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(Continued)

V) HOW SOUND CHANGES HAVE COME ABOUT:

A) In search of sound change patterns:

For better understanding of sound change patterns, you should first distinguish the sound change variations between SV and VS lexemes and recognize that their induced-drift shifts follow patterns of different models even if they originate from the same C words. Most of the time they are C loanwords which have been accentuated with a substratum of older layers of prior AC lexicons, not excluding basic vocabulary probably evolved from the same source or, in other words, being cognates as we have seen previously in Shafer's basic ST word lists. The underlined rationalization of this is based on both historical records of ten centuries long of C occupation of the Annamese land and apparent linguistic evidence of C loanwords that had entered the V language en masse and this phemomenon evolved manifolds by drift and shift semantically and syntactically by leaps and bounces synchronically.

The following examples of dissyllabic words, partially structured with either a SV or SV element or both of each type, demonstrate best those phonetic discrepancies. Note that V usage of all these words might have changed a little or a lot, e.g. metathesis, localization, in reverse order, innovation, or slightly having steered away from their original meaning, even though most of the time there exist exact correspondences phonetically and semantically pointing directly to equivalents in C, mostly because they were late loanwords, such as

Just like the development of the Chinese languages, the path their speakers as they had become parts of the later evolving Han Chinese nearly two and a half millennia ago after the Qin Dynasty, undoubtedly, the becoming of the modern V language having continuously and gradually formed over the time is the ultimate result of inevitable cause and effect interactions between some ancient aboriginal substrate language and those of Chinese conquerers, and their soldiers, emigrants, disgraced official exiles and the like, of different mixed-race stocks for a substantially very long period of time. You may recall that the proto-Vietmuong, descendant of the previously forementioned indigenous speech before its having broken apart and diverged into different branches, might have already long existed long before the Chinese Han ever set their feet on the Annamese soil, which then was situated further to the southwest far away from the NamViet (NanYue) State. That is to say, the view that the proto-Vietmuong was not evolved from the same source as that of ST as shared by many renown scholars may hold valid. Nevertheless, based on some of what appear to be cognates in the basic stock of both C and V, we could also safely speculate that their common share of basic words had been already widely used prior to the emergence of other derived variants from the AC as results of later contacts with the Han occupational forces and new emigrant from the north.

The onset of new vocabulary, that had eventually made a round trip finding its way back into some other forms of speech used by native speakers in the China South, might then have already formed some time before the Han annexed the nation of NamViet, which previously earlier had been ruled by King Trieu Da (Zhao Tuo) of Han origin. The Annamese land under the Han rule and thereafter had also seen the aforementioned split of the proto-Vietmuong into the Viet and Muong branches that dispersed in different directions following migrating paths of their speakers, to mountainous hideouts or the coastline settlements, and this event, which is even still recorded in the V folktale Lạclongquân ("King Lac of Dragonic Descent") about the origin of the V people, gave rise to the early Vietic language which began to absorb the early AC elements, including basic vocabulary, starting from the Han Dynasty. The similarity among those basic words between the V and C is the subject of investigation of this paper, trying to explain with evidence of their being cognate if it is so even though we so far have had no records of how the archaic Vietic language had been spoken more than two millennia ago. For that reason, we actually can only work on the framework of ancient C linguistic records (See Bo Yang, Wang Li, Li Fang-Kuei, Kargren, PulleyBlank, Schuessler, et al.)

In reality, sound changes from C to V are manifold and they could have gradually occurred over a long span of timeline where vernacular forms in different periods as they appear in older ancient lexical layers might have competed with newer and more prestigious ones, i.e. SV from MC as having articulated in some learned cirles. Also, they could possibly have evolved into some familar words that we all seem to know too well, but actually not, such as some typical words serving multifunctionally, i.e., noun-verbs as co-locators, verbs or adverbs as particles, as exemplified below, which must have come from at least one or two northern vernacular C dialects, i.e. Mandarin of early and later periods. Also, other new lexicons could be considered later loans in addition to what could have been alterations of those very same words having already existed prior to phonological shifts with new usages and semantic adaptions.

Let's examine some of those derived variants of the same roots.

來 lái: lai (SV)

  1. lại : "come", variations: 來來來! láilái lái: "Lại đây nầy!" or "Tới đây!" (Come here!),
  2. lại (a grammatical particle): Màn lái! 慢來! "Chậm lại!" (Slow down!),
  3. 再 zài: lại as in 再來 zàilái! Làm lại! 'Do it again!' (# 再來 zàilái can also be: "lặplại" 'repeat!' or "trởlại" 'return')
  4. là: 本來 běnlái "vốnlà" (originally), 原來 yuánlái "nguyênlà" (initially), 一來.. yìlái "mộtlà".. 二來..èrlái "hailà"...,
  5. vậy: (a grammatical particle): 你去那裏來 Nǐ qù nálǐ lái? "Mầy điđâu vậy?" (Where did you go?)
  6. đây: 上來 Shànglái! "Lên đây!" (Come up here!),
  7. nầy, nay: 後來 hòulái "saunầy" (later on), 素來 sùlái "xưanay" (from the start),
  8. làm, tới: 來一盃 Lái yī bēi! "Làm một ly!" (Let's have a drink!), 來不及 Láibùjí "Tới khôngkịp!" '(We, I, He..) cannot come (on time)' ~ "Làm khôngkịp" 'It can't be done (on time)' , 來唄 láibei! "Tớiđi" (Come!) ~ 'Làmđi!' (Go ahead!), 亂來 luànlái "làmcàn" 'do things carelessly',
  9. nổi: 起不來 qǐbùlái "dậyđâunổi" (unable to get up),
  10. sau: 未來 wèilái "maisau" (in the future).

打 dă: đả (SV)

  1. đánh, quánh, đập, để : "beat, strike, operate" [ e.g. 打字 dăzì "đánhchữ" (typing) ],
  2. đòn: 挨打 ăidă "ănđòn" (get beaten up, be punished),
  3. tá: 一打 yī dá "một tá" (a dozen) [ This is a recent English loanword in C., earliest in the late of the Qing Dynasty) and, like other words, it was creeping into the V language naturally and dominantly to become an active member of the modern V.],
  4. từ : 打 dá (from) [ ~ @ 自 zì (SV tự), cf. 自打 zìdá # "từkhi" (since) ],
  5. ăncướp: 打劫 dăjié 'to rob' [ also, VS đánhcướp ~ đánhcắp | M 打劫 dăjié \ @ 打 dă ~ 'ăn' | M 劫 < MC kɛp < OC *kap],
  6. tínhtoán, toantính: 打算 dăsuàn (to plan),
  7. lậpcập: 打抖 dădǒu 'shaking' [ M 打抖 dădǒu \ @ 打 dă ~ lập (reduplicative) | ¶ d- ~ l- ],
  8. cáđộ: 打賭 dădǔ (đảđộ) [ ® @ 打 dă ~ cá ], etc.

What makes us posit such variant sounds for each C root? Evidences show that C and V phonological interchanges, as demonstrated by their phonetic shells, since they had occurred at different periods or evolved from different sources, were drastically altered beyond recognition, even with those of the MC ~ SV, for instance:

while, in fact, they follow well-defined patterns of sound changes from MC to SV which are diachronic and scholarly in nature having evolved from the official language spoken at the old-timed Chinese imperial court and among literati, in this case, the language of Chang'an from the 6th century onwards. These sound patterns have been identified and categorized based on a systematic phonological rule known as fănqiè 反切 (FQ), or phonetic spelling. It is from this old-timed spelling system that all the available C characters can be deciphered for its pronunciation in equivalent SV sounds. Regarding of how hundreds of these cultural and scholarly loanwords have enterd the daily speech of the common speakers of today's V is another matter for discussion. Specifically for this phenomenon of phonological sound changes, as mentioned earlier, there are always exceptions that reflect different dialectal articulation as well as historical periods, but in most of the cases their variants match what are recorded in ancient rhyming books (See Kargren, Nguyễn Tài-Cẩn, Wang Li, Li Fang-Keui, et al.) which were later compiled and cited in the Kangxi Zidian (康熙字典), for example,

To explore further the process of sound changes from C and V through drift, shift, or nativization, etc., for illustration I will examine in detail the example of côngcuộc, 'task' 工作 gōngzuò (SV côngtác) [ MC /koŋʷtzok/ | M 作 zuō, zuó, zuò < MC tzwʌk | for tz- cf. Cant /tzwʌk/ | Starostin: MC cʌk < OC *ɕa:k | FQ 則落 ] as I will do with some other cases throughout this paper because it involves also some common aspects of word formation in V with C material via sandhi process of assimilation (be reminded that the denotation of sandhi process of assimilation used in this paper is to mean a linguistic rule of sound changes by assimilating the involved sound with those that are within the realm of either meanings, sounds, or both of those words that carry some similar lexical contours, phonologically and semantically. This process sometimes is referred to by other authors as induced shift.) As in the case of côngcuộc, specifically, the interference of the preceding closed and rounded velar ending [-ŋʷ-] causes the initial of the next syllable [tz-] to change to [kw-] within dissyllabic forms. This process is further continued by V speakers by associating the morpheme [kwok] with an homophonous one cuộc (< SV cục), where it appears in variations of dissyllabic forms and has a close meaning as what appears in the compound côngcuộc, hence [koŋʷtzok] > [koŋʷkwok]. It is no doubt that many non-specialists of SV will be tempted to assign to cuộc , a C cognate of jú 局 right away. Also, it’s worthy to note that in V, except for the C original meaning of 'cuộc' as in (SV) thếcuộc 世局 shìjú (> cuộcđời) ‘life’, this compound usually is used only in the context côngcuộc xâydựng 建設工作 jiànshè gōngzuò ‘the task of building’ or côngcuộc tranhđấu 鬥爭工作 dòuzhēng gōngzuò ‘the fighting task’ with the same meaning as côngtác (SV) while 工作 gōngzuò in modern M can also mean ‘job’, for which the V việclàm (a localized alternation of the vernacular form 幹活 gànhuó as "làmviệc" 'to work' by means of metathesis) is the equivalent in both etymology and meaning. For that reason, we can assume that the formation of the word côngcuộc is a local development in V originated from 工作 gōngzuò and, yet, in the meantime, we can not exclude the possibility that 工作 gōngzuò can be the compound derivation of gōng 公 + jú 局 (a derived doublet of 作) if we apply the sandi rule to the formation of this C compound even though this compound word appears not to exist in the C vocabulary as known to the author. And if that were the case, then the scenario [koŋʷtzok] > côngcuộc is no longer a local development in V but a variation of the same C cognate.

Many V words are formed that way and, being C loanwords for most of the cases, we can apply the same analytic approach to trace down the etymology of VS lexicons, for example, 渾蛋 húndàn (SV hỗnđản) for 'khốnnạn' (son of a bitch) vs. 困難 kùnnan (VS khókhăn 'difficulty') or 炸肉 zhàròu (SV tạcnhục) for 'chảlụa' (fried or cooked meat cake) instead of 'ruốcchiên' (fried meat), and so on. The existence of such derived words allows us to further solidify our sandhi association principle for making etymological revisions of the same roots in numerous cases.

As you will see the foundation for such revised reconstruction is partially based on certain peculiar vocalism and articulation of V initials and finals that fit into AC phonological and rhymimg schemes deduced from OC linguistic materials as well as recent discoveries and reconstruction work on Proto-C and OC by several renown linguists of our time. For example, one of the most striking peculiar labiovelar vocalism in modern V with those of finals -c, -ng which are preceded by a rounded vowel such as ɔ-, o-, u- or a medial -w-) in V orthography, i.e. [-uwk, -uwŋ, -owk, -owŋ] (characterized by the liabialization of the same ending consonants) appears to resemble so closely with those OC finals ending with labiovelars *-kw[kʷ], *-gw[gʷ], and labiovelar nasal *-ngw[-ŋʷ] (Li, along with some other linguists such as Pulleyblank, independently reached the same conclusion.) For illustration, the examples of 風 fēng and 心 xīn are sufficed:

In Shijing 詩經 (“The Book of Odes”) 風 usually rhymes with 心, 林, etc., all fitting into 侵 MC tshjəm rhyme group and 東 MC djung [ < OC *djəŋʷ] (cf. SV lòng [lɔŋʷ]) (1), division III (having -j- medial). Yu Nai-yong (1985. pp. xiii, 277-79, 286) grouped it with the same classification but in class C (ending with -m). It is interesting to see that words ending with -ŋʷ in this class in V happen to be articulated with all initial consonants, so it is not hard to connect that with lòng [lɔŋʷ]. His reconstruction of PC and OC 風 as **pljom > *pljəm and 嵐 as **plom > *bləm is based on xiéshēng 諧聲 which shows two different initials in MC as [piuŋ] and [lam] respectively, all from

Some other linguists have similar reconstructions with only minor differences. For example, Bodman (1980 p. 121) came up with PC **pyəm, OC *pjəm and MC pjuŋ for 風 and commented on the opinion about the inter-rhyming of the *-əm, *əng and *-ung finals in OC as being divided between those favor *-m in the -uŋ endings, that the *-uŋ was perhaps a dialect reflex of -əm. Schuessler (1987. p.385) modified Li’s OC of 林 as gljəm. Forrest (1958 p.114) observed that in the archaic period C still tolerated consecutive labials, i.e. the initial P- and the ending -M (capital letters signify arbitrary consonants of similar class of articulation,) and he concluded that the OC 風 ending must have been the same as that of 心, that obviously appears to us as -m.

From the above view we can safely posit *-jOm ~ *-jOŋʷ interchange based on the speculation that during the sound change transition from OC *-jəm to MC -jung, it must have gone the through the process of labialization of the OC final to become -juŋʷ . It is interestingly enough that this phonemic feature still shows in the V language. Pulleyblank (1984) shared the same view when representing final -uŋ as -əŋʷ and he hypothesized that the OC final must have been pronounced as that of V ông [oŋʷ] and ong [əŋʷ], of which the final labiovelar is realized with double, labial and velar, articulation.” (p.123) On the other hand, for the MC period, Forrest noted that -ung remained unchanged everywhere unless the preceding consonant is a labial P- in which case it is dissimilated to -ə- as 風 pronounced fēng in M. (p. 182.) The implication we can draw from Pulleyblank’s and Forrest’s views is that V giông might have evolved during the transitional period of AC (also known as Early Middle Chinese or EMC) where p- was palatalized and dropped from pjuŋʷ to become a glide j-, that eventually gave rise to [juŋʷ] > [joŋʷ] and further developed into > [jɔ] as it appears in the last two forms in modern V. Of course, this process of sound change could also have gone differently from the one that would later have given rise to SV phong [fəŋʷ]. It was the same as in the case of 凡 fán to go one step further to become những and it is not hard to see that the initial of /juŋʷ/ was nasalized to …/juŋʷ/ , then the rounded vocalism was unrounded to become …j‚ ng. This proposition is very likely because the V language has its tendency of resistance for p- and substitutes it with b-, ph-, h-, j-, nh- … or might have this initial palatalized to t-, s- and the likes, and, sometimes, does this even with the rounded labiovelars being dropped to become -w or -o. This phenomenon commonly has happened not only with V words of C origin but within the C dialects themselves as well. Based on this deduction, we can assume with certainty that Proto-Vietnamese (PV) and Old V, oftentimes referred to as Old Annamese, of giông might possibly have had similar sounds as those of lexicons in PC and OC. In the meanwhile the V gió might have been a local innovation or merely an alternation of the former by changing the labiovelar to -ɔ. An interesting thing is that in the form of SV phong [pfɔŋʷ], of which the initial is an alternation of b-, both labials, i.e., b- and f-, remained in the same word. Consecutive labial occurrence is regarded as a distinct feature of OC while VS giông reflects an OC linguistic feature of an ancient period that the C language had developed “its distaste for consecutive labials”, as Forrest put it, and modern VS also still keeps this linguistic feature.

The historically phonological correlation of V and C in the case of the ending -juŋʷ, which could be expanded to many other cases such as 心 xīn for 'lòng' (heart) or 痛 tòng for 'đau' (pain), demonstrates the relationship of both languages from which we can actually draw parallel lines for the historical development of both V and C. From this baseline we can actually reconstruct many OC initials and finals and build an analogy of the C ~ V sound change patterns which can eventually be used to find more V etyma of C origin and, for the same matter, to recognize words resulted from multiple lexical shifts such as those loanwords in the realm of VS which have been conveniently adapted to local speech habit as well as other factors due to its colloquial nature or linguistic substrate interference with the target language through imperfect learning or imitation.

In the researching process, there inevitably arises confusion in etymological roots due to corruption and contamination from both similar SV sounds and semantical mask with extended usages, such as

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B) An analogy of Vietnamese etymology:

Beside the similarity of innumerable basic words in V and C, C throughout its history of development has continuously influenced the formation of the V language remarkably for hundreds of years while the ancient Vietnam's land, or Annam, was under the C occupation and its after-affects still continue on until present day having left its traces clearly and notably in all contemporary V linguistic aspects. One way to identify their C traits in the V etymology is to utilize a new tool that I call the analogical method. It is based on a methodology that syntactic or lexical analogy as have been previously used as a tool in historical linguistics can be re-tooled and utilized making use of many linguistic forms that have already been standardized, categorized, and tabulated in V linguistic works accomplished until now. For that matter, we must firstly see into it that they are in effect production of patterns and development of phonetic interchanges that resemble sound changes in loanwords and their induced shifts already predominating in the V language, specifically. In the following and the next sections we will examine some patterns of sound changes that make many of those exemplified words listed throughout this writing candidate cognates with those related C words plentiful in the contemporary V language which can be readily recognized in both layers of linguistic substratum and superstratum.

1) A corollary approach:

The corollary approach utilized in this research is one among several analogical methods to establish linguistic attributes for etymological candidates by making use of their lexical properties found to be similar based on their semantic peculiarities and characteristics, that is, the very same nature and traits that have already occurred and existed in those words under examination. Let's use this corollary approach to examine only some of common words as they selectively picked for their notorious authenticity which is highly controversial and somewhat dubious. For the same reason, this is only an attempt to find the V etymologies of C origin by utilizing one among many techniques and methods along with their resulted works already made available to date at our disposal. In any cases for those words that are not likely plausible cognates it does not mean that others are also falling under the same blanket -- each should have each own merit as in the field of VS studies sound changes do not always follow strict rules that those of scholarly SV have gone through. The important point here is that you will see what steps and how I have come up with etymological hypotheses solely through reasoning and induction by using these tools.

In fact, with the exception of intimate relationship among many C dialects themselves for historical reasons, e.g. the evolvement of Cantonese or Fukienese prior to the of massive influx of Han and MC stocks where remnants of a larger substratum of aboriginal lexicons were positively identified, remarkable linguistic closeness of V with C dialects is noteworthy for their possible kinship rather than merely a loan relationship while in basic words, such as yú 魚 cá ‘fish’, 葉 lá ‘leaf’ yè , miàn 面 mặt, yǐn 飲uống ‘drink’ their resemblance is far more close than even those same words in MK or ST languages that have among themselves.

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2) Words of unknown origin:

Unfortunately, we cannot find all the V words of C origin by applying all the approaches and principles discussed here. Many words in V, except for those appear clearly loanwords such as "cápduồn" from an identifiable loan from the Khmer language, are questionable regarding their roots, which, sometimes look like C, for instance:

However, no matter what, we can still have many of those words appear in some fixed expressions or compounds of which one of the syllable words is either cognate or of Chinese origin, for example,

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3) Questionable words of Chinese origin:

Except for those obvious loanwords from C as demonstrated by their closeness in both phonology and semantics, we still have a long list of words that are suggestive of C origin. Nevertheless many of them, in addition to what are posited as the foregoing, at the same time, appear to be related with those of either the MK languages or unknown sources such as Malay, which make them dubious as C cognates, for instance:

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(1) a) rừng, rậm 林 lín ‘forest’ (SV lâm) [ M 林 lín < MC lim < OC *rjəm < PC **rjəɱ ~ OC *srjəm (~ 森 (sâm) rậm) | Tibetan languages: Burmese: rum 'rậm', Kachin: diŋgram2 'rừng', Lushei: ram 'rừng' | Cant. /lʌm/ | ¶ l- ~ r-, ex. 龍 lóng (long) rồng ],
b) lấn 侵 qīn (xâm) [ M 侵 qīn < MC chjim < OC *shim | ¶ q- ~ l- ],
c) 東 dōng 'the east' (SV đông) [ Starostin: 東 dōng < MC tuŋ < OC *toŋ | FQ 德紅 ]


ā ē ě ī ǐ ă ō ǒ ū ǔ ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ ü