left

Tangraph	LFW#	Alphacode	Reading	Gloss	Source of jui	Notes
	3917	juidiodom	1tʃɨəə	to sew, patch up	unknown; perhaps each other?	cf. 0688, 2568 below
	3969	juibaxbelcin	2dwu	to mend, patch, repair
	3970	juidim	1dʒɨõ	2nd half of 2dʒɛ 1dʒɨõ 'to do, make'	3977	one reduplicative word with two spellings?; not attested outside dictionaries? odic?
	3977	juihom	1dʒɨõ	2nd half of 2dʒɛ̃ 1dʒɨõ 'to play'	3970
	3998	juibiobeucin	1juu	to taste	3966	cf. 4046, 5387 below

The analysis of 3998 confirms that the qua of 3966 consists of jui + bae.

jui on the right

Names for phonetics are in my lay Tangut romanization.

Tangraph	LFW#	Alphacode	Reading	Gloss	Source of jui	Type
	0662	henfimjui	1khiəə	to grind	2647	khy-phonetic
	0687	beljui	2piẹ̃	shovel	?	pen-phonetic
	0688	harjui	1viẹ	to mend	2568	semantic: sewing; pen-phonetic (but vowel isn't nasal!)?
	0690	tuajui	1vəuʳ	(transliteration)	3909	pu-phonetic
	0705	herbaejui	1ziẹ	time	2647	?
	0715	hoajui	2piẹ̃	ancient Chinese battle axe	2653	pen-phonetic
	2568	baepikjui	1rəʳ	to stitch, sew	5391	semantic?: 'stripe' > 'pattern' > 'to sew'?
	2643	dexjui	1piẽ	tent	5898 (3909?)	pen-phonetic?; 3909 is a better phonetic than pu-phonetic 5898
	2647	dexfiujui	2khiəə	line, ranks	(0662?)	khy-phonetic
	2653	dexdoojui	1piẹ̃	horn	0715	pen-phonetic would 'ancient Chinese battle axe' really be created before 'horn'?
	3908	doejui	2ləu	proper; upright; regular	2bi 'step, pace'	2bi 'step' has no semantic or phonetic similarity to 2ləu 'proper'; maybe 2647 'line, ranks' was the real source: 'in line' > 'proper'?
	3909	girjui	1pəu	the surname Pu	2653	semantic?: shares initial with 2653 but not rhyme; was this family associated with horns?
	4046	coepikjui	1khɪ	bitter	3966	semantic: taste; also khy-phonetic, though the vocalic match is loose?
	4340	boxdexfiujui	2khiəə	a kind of tree	?	khy-phonetic
	5363	gosjui	2thew	to play	2653	1piẹ̃ has no semantic or phonetic similarity to 2thew 'to play'; phonetically similar to 5391 2sew, but are there other cases of th- ~ s- phonetic series in tangraphy?
	5387	guajui	2ʃwɨii	astringent	(3966?)	semantic: taste? loan from Middle Chinese 澀 *ʂɨp; -w- reflects a pre-Tangut *P-prefix; vowel length may reflect a lost final stop; tone 2 may reflect a pre-Tangut *-H suffix
	5391	pikjui	2sew	piebald; stripe	5391	semantic?: 'to sew' > 'pattern'?
	5898	tarjui	1phiuu	to cover, shelter	2653 (3909?)	pu-phonetic?; 3909 is a better phonetic than pen-phonetic 2653

jui apparently has at least eight functions (A1-A3, B1-B5):

A. Semantic

1. sewing/pattern: 3917, 3969, 0688, 2568, 5391

2. taste: 3998, 4046, 5387

3. line: 3908

B. Phonetic

1. jon-phonetic?: 3970, 3977

2. khy-phonetic: 0662, 2647, (4046?), 4340

3. pen-phonetic: 0687, (0688?), 0715, 2643, 2653

4. pu-phonetic: 3909, 5898?

5. Cew-phonetic: 5363?, 5391?

C. Unknown: 0705

Did literate Tangut know which function of jui was relevant for any given tangraph, or did they just blindly memorize jui-combinations?