Reconstruction talk:Proto-Hmong-Mien/ɴɢej

Relationship with Old Chinese 肌
Ratliff (2010) writes "The word *NGej ‘meat/wild game’ is reconstructed to Proto Hmong-Mien and appears to be native (5-6.6/10, White Hmong nqaij)". There is a difference in voicing of and *ɴɢej that needs some explanation, if the two are indeed etymologically related. RcAlex36 (talk) 18:02, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree. if you have a source for connecting it to 肌, please cite it. Otherwise, our own speculations should generally not be included. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 20:14, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Since this is controversial, I have removed the proposed etymology. Ngôn Ngữ Học (talk) 21:06, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! — justin(r)leung { (t...) 21:11, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Personally I disagree with Ratliff. She is not a Sinologist and does not identify many words of obvious Sinitic origin. To me, this is obviously 肌. Also, Proto-Hmong-Mien had all kinds of voicing alternations going because of prefixes. Nevertheless, I think it's best to remove the etymology because it's controversial. Ngôn Ngữ Học (talk) 21:19, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What reasoning is there to support the obviousness of connecting this to 肌? I think there needs a little more argumentation for people who are unfamiliar with these issues (like myself). — justin(r)leung { (t...) 21:23, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * PHM *ɴɢej and OC *krəj share a -ej/-əj rime. Ostapirat (2016) shows that Ratliff's uvulars should be in fact reconstructed as velars, with many of them conditioned by velarization. So we might in fact have something like *N-kej or *N-kˠej (with *N- being a tightly attached nasal prefix, like *m/n/ŋ.-), which is a match with OC *krəj. Proto-Hmong-Mien has a tendency to prenasalize Chinese borrowings too. Ratliff mentions that it is a native word not because she suspects that 肌 is unrelated, but rather because she didn't even know that 肌 existed. She had to depend on Sagart to identify many Chinese loanwords for her. I have a copy of her 2010 book and could not find 肌 mentioned anywhere. Ngôn Ngữ Học (talk) 22:37, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Are there other words where PHM *-ej corresponds to OC *-əj or PHM *ɢ-/*k- corresponds to OC *kr-? Also, if I remember right, Baxter and Sagart usually would reconstruct *N- in OC if Hmong-Mien has prenasalized initials, but I'm not sure if they do this all the time. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 22:42, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Oftentimes PHM *-ej corresponds with OC *-aj. As for the initials, we have:


 * PHM *ɢaX < 下 (OC *gˤraʔ)
 * PHM *ɢæw < 號 (OC *[C.g]ˤaw)
 * Proto-Hmongic *ɢlowD < 峽 (OC *N-kˤep)

For 'meat', PHM *ɴɢ- should most likely be something like *ŋg- instead if you follow Ostapirat (2016). Correspondences are very irregular, which means that this was a complex contact scenario where words were being borrowed from different regional dialects. And if you believe Benedict and others, you could even say that Chinese had borrowed many of these words from non-Sinitic languages, rather than the other way around. Ngôn Ngữ Học (talk) 22:53, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * It seems like a host of problems here with correspondences and direction. Thanks for walking me through this. I think generally we should be more careful with making claims on the actual entries, so thanks again for taking the etymology off the entry for now. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 23:27, 18 March 2023 (UTC)