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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: How did Korean lose the tones?
Message-ID: <1995Jan14.223820.14719@midway.uchicago.edu>
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References: <3f14rq$dqf@news.CCIT.Arizona.EDU> <1995Jan13.001414.27898@midway.uchicago.edu> <3f6pvo$j9q@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 22:38:20 GMT
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In article <3f6pvo$j9q@agate.berkeley.edu> patchew@uclink2.berkeley.edu (Patrick Chew) writes:
>Daniel von Brighoff <deb5@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>	First off, Daniel: taedanhi kamsa hamnida.

Ch'eonmaneyo!
>
>	Cantonese has a few differing ways to "derive new vocabulary." 
>Ofttimes a derivational change in tone (to that of high-rising) is 
>usually apparent.  What S. Lau meant by "deriving new vocabulary" is not 
>100 % clear to me in this context. *shrug*

Those are not his words (or mine, for that matter).  I was mentioning
this type of word derivation (tone change) as a counterexample to
Ekki's claim that tone is very conservative in Chinese dialects.

I wrote:
>>That is why you can predict Mandarin tones from Hoklo and not vice-
>>versa. 
>
>	Well.. not quite.. for most all non-consonant coda'd lexemes.  
>Development of the upper-entering (yinru) category was more or less 
>haphazard in Mandarin.

I was quoting Ekki.  He made the claim that he can predict Mandarin
tones from Hoklo.  It had always been my impression that the
correspondances are not perfectly regular (generalising from the
fact that they aren't regular between Cantonese and Mandarin, which
are more closely-related than Mandarin and Hoklo).

>>Patently ridiculous!  Have you studied Mongolian and Manchu?  Both
>>languages have final consonants.  Also, remember that the size of
>>the invasionary forces was tiny compared to the total Chinese popula-
>>tion and that the conquerors assimilated pretty quickly to Chinese
>>speech and culture.  Not exactly the best conditions for forcing the
>>vast majority of Chinese speakers to change the way they talk.
>
>	Thank you.  However, I would have to grudgingly admit that the 
>influx of Altaic languages has had a profound effect on norhtern 
>dialects, viz. the 'er' suffixation in northern Sinitic speech having 
>become a nice rhotic coda.

There is definitely some influence, just not of the type Ekki claimed.
The frequency of the Beijing -er (which I hate the sound of, btw) is 
generally  acknowledged to be the result of superstratal influence,
just as its absence in Taiwanese Mandarin (descended from Beijing
Mandarin) is the result of substratal influence. 

Here's another example of a gradual change:  sh -> s in Taiwanese
Mandarin.  Nationalists didn't spontaneously shift sounds after
they were driven from the Mainland.  The Taiwanese they conquerored
and forced to learn Mandarin (please no flames!) had difficulty pro-
nouncing "sh" (and other retroflex consonants that their native
dialect lacked) and substituted "s."  Over time, as the two groups
merged, s for sh became common in the speech of those descended from
Beijingers as well.  The war didn't cause the change; it just set up
conditions that allowed it to take place gradually.  (It still hasn't
been completed to this day.)

>	I completely agree, Purigeuheop'eu-hyeongnim.

Mareun aju ttakttakhagunyo!  Keureondae, naneun "Yang Tae-mun"ira
pullyeo chuseyo!

>	One comment: most Chinese dialectologists (of my "generation" of 
>"scholars")  would look at the gradation of coda attrition in Chinese 
>dialects from north to south, wher the south is, by far, the most 
>"conservative," preserving the most in comparison to earlier stages of 
>the language.
[examples deleted]

I think Ekki knows this; he was just trying to find an explanation.
I don't think there is one, necessarily, but if so, he has to look
back much earlier than the Yuan.  Why?

Korean words borrowed from Chinese lack final "t", although they
preserve final "p" and "k."  Middle Chinese "-t" corresponds to
Sino-Korean "-l."  E.g.:

il "sun; day" (cf. Yue yat)
pul "Buddha" (cf. Yue fat)
weol "moon; month" (cf. Yue yut)

(Yue/Cantonese preserves the final stops of Middle Chinese.)

Because many Korean words end with "-t" (often spelled "-s") or "-th", 
this change much have taken place before the words were borrowed into 
Korean (or else the Korean sounds would have been altered, too).

So, the theory is that the words came from a northern dialect where
-t --> -r.  Subsequently, -r became -l in Korean and was lost in
this Chinese dialect.

Because most of these words has entred Korea by the sixth or seventh
century, the change of -t -> -r had to have come before.  Which means
that northern Chinese was losing the finals over six centuries before
the Mongol Invasion.

>>Basically, yes.  I can only think of a few words (mal "horse", mal
>>"[measure]"; pam "evening", pam "chestnut"; pae "boat", pae "pear")
>>that are actually distinguished by pitch accent/vowel length.
>
>	Don't forget <nun> "eye" and "snow". =)  

I left these and others out because I couldn't remember if they had 
different lexical pitch in Middle Korean or not.  They do form one
of my favourite poetic ambiguities, though:  nunmul can mean "tear(s)"
or "melted snow."  One day, I'll write a sijo around this. ^_^

Kamsahamnida, Tongsaengnim!

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
