Proto-Min is a
comparative reconstruction
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...
of the common ancestor of the
Min
Min or MIN may refer to:
Places
* Fujian, also called Mǐn, a province of China
** Min Kingdom (909–945), a state in Fujian
* Min County, a county of Dingxi, Gansu province, China
* Min River (Fujian)
* Min River (Sichuan)
* Mineola (Am ...
group of
varieties of Chinese
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
. Min varieties developed in the relative isolation of the Chinese province of
Fujian
Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capi ...
and eastern
Guangdong
Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...
, and have since spread to
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
,
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...
, and other parts of the world. They contain reflexes of distinctions not found in
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...
or most other modern varieties, and thus provide additional data for the reconstruction of
Old Chinese
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...
.
Jerry Norman reconstructed the sound system of Proto-Min from popular vocabulary in a range of Min varieties, including new data on varieties from inland Fujian. The system has a six-way manner contrast in
stop
Stop may refer to:
Places
* Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States
* Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Facilities
* Bus stop
* Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck d ...
s and
affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...
s, compared with the three-way contrast in Middle Chinese and modern
Wu varieties and the two-way contrast in most modern Chinese varieties. A two-way contrast in
sonorant
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...
s is also reconstructed, compared with the single series of Middle Chinese and all modern varieties. Evidence from early loans into other languages suggests that the additional contrasts may reflect consonant clusters or
minor syllable
Primarily in Austroasiatic languages (also known as Mon–Khmer), in a typical word a minor syllable is a reduced (minor) syllable followed by a full tonic or stressed syllable. The minor syllable may be of the form or , with a reduced vowel, as i ...
s.
Min dialects
The Min homeland consists of most of the province of
Fujian
Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capi ...
, and the adjacent eastern part of
Guangdong
Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...
. The area features rugged mountainous terrain, with short rivers that flow into the
South China Sea
The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by the shores of South China (hence the name), in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan and northwestern Phil ...
. After the area was first settled by Chinese during the
Han dynasty
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
, most subsequent migration from north to south China passed through the valleys of the
Xiang and
Gan
The word Gan or the initials GAN may refer to:
Places
*Gan, a component of Hebrew placenames literally meaning "garden"
China
* Gan River (Jiangxi)
* Gan River (Inner Mongolia),
* Gan County, in Jiangxi province
* Gansu, abbreviated ''Gā ...
rivers to the west. Min varieties have thus developed in relative isolation.
Separation from common Chinese
As described in
rhyme dictionaries
A rime dictionary, rhyme dictionary, or rime book () is an ancient type of Chinese dictionary that collates characters by tone and rhyme, instead of by radical. The most important rime dictionary tradition began with the '' Qieyun'' (601), ...
such as the ''
Qieyun'' (601 AD),
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...
initial
stop
Stop may refer to:
Places
* Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States
* Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Facilities
* Bus stop
* Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck d ...
s and
affricate consonant
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...
s showed a three-way contrast between voiceless
unaspirated
In linguistics, a tenuis consonant ( or ) is an obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized.
In other words, it has the "plain" phonation of with a voice onset time close to zero (a zero-VOT consonant), as Spanish ''p, t, ch ...
, voiceless
aspirated and
voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...
d consonants. There were four tones, with the fourth, the "entering tone", a
checked tone
A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone, is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the phonetic sense but rather a syl ...
comprising syllables ending in stops (''-p'', ''-t'' or ''-k'').
This syllable structure was also found in neighbouring languages of the
Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area
The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area is a sprachbund including languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Kra–Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic families spoken in an area stretching from Thailand to China. Neighbou ...
–
Proto-Hmong–Mien,
Proto-Tai
Proto-Tai is the reconstructed proto-language (common ancestor) of all the Tai languages, including modern Lao, Shan, Tai Lü, Tai Dam, Ahom, Northern Thai, Standard Thai, Bouyei, and Zhuang. The Proto-Tai language is not directly atteste ...
and early
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
– and is largely preserved by early loans between the languages. Towards the end of the first millennium AD, all of these languages experienced a tone split conditioned by initial consonants. Each tone split into an upper ( /) register consisting of words with voiceless initials and a lower ( /) register of words with voiced initials. When voicing was lost in most varieties, the register distinction became phonemic, yielding up to eight tonal categories, with a six-way contrast in unchecked syllables and a two-way contrast in checked syllables.
The traditional classification of
varieties of Chinese
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
distinguished seven groups according to the reflexes of Middle Chinese voiced initials in various tonal categories. For example, voiced stops are preserved in the
Wu and
Old Xiang
Old Xiang, also known as Lou-Shao (娄邵片 / 婁邵片), is a conservative Xiang Chinese language. It is spoken in the central areas of Hunan where it has been to some extent isolated from the neighboring Chinese languages, Southwestern Mandari ...
groups, have merged with aspirated or unaspirated stops depending on the tone in Mandarin, and have uniformly become aspirated stops in
Gan
The word Gan or the initials GAN may refer to:
Places
*Gan, a component of Hebrew placenames literally meaning "garden"
China
* Gan River (Jiangxi)
* Gan River (Inner Mongolia),
* Gan County, in Jiangxi province
* Gansu, abbreviated ''Gā ...
and
Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...
. The distinguishing characteristic of Min varieties is that voiced stops yield both aspirated and unaspirated stops in all tonal categories. Further, the distribution is consistent across Min varieties, suggesting a common ancestor in which two types of voiced stop were distinguished.
![Chinese tree](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Chinese_tree.svg)
Min must have diverged before two changes in other Chinese varieties (including Middle Chinese) that are not reflected in Min:
* The
Old Chinese
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...
finals and merged after velar initials. This merger is reflected in a change in poetic rhyme between the
Western Han
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by th ...
(206 BC to 9 AD) and Eastern Han (25–220 AD) periods.
* Old Chinese velar initials
palatalized in certain environments during the Western Han period. For example, Middle Chinese 'branch' / is believed to reflect palatalization of an Old Chinese initial because other words written with the same phonetic component, such as ''gje
X'' 'skill' /, have velar initials. The Proto-Min form *ki
A 'branch' retains the original initial.
However, the palatalization of
dental stop In phonetics and phonology, a dental stop is a type of consonantal sound, made with the tongue in contact with the upper teeth (hence dental), held tightly enough to block the passage of air (hence a stop consonant).
Dental and alveolar stops are ...
initials, which had occurred in some dialects by the Eastern Han period, is common to Middle Chinese and Min. Baxter and Sagart suggest that the later part of the Proto-Min period may have overlapped with
Early Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The S ...
.
Pointing to features of Min varieties that are also found in Hakka and Yue varieties,
Jerry Norman suggests that the three groups are descended from a variety spoken in the lower
Yangtze
The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains (Tibetan Plateau) and flows ...
region during the Han period, which he calls Old Southern Chinese. He argues that this dialect belonged to the group of dialects known as Wu () or Jiangdong () in the
Western Jin
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...
period, when the writer
Guo Pu
Guo Pu (; AD 276–324), courtesy name Jingchun () was a Chinese historian, poet, and writer during the Eastern Jin period, and is best known as one of China's foremost commentators on ancient texts. Guo was a Taoist mystic, geomancer, collector ...
(early 4th century AD) described them as quite distinct from other Chinese varieties. Some of the distinctive Jiangdong words mentioned by Guo Pu appear to be preserved in modern Min varieties, including Proto-Min *gi
A 'leech' and *lhɑn
C 'young fowl'. This language entered Fujian after the area was opened to Chinese settlement by the defeat of the
Minyue
Minyue () was an ancient kingdom in what is now the Fujian province in southern China. It was a contemporary of the Han dynasty, and was later annexed by the Han empire as the dynasty expanded southward. The kingdom existed approximately from ...
state by the armies of
Emperor Wu of Han
Emperor Wu of Han (156 – 29 March 87BC), formally enshrined as Emperor Wu the Filial (), born Liu Che (劉徹) and courtesy name Tong (通), was the seventh emperor of the Han dynasty of ancient China, ruling from 141 to 87 BC. His reign la ...
in 110 BC. Norman argues that Hakka and Yue have resulted from overlays of this language by successive waves of influence from northern China.
When Chinese soldiers and settlers moved south from their homeland in the
North China Plain
The North China Plain or Huang-Huai-Hai Plain () is a large-scale downfaulted rift basin formed in the late Paleogene and Neogene and then modified by the deposits of the Yellow River. It is the largest alluvial plain of China. The plain is bord ...
, they came into contact with speakers of
Tai–Kadai,
Hmong–Mien and
Austroasiatic languages
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...
. Early loans from Chinese into these languages date from around Han times and thus contain evidence of the sounds of Chinese as spoken in the south at that time.
Strata
Norman identifies four main layers in the vocabulary of modern Min varieties:
# A non-Chinese
substratum
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
from the
original languages of Minyue, which Norman believes were
Austroasiatic
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The te ...
. These etymologies have been disputed by
Laurent Sagart
Laurent Sagart (; born 1951) is a senior researcher at the Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale (CRLAO – UMR 8563) unit of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
Biography
Born in Paris in 1951, he earned hi ...
, and there is no other evidence for an early Austroasiatic presence in southeast China.
# The earliest Chinese layer, brought to Fujian by settlers from Zhejiang to the north during the Han dynasty.
# A layer from the
Northern and Southern dynasties
The Northern and Southern dynasties () was a period of political division in the history of China that lasted from 420 to 589, following the tumultuous era of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Eastern Jin dynasty. It is sometimes considered as ...
period, largely consistent with the phonology of the ''
Qieyun'' dictionary, which was published in 601 AD but based on earlier dictionaries that are now lost.
# A
literary layer based on the
koiné of
Chang'an
Chang'an (; ) is the traditional name of Xi'an. The site had been settled since Neolithic times, during which the Yangshao culture was established in Banpo, in the city's suburbs. Furthermore, in the northern vicinity of modern Xi'an, Qin Shi ...
, the capital of the
Tang dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...
.
Since the two later layers can largely be derived from the ''Qieyun'', Norman sought to focus on the earlier layers.
Subgroups
Early classifications, such as those of
Li Fang-Kuei
Li Fang-Kuei (Chinese: 李方桂, Cantonese: Lei5 Fong1 Gwai3 ej˩˨ fɔŋ˦ gʷaj˧, Mandarin: Lǐ Fāngguì i˨ faŋ˦ gʷej˥˩ 20 August 190221 August 1987) was a Chinese linguist known for his studies of the varieties of Chinese, his rec ...
in 1937 and
Yuan Jiahua
Yuan Jiahua (, ; January 19034 September 1980) was a Chinese linguist and dialectologist from Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu province. He graduated from the English Department of Peking University in 1932, worked as an editor in the North Shanghai New Boo ...
in 1960, divided Min into Northern and Southern subgroups. However, in a 1963 report on a survey of Fujian, Pan Maoding and colleagues argued that the primary split was between inland and coastal groups. The inland varieties are distinguished by consistently having two distinct reflexes of Middle Chinese . The two groups also have differences in their vocabulary, including their pronoun systems.
The coastal dialects are divided into three subgroups:
;
Eastern Min
Eastern Min or Min Dong (, Foochow Romanized: Mìng-dĕ̤ng-ngṳ̄), is a branch of the Min group of Sinitic languages of China. The prestige form and most-cited representative form is the Fuzhou dialect, the speech of the capital of Fujian.
...
:including
Fuzhou
Fuzhou (; , Fuzhounese: Hokchew, ''Hók-ciŭ''), alternately romanized as Foochow, is the capital and one of the largest cities in Fujian province, China. Along with the many counties of Ningde, those of Fuzhou are considered to constitute t ...
,
Ningde
Ningde (; Foochow Romanized: Nìng-dáik), also known as Mindong (; Foochow Romanized: Mìng-dĕ̤ng; lit. East of Fujian), is a prefecture-level city located along the northeastern coast of Fujian province, People's Republic of China. It borders ...
and
Fu'an
(; Foochow Romanized: Hók-ăng-chê; sometimes ''Fu An'') is a county-level city of Ningde prefecture level city, in northeast Fujian province, PRC, some away from the provincial capital Fuzhou.
History Found
Fu'an county was found in 1245 A ...
in northeast Fujian
;
Pu-Xian Min
Puxian (Hinghwa Romanized: ''Pó-sing-gṳ̂''; ), also known as Pu-Xian Chinese, Puxian Min, Xinghua, Henghwa or Hinghwa (''Hing-hua̍-gṳ̂''; ), is a Sinitic language that forms a branch of Min Chinese. Puxian is a transitional variety of C ...
:including
Putian
Putian or Putien (, Putian dialect: ''Pó-chéng''), also known as Puyang (莆阳) and Puxian (莆仙), historically known as Xinghua or Hing Hwa (), is a prefecture-level city in eastern Fujian province, China. It borders Fuzhou City to the nor ...
and
Xianyou
Xianyou (; Puxian Min: ) is a county in the municipal region of Putian, in eastern Fujian province, People's Republic of China.
Administration
The county seat is in Licheng Subdistrict ().
Towns (镇, ''zhen'')
* Linan, Xianyou
Linan () is ...
on the central Fujian coast
;
Southern Min
Southern Min (), Minnan (Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ( ...
:including
Xiamen
Xiamen ( , ; ), also known as Amoy (, from Hokkien pronunciation ), is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, ...
,
Zhangzhou
Zhangzhou (), alternately romanized as Changchow, is a prefecture-level city in Fujian Province, China. The prefecture around the city proper comprises the southeast corner of the province, facing the Taiwan Strait and surrounding the prefec ...
and
Quanzhou
Quanzhou, postal map romanization, alternatively known as Chinchew, is a prefecture-level city, prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, China. It is Fujian's largest metrop ...
in southern Fujian, and
Chaozhou
Chaozhou (), alternatively Chiuchow, Chaochow or Teochew, is a city in the eastern Guangdong province of China. It borders Shantou to the south, Jieyang to the southwest, Meizhou to the northwest, the province of Fujian to the east, and the Sou ...
,
Jieyang
Jieyang () is a prefecture-level city in eastern Guangdong Province (Yuedong), People's Republic of China, part of the Chaoshan region whose people speak Chaoshan Min distinct from neighbouring Yue speakers. It is historically important as the ...
and
Shantou
Shantou, alternately romanized as Swatow and sometimes known as Santow, is a prefecture-level city on the eastern coast of Guangdong, China, with a total population of 5,502,031 as of the 2020 census (5,391,028 in 2010) and an administrative ...
in eastern Guangdong
They divided the inland dialects into two subgroups:
;
Northern Min
Northern Min () is a group of mutually intelligible Min varieties spoken in Nanping prefecture of northwestern Fujian.
Classification and distribution
Early classifications of varieties of Chinese, such as those of Li Fang-Kuei in 1937 and Yu ...
:including
Jianyang,
Jian'ou
Jian'ou is a county-level city in Nanping in northern Fujian province, China. Under the name Jianning (Kienning), it was formerly the seat of its own prefecture and was the namesake of its province.
Jian'ou is within a major bamboo and rice- ...
,
Chong'an,
Zhenghe and
Shibei
;
Central Min
Central Min, or Min Zhong (), is a part of the Min group of varieties of Chinese. It is spoken in the valley of the Sha River in Sanming prefecture in the central mountain areas of Fujian, consisting of Yong'an, the urban area of Sanming ( Sany ...
:including
Sanming
Sanming (, Foochow Romanized: Săng-mìng), also known as Minzhong (), is a prefecture-level city in western Fujian province, China. It borders Nanping City to the north, Fuzhou City to the east, Quanzhou City to the southeast, Longyan City to th ...
and
Yong'an
Yong'an () is a county-level city in west-central Fujian province, People's Republic of China. It is located on the Sha River, which is a tributary of the Min River (Fujian), Min River. accessed August 14, 2005
Yong'an is located in the west-cen ...
in western Fujian
Several varieties in the far west of Fujian include features of Min and the neighbouring Gan and Hakka groups, making them difficult to classify. In the
Shaojiang dialects, spoken in the northwestern Fujian counties of
Shaowu
Shaowu () is a county-level city in northwestern Fujian province, People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the Wuyi Mountains and bordering Jiangxi province to the west. It has more than 100,000 inhabitants. The local dialect co ...
and
Jiangle, the reflexes of Middle Chinese voiced stops are uniformly aspirated, as in Gan and Hakka, leading some workers to assign them to one of these groups. Pan et al. described them as intermediate between Min and Hakka. However, Norman showed that their tonal development could only be explained in terms of the same two classes of voiced initial assumed for Min dialects. He suggested that they were inland Min dialects that had been subject to heavy Gan or Hakka influence. Norman's student David Prager Branner argued that the varieties of
Longyan
Longyan (; Hakka: ''Liùng-ngàm''; Longyan dialect: ''Lengngia'') is a prefecture-level city in south-western Fujian Province, China, bordering Guangdong to the south and Jiangxi to the west.
History
In 736 AD, (the Tang dynasty), the prefect ...
and the township of Wan'an, in the southwestern part of the province, were coastal Min varieties, but outside of the three subgroups identified by Pan.
Initials
In a series of papers from 1973, Jerry Norman sought to reconstruct the initial consonants of Proto-Min by applying the
comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
to pronunciations in modern Min varieties.
For this purpose, rather that the traditional approach of soliciting readings of character lists, he focussed on everyday vocabulary and excluded words of literary origin.
The inventory of Proto-Min initials differs from that of
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...
(as deduced from the ''
Qieyun'' rhyme book and its successors) in several ways:
* Middle Chinese has two series of
retroflex
A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the ha ...
initials that are not found in Proto-Min.
* Whereas Middle Chinese obstruents have a three-way manner distinction, proto-Min has a six-way distinction: both voiced and voiceless stops may be aspirated or unaspirated, and also have an additional series that Norman called "softened".
* Proto-Min has two series of sonorants.
* Proto-Min distinguishes voiced fricatives *ɣ and *ɦ.
The most controversial have been the "softened" stops and affricates, so named because they have lateral or fricative reflexes in some Northern Min varieties centred on Jianyang.
These initials also have distinct tonal reflexes in the Northern Min and Shaojiang groups, but have merged with unaspirated stops and affricates in coastal varieties. Other scholars have suggested that the patterns observed in northwest Fujian can be explained as a mixture of forms from neighbouring Wu, Gan and Hakka varieties, though this does not explain the regularity of the correspondences. In addition, the forms of many of the words in the proposed donor varieties do not match the Min reflexes, and some of the words occur only in Min.
Since the pioneering reconstruction of
Bernhard Karlgren
Klas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren (; 15 October 1889 – 20 October 1978) was a Swedish sinologist and linguist who pioneered the study of Chinese historical phonology using modern comparative methods. In the early 20th century, Karlgren conducte ...
, Old Chinese has been reconstructed by projecting the categories of Middle Chinese back onto the rhyming patterns of the ''
Classic of Poetry
The ''Classic of Poetry'', also ''Shijing'' or ''Shih-ching'', translated variously as the ''Book of Songs'', ''Book of Odes'', or simply known as the ''Odes'' or ''Poetry'' (; ''Shī''), is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, co ...
'' and the shared phonetic components of
Chinese characters
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...
. Thus Old Chinese is usually reconstructed with the same three-way manner distinction in obstruent initials found in Middle Chinese. However this does not preclude additional manner distinctions that merged in Middle Chinese, because rhyme gives no information about initials and sharing of phonetic components indicates initials with the same
place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
but not necessarily the same manner. Several scholars have attempted to incorporate Proto-Min data into their reconstructions of Old Chinese. The most systematic attempt to date is the
reconstruction of Baxter and Sagart, who derive the additional initials from a number of initial consonant clusters and
minor syllable
Primarily in Austroasiatic languages (also known as Mon–Khmer), in a typical word a minor syllable is a reduced (minor) syllable followed by a full tonic or stressed syllable. The minor syllable may be of the form or , with a reduced vowel, as i ...
s.
Voiceless stops and affricates
All modern Min varieties have a two-way contrast between unaspirated and aspirated voiceless stops and affricates. Where these initials occur with upper register tones, they are projected back into Proto-Min, and correspond to unaspirated and aspirated voiceless initials in Middle Chinese. However, some Middle Chinese voiceless unaspirated initials correspond to fricatives or laterals in Northern Min, and also have a special tonal development in Northern Min and Shao–Jiang. Norman called these initials voiceless "softened" stops and affricates.
In loans from southern Chinese into proto-Hmong–Mien, softened obstruents are often represented by
prenasalized consonant
Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rathe ...
s. Norman suggests the Proto-Min initials were also prenasalized, whereas Baxter and Sagart derive them from stops preceded by
minor syllable
Primarily in Austroasiatic languages (also known as Mon–Khmer), in a typical word a minor syllable is a reduced (minor) syllable followed by a full tonic or stressed syllable. The minor syllable may be of the form or , with a reduced vowel, as i ...
s, arguing that the intervocalic environment caused the stops to weaken to fricatives in some dialects.
Voiced stops and affricates
In most varieties of Chinese that have lost the voicing of Middle Chinese initials, the aspiration of the resulting initials is conditioned by tone, though the relationship varies between dialect groups. In Min varieties however, both aspirated and unaspirated voiceless initials are found in lower register tones. These initials must therefore be distinguished in Proto-Min as aspirated and unaspirated voiced consonants. In Shao–Jiang these initials are uniformly aspirated, but the same distinction is reflected in the tonal development. As with the voiceless initials, there is a third group of formerly voiced initials with fricative or lateral reflexes in some Northern Min varieties, which Norman called "softened" voiced initials. In Eastern Min varieties, voiced unaspirated affricates typically yielded plain .
There are several cases where an adjective or intransitive verb beginning with an unaspirated voiced stop is paired with a transitive verb differing only in aspiration of the voiced stop, suggesting that the contrast reflects an early morphological process.
Early loans from southern Chinese into proto-Hmong–Mien have prenasalized stops corresponding to both aspirated and softened voiced stops in Proto-Min. Baxter and Sagart derive aspirated voiced stops from tightly bound nasal preinitials in Old Chinese, and softened voiced stops from voiced stops preceded by minor syllables.
Sonorants
Inland Min varieties are characterized by having two distinct reflexes of Middle Chinese , which Norman labels as Proto-Min *l and *lh. The two have merged in coastal varieties. In modern Southern Min varieties such as
Hokkien
The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages in ...
, and comprise a single phoneme, realized as before
nasalized vowels and as in other syllables. Two series of nasals can also be distinguished based on their tonal reflexes in Eastern Min and Shao-Jiang. They generally produce a single series of nasal initials in modern varieties except in Southern Min. In those varieties, the Proto-Min initials *nh and *ŋh have become /h/ before high front vowels, *m, *n and *ŋ denasalized to *b, *l and *g respectively before oral vowels, but *mh and other occurrences of *nh and *ŋh often yield nasals in that context.
As the initials *lh, *nh, etc. follow the same tonal development as voiced aspirated initials throughout Min, Norman suggests that they were characterized by
breathy voice
Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like ...
. In Hakka dialects, nasals appear in both lower and upper register tones, suggesting a protolanguage with both voiced and voiceless nasals. Moreover, the occurrence of these initials corresponds to the plain and aspirated nasals of Proto-Min. Norman suggests that they derive from voiced and voiceless nasals in Old Southern Chinese. Further evidence for a voicing distinction comes from early loans into
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
and the
Mienic and
Tai languages
The Tai or Zhuang–Tai languages ( th, ภาษาไท or , transliteration: or ) are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family. The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai–Kadai languages, including Standard Thai or Sia ...
. Norman later abandoned the *ń initial, treating the dz-/z- initials in some Southern Min varieties as arising from *n followed by a high front vowel *i or *y.
A different set of voiceless resonant initials is proposed in most recent reconstructions of
Old Chinese
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...
, with fricative reflexes in Middle Chinese. Norman suggests that Old Southern Chinese voiceless sonorants derive from sonorants preceded by voiceless consonants.
William Baxter and
Laurent Sagart
Laurent Sagart (; born 1951) is a senior researcher at the Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale (CRLAO – UMR 8563) unit of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
Biography
Born in Paris in 1951, he earned hi ...
have incorporated this proposal into their reconstruction of Old Chinese.
Fricatives and others
Fricatives in upper and lower registers are assumed to derive from voiceless and voiced fricatives respectively, broadly corresponding to the voiceless and voiced fricatives of Middle Chinese. Zero initials show three distinct patterns of tonal development, reconstructed as initials *ɦ, *ʔ and a Proto-Min zero initial. The latter occurs only before the high front vowels *i and *y.
In Central Min, *s and *x merged as /ʃ/ before high front vowels.
Tones
Proto-Min had four tone classes, corresponding to the
four tones of Middle Chinese
The four tones of Chinese poetry and dialectology () are four traditional tone classes of Chinese words. They play an important role in Chinese poetry and in comparative studies of tonal development in the modern varieties of Chinese, both in tr ...
: syllables with vocalic or nasal endings belonged to class *A, *B or *C, whereas class *D consisted of the syllables ending in a stop (, or ). As with Middle Chinese and other languages of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, each of these classes split into upper and lower registers, depending on whether the original initial was voiceless or voiced. When voicing was lost, the register distinction became phonemic, yielding tone classes conventionally numbered 1 to 8, with tones 1 and 2 naming the upper and lower registers of Proto-Min class A*, and so on. All 8 classes are retained by the Chaozhou dialect, but some have merged in other varieties. Some northern varieties, including the Jianyang dialect, have an additional tone class (tone 9), reflecting a partial merger of tone classes that cannot be predicted from Middle Chinese forms.
Stop and affricate initials at other points of articulation produce the same tonal reflexes as the dental examples in the above table. Voiceless fricatives have the same tonal reflexes as voiceless aspirated and unaspirated stops. Voiced fricatives are more varied:
* The initials *z and *ɣ have the same tonal reflexes as aspirated nasals and voiced aspirated stops.
* The initial *ž follows voiced unaspirated stops.
* The initial *ɦ follows softened voiced stops.
The zero initial has the same tonal development as plain sonorants.
Finals
Norman reconstructs Proto-Min finals as consisting of:
* an optional medial *i, *u or *y,
* a nuclear vowel *i, *u, *y, *e, *ə, *o, *a or *ɑ, and
* an optional coda *i, *u, *m, *n, *ŋ, *p, *t or *k.
The possible combinations were:
The close vowels *i, *u, *y, *e and *ə were short, with stronger following consonants, whereas the open vowels *o, *a and *ɑ were longer, with weaker following consonants.
Proto-Min also had a single word with a syllabic nasal, the usual negator *m
C (cognate with Middle Chinese ''mjɨjH'' 'not have').
Sound changes leading to modern varieties
Most inland varieties have reduced the nasal codas to a single category.
Coastal varieties went through a series of changes that each affected part of the area, and interacted with nasal initials:
* In
Southern Min
Southern Min (), Minnan (Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ( ...
,
Pu-Xian and
Hainan
Hainan (, ; ) is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. , the largest and most populous island in China,The island of Taiwan, which is slightly l ...
varieties, nasal codas disappeared after open vowels, leaving
nasalized vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced with ...
s.
* In Southern Min, Pu–Xian and Hainanese, nasal initials became voiced stops or flaps except before nasalized vowels or nasal codas. In Hokkien, denasalization also occurred before nasal codas, but not before nasalized vowels. In Pu-Xian, these initials later devoiced, merging with the voiceless unaspirated stops.
* Vowels subsequently lost their nasalization in Putian and Hainan.
* A later merger of nasal codas as /ŋ/ occurred in Pu–Xian and some Eastern Min dialects, including Fuzhou, Fuding and Gutian, but not Fu'an and Ningde. A partial merger occurred in Chaozhou, Jieyang and Shantou, where -n merged with -ŋ.
In most inland varieties stop codas have disappeared, but are marked with separate tonal categories.
In coastal varieties, stop codas underwent changes corresponding to those affecting nasal codas:
* Final stops following open vowels merged as a
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
in Southern Min, Pu–Xian and Hainanese. In Eastern Min, only final *k changed to a glottal stop in this environment.
* This glottal stop then disappeared in Pu–Xian.
* Stop codas merged as in Pu–Xian, Fuzhou, Fuding and Gutian, but not Fu'an and Ningde, and -t merged with -k in Chaozhou, Jieyang and Shantou.
Vocabulary
Most Min vocabulary corresponds directly to cognates in other Chinese varieties, but there is also a significant number of distinctively Min words that may be traced back to proto-Min.
In some cases a semantic shift has occurred in Min or the rest of Chinese:
* *tiaŋ
B 'wok'. The Min form preserves the original meaning 'cooking pot', but in other Chinese varieties this word (MC > ) has become specialized to refer to ancient ceremonial tripods.
* *dzhən
A 'rice field'. In Min this form has displaced the common Chinese term . Many scholars identify the Min word with (MC ) 'raised path between fields', but Norman argues that it is cognate with (MC ) 'additional layer or floor', reflecting the
terrace
Terrace may refer to:
Landforms and construction
* Fluvial terrace, a natural, flat surface that borders and lies above the floodplain of a stream or river
* Terrace, a street suffix
* Terrace, the portion of a lot between the public sidewalk a ...
d fields commonly found in Fujian.
* *tšhio
C 厝 'house'. Norman argues that the Min word is cognate with (MC ) 'to guard'.
* *tshyi
C 喙 'mouth'. In Min this form has displaced the common Chinese term . It is believed to be cognate with (MC ) 'beak, bill, snout; to pant'.
Norman and Mei Tsu-lin have suggested an
Austroasiatic
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The te ...
origin for some Min words:
* *-dəŋ
A 'shaman' may be compared with
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
(/ɗoŋ
2/) 'to shamanize, to communicate with spirits' and
Mon doŋ 'to dance (as if) under demonic possession'. However,
Laurent Sagart
Laurent Sagart (; born 1951) is a senior researcher at the Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale (CRLAO – UMR 8563) unit of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
Biography
Born in Paris in 1951, he earned hi ...
argues that this word is cognate with Chinese 童 (MC ) 'child, servant'.
* *kiɑn
B 囝 'son' appears to be related to Vietnamese () and Mon 'child'.
In other cases, the origin of the Min word is obscure. Such words include *khau
A 骹 'foot', *-tsiɑm
B 䭕 'insipid' and *dzyŋ
C 𧚔 'to wear'.
Notes
References
Works cited
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Further reading
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{{Chinese language
Min Chinese
Min
Min or MIN may refer to:
Places
* Fujian, also called Mǐn, a province of China
** Min Kingdom (909–945), a state in Fujian
* Min County, a county of Dingxi, Gansu province, China
* Min River (Fujian)
* Min River (Sichuan)
* Mineola (Am ...
History of the Chinese language