Thoughts on Baxter & Sagart’s recent *X.p- hypothesis

This is an edited and expanded version of a tumblr post.

Recently I saw on twitter that Sagart has uploaded the slides for his and Baxter’s presentation at the 37th Journées de linguistique d’Asie orientale on academia.edu, titled “Alternation between Middle Chinese p(h) and xw in Chinese word families”. The presentation argues for a new Old Chinese onset type *X.p-, where *X is an “unknown prefixed element” that lenites *p- to MC xw- (曉母合口):

OC *p- > MC p-
OC *X.p- > MC xw-

The argument is based on essentially one type of evidence: OC synonym pairs with alternating initials reflected in MC as p- and xw-. B&S present 9 such pairs [1] but mention that there are “at least twelve”; they think that this is “[t]oo many for accidental resemblances” and that “we are probably dealing with cognate words”. Possible cognates in Tibeto-Burman, Karenic and Austronesian languages are cited as evidence that MC xw- in this situation is secondary.

In this post I want to detail the reasons why I feel unconvinced by this proposal.

examining the evidence #

The central evidence B&S rely their argument upon is the synonym pairs; some of them are more convincing than others. The first, third, fourth and last synonym pairs they list (“to disperse, dissolve, melt”, “white, shiny, brilliant”, “to fly, flutter about”, and “flower”) I don’t really have a problem with. The rest are all problematic for one reason or another.

1. “ample, corpulent, large”: B&S compare 胖 ban ‘ample, corpulent’ and 奐 xwanH ‘ample’ #

There is grounds for comparing these two semantically, but it’s much more nuanced and more difficult than B&S present. At the risk of going into too many irrelevant details (this is in fact the lengthiest section of this post), I’ll establish both items philologically before giving my assessment.

1.1 胖 ban [2] is not a well-attested item in classical times by any means. In fact, in classical texts it almost qualifies as a hapax: the only attestation I know of is in Lǐjì 禮記, with Zhèng Xuán 鄭玄 (127–200) glossing it as 大也 “large”, though about a millennium later Zhū Xī 朱熹 (1130–1200) gives the influential reading 安舒 “at ease”:

富潤屋、德潤身、心廣體胖。故君子必誠其意。
Riches adorn a house, and virtue adorns the person. The mind is expanded, and the body is at ease. [if after Zhèng, “and the body is large”] Therefore, the superior man must make his thoughts sincere. (trans. James Legge, Book XXXIX, 6)

The pronunciation is also not entirely agreed on by the sources: the word is not present in Guǎngyùn; both Tenrei banshō meigi 篆隷萬象名義 (c. 830) and Shinsen Jikyō 新撰字鏡 (c. 900) give 普半反 = phanH; Jíyùn 集韻 (1039) gives 蒲官切 = ban.

Another piece of evidence is the obviously relevant Shuōwén orthographic item 伴, with Xǔ Shèn’s gloss 大也 “large”, though it’s unclear if it points to the same word or just a related one.

Also note-worthy is the binomic item 伴奐 banH-xwanH in Shī 252:

伴奐爾游矣。優游爾休矣。
Relaxed is your diversion / pleasant and easy is your rest (trans. Bernhard Karlgren)

The meaning of this binom is difficult (Karlgren’s translation follows Zhèng Xuán’s explanation 自縱弛 “to allow oneself to relax; to be unbridled and relaxed by oneself”). Here, I want to direct the attention to the Máo gloss for the word: 廣大有文章也 “vast and equipped with (good) Institution”. This reading is probably incorrect, but interesting because it seems to be additional proof that in the exegetical traditions no later than the early Hàn, people recognized a word (or words) that is phonologically permitted by the phonetic 半 and means “large”. It seems clear to me that the 有文章 “equipped with (good) Institution” part is a Confucianist reading of 奐, taken here to mean {煥 xwanH “brilliant, dazzling”}, perhaps a direct derivation of the following Analect passage:

巍巍乎、其有成功也。煥乎、其有文章。
How majestic was he in the works which he accomplished! How glorious in the elegant regulations which he instituted! (trans. James Legge, Book XIII, Chap. XIX, 2)

Therefore, the 廣大 “vast” part must have been Máo’s reading of 伴.

1.2 Although the orthographic form 奐 is well attested in classical texts, the morpheme(s) it points to are more difficult to pin down. Barring personal names, these are the early instances of this form I was able to find:

  1. Zhèng Xuán on the Lǐjì phrase 美哉奐焉 glosses it as 衆多 “numerous”. Note that this could (and I personally insist that it must) be seen as a contextual reading of the item {煥 xwanH “brilliant, dazzling”}.

    美哉輪焉。美哉奐焉。
    How elegant it is, and lofty! How elegant and splendid! [If after Zhèng, “how elegant, and what a crowd!”] (trans. James Legge, Book II, Section II, Part III, 19)

  2. The Hànshū (111) records a poem by Wéi Xuánchéng 韋玄成 (d. 36 BCE), in which the phrase 惟懿惟奐 is similar (possibly derivative) to 1. The item 奐 here is glossed by Yán Shīgǔ 顏師古 (581–645) with 盛也 “splendid, grand”, no doubt identifying it with {煥 xwanH “brilliant, dazzling”}.

    既耇致位、惟懿惟奐。厥賜祁祁、百金洎館。
    At the time [my father] retired at ripe old age, [the family] was admirable and splendid. The royal bestowals were abundant; great amounts of wealth was coming to the household. (Hànshū Zhuàn 43)

  3. On the orthographic form 奐, Shuōwén says:

    取奐也。一曰大也。
    [???]. Also said to mean “large”.

  4. Again in Shuōwén at the entry of 璠, Xǔ Shèn records a quote of Confucius that is not present in today’s canonical Analects, in which he describes a kind of jade-stone as 奐若. It’s transparent that this word is derived from 奐 by adding the “expressive” suffix 若 nyak “in the manner of…, like…”. Xú Kǎi 徐鍇 (920–974) explains it reasonably as 文也 “[filled with] patterns”, clearly also making an identification with {MC xwanH “brilliant, dazzling”}.

    遠而望之、奐若也。近而視之、瑟若也。
    From afar it looks all dazzling, and from up-close it looks all sharp and clear [expl. of 瑟若 of after Duàn]

  5. In Hánshī Wàizhuàn 韓詩外傳 (2 c.) there are two instances of the orthographic form 奐, both with the expressive suffix 然 nyen. One seems onomatopoeic/ideophonic (?), and the other is identifiable with {渙 xwanH “to disperse”}:

    受子貢觴、迎流而挹之、奐然而棄之。促〈從〉流而挹之、奐然而溢之。
    [She] took Tzŭ-kung’s cup, went to the stream and dipped it in against the current; then she threw out the water with a splash and dipped it in again with a splash, following the current, and filled it to overflowing. (trans. James Hightower, Chapter I, 3)

    君臣上下之際突〈奐〉然有離德者
    where the prince and the subjects, the superior and the inferior, are drifting away with intentions no longer aligned (Chapter III)

  6. The aforementioned binom 伴奐 banH-xwanH in Shī 252. Elsewhere in Shījīng (Máo’s orthography) the forms 畔援 (Shī 241) and 判渙 (Shī 287) occur. Since all these orthographic forms point xiéshēng-wise to *PAN-WAN, it’s likely that they are the same word or words in the same family (posited already by Móu Tíng 牟庭 in Shī Qiè 詩切 1815[?]), but ultimately the links between these items are unclear. Karlgren gives “relaxed” for all three items, following Zhèng’s gloss for 伴奐. Móu (and more recently Gě Yìqīng 葛毅卿 in 1947 [3]) connects these items to the phonologically closely aligned item 盤桓 ban-hwan “to move in circles, to linger, to hesitate”. Zhèng Xuán’s attempt to connect 畔援 to 拔扈 bat-huX ‘cruel and insolent’" is interesting but phonologically difficult.

    帝謂文王、無然畔援、無然歆羨
    God said to Wen Wang: “Do not like that be relaxed,do not like that indulge your desires” (trans. Bernhard Karlgren, 241)

    將予就之、繼猶判渙
    [I]f later on I achieve it, in the sequel I shall (still) be (relaxed =) slack (trans. Bernhard Karlgren, 287)

    N.B. Since the phonological shape of these items suggest that they’re monomorphemic binoms, the per-character readings that render them as compounds are probably incorrect; therefore the idea that 伴奐 could have been a compound of 伴 “large” and 奐 “(SW) large” is dubious (contra Mǎ Ruìchén 馬瑞辰’s Máoshī Zhuànjiān Tōngshì 毛詩傳箋通釋 1835), as is the reading of 判渙 as {判 banX “to divide”} + {渙" xwanH “to disperse”} (contra the Máo gloss and the Zhèng commentary, although this reading is usually followed); the Máo gloss that equates 畔援 with {叛, 畔 banH “to abandon (the Way)”} + {援 hjwon “to take”} particularly strains credulity.

1.3 It should be rather clear by now that besides the mention in the Shuōwén gloss for 奐, there is no clear semantic basis to compare 奐 with 胖 ban “large”, since with the exception of the SW gloss, all the items above are either identifiable with one of {渙 xwanH “to disperse”} and {煥 xwanH “brilliant, dazzling”}, part of a binom, or altogether unclear.

Another point worth making here is that we don’t have a fireproof rule for determining what Chinese items are cognate; in general one relies on impressionistic judgement. When there is more than one possibly comparable item, the choice of one over all the others as the “true cognate” can be arbitrary and unfalsifiable. Even if I were to compare an item 奐 *WAN “large? ample?” with something, for example, I would consider the item 寬 khwan “wide”. In Baxter–Sagart’s system one would suggest something like

奐 *qʷʰˤan-s? > xwanH? “(SW) large” vs. 寬 *C.qʷʰˤan > khwan “wide”

Of course I don’t necessarily endorse this reconstruction, either; I just want to make the point that if we’re using the “Chinese-internal cognate words” as evidence for OC, we have to be really cautious about it.

“quick, impetuous, rash”: B&S compare 憋 phjiet ‘impetuous, rash’ and 決 xwet ‘quickly’ #

憋 pjiet, phjiet [4] is a rather difficult item in early texts. The character appears in Yáng Xióng 揚雄 (53 BCE–18 CE)'s Dialects with the explanation 惡也 “bad”. This is the only clear early piece of evidence we have of this item.

I don’t know of any clear instance of the orthographical form 憋 in classical texts; but the existence of word(s) meaning “bad” in the repertoire of word-shapes phonologically permitted by the phonetic 敝 is indubitable: one immediately recalls

I think the Dialects gloss must be pointing to one of these words or a close cognate. Traditional philologists seem to identify the following two instances (one post-classical, one in Hàn) with the Dialects item:

Both items above seem to differ in nuance from {敝} and {弊} in that they indicate a judgement of character (“bad” as in “malicious toward people”).

There’s, of course, little semantic grounds to compare these items, meaning “bad”, with 決 xwet “quickly”. But where did the gloss “impetuous, rash” for 憋 come from? The source of this gloss, seen as early as in Tenrei banshō meigi 篆隷萬象名義 (c. 830, largely based on the orginal Yùpiān c. 543), seems to be 郭璞 Guō Pú (276–324). In his commentary to the Dialects he notes that “憋怤 phjiet-phju means an impetuous character” 憋怤，急性也.

Our understanding of this binom phjiet-phju in early texts rests solely on Guō’s commentary. There are no good instance of it in early texts. The orthographic form 䳤[⿰付鳥], which is the name of a (mythical) bird, appears in Shānhǎijīng 山海經, with Guō Pú giving it the same gloss (“an impetuous character” 急性). A related post-classical instance is the name of a (fabled) person 憋懯 that appears in Lièzǐ 列子 (4 c.), with Zhāng Zhàn 張湛 (fl. late 4 c.)’s explanation “swiftly moving” 急速之貌. Both of these are names, not actual use cases of the word.

But one thing is certain, at least: Guō is very clear that the reading “impetuous” belongs to the binom, not 憋 phjiet itself. Only in later dictionaries did 憋 gain the reading “impetuous”, with the exact phrasing as Guō’s commentary, which is a clue that the dictionaries took the definition directly from Guō. But this—if it was the case—would of course be a mistake.

Since 憋 phjiet is a rare item in classical times with the gloss “bad”, not “impetuous”, and the desired reading “impetuous” seems to have originally belonged to the equally rare binom {憋怤}, which is of unclear relationship with {憋}, B&S’s comparison of this item with 決 xwet on the sense “quickly” is hardly reliable.

(sidenote) As mentioned by Wáng Niànsūn 王念孫 (1744–1832), there is an item 嫳 in Shuōwén, with Xǔ Shèn’s gloss “easily provoked” 易使怒也; Xǔ also provides a sound-gloss here (= 撆, → MC phet; in OC times it could have just differed from phjiet by pharyngealization of the onset). Importantly, this might be related to the “impetuous” binom. The comparison with “quickly” is semantically more difficult, however. (Quick additional remark on 2024-08-22: A derivation of “bad” > “bad-tempered” seems equally likely, if not more so.)

“to cleave, split”: B&S compare 擘 peak ‘cleave, split’ and 殈 xwek, xjwiek ‘cleave (egg shells)’ #

I don’t actually have that much of a problem with this comparison, but I’m apprehensive since this once again relies on a word that’s barely attested in early times. (This seems to be a theme here: B&S keep basing their argument on isolated, poorly attested items.)

The only attestation I know of 殈 xwek in classical texts is again in Lǐjì with Zhèng Xuán’s gloss 裂也 “to crack”. In the passage it’s put in parallel to 殰 duwk “miscarriage, stillborn”, so it’s probably more to the effect of something like “to be cracked before hatching”:

蟄蟲昭蘇、羽者嫗伏、毛者孕鬻、胎生者不殰、而卵生者不殈
insects will come to the light and revive; birds will breed and brood; the hairy tribes will mate and bring forth; the mammalia will have no abortions, and no eggs will be broken or addled (trans. James Legge, Book XVII, Section III, 3)

Zhèng also explicitly states that he considers this to be a dialectal word, but B&S don’t seem to take this into account.

(sidenote) 殈 xwek has a probable cognate (pointed out already by Wáng Niànsūn) seen in Guǎngyǎ, 掝 xweak, glossed also as 裂也, which could have possibly only differed from 殈 xwek by an OC *-r-; but since I don’t know of any actual usage of this character (with this meaning) in a text, this doesn’t seem much help.

“to collapse, die”: B&S compare 崩 pong ‘to collapse’ (of a mountain) and 薨 xwong ‘to die’ (of a king or prince) #

There’s no problem with this comparison in itself; the issue here is, the graph 薨 has been used to write the word {xwong, “to die (of a king or prince)”} since as early as 2 c. BCE, and the xiéshēng material must be accounted for:

This is trivial if at the time of graphic creation (which presumably was earlier than the deocclusivization of *m̥) that word was *m̥ˤəŋ, but would be difficult to explain otherwise.

“‘stupid’ (?)”: B&S compare 豩 pin ‘stupid’ and 豩 xwaen ‘stupid’ #

This pair B&S seem to be uncertain with, judging from the question mark, and they are correct in their uncertainty.

On the slide they claim that “[m]eaning of 豩 pin [is] according to Duan Yucai”. But let’s see what Duàn Yùcái actually says in his commentary to the Shuōwén (in bold is the original text of Shuōwén; the rest is Duàn’s commentary):

二豕也。豳从此。許書豳燹二篆皆用豩爲聲也、然則其讀若尚略可識矣。古音當在十三部。
[this character represents] a pair of pigs; it is what [the character] 豳 has as a component. — The seal graphs 豳 and 燹 in Xǔ’s book both have 豩 as their phonetic. Thus, the pronunciation of this [character] is still—to a limited extent—attainable: its ancient pronunciation should be in Rhyme Category 13.

闕。謂其義其音皆闕也。二豕乃兼頑鈍之物、故古有讀若頑者。大徐伯貧切、又呼關切。
wanting. — This means that the meaning and the pronunciation of this [character] are both wanting. A pair of pigs are both stubborn and stupid creatures; therefore in old times, some would read [this character] as [the word] {頑} (ngwaen, “stubborn, stupid”). In the Greater Xú [= Xú Xuán 徐鉉]’s version [of the Shuōwén], [the fǎnqiè is] 伯貧切 [pin] or alternatively 呼關切 [xwaen].

Note that he expressly does not say that the meaning of pin is “stupid”. In fact, he does not say that either of the readings means “stupid”. What he means is that the “stupid” reading is one that “some” would force on it in trying to figure out what the character means.

Duàn is, as he often is, very insightful here. the meaning of the pin reading remains unknown as far as we know (if it does not just mean “two pigs”, which it probably doesn’t); it seems that we don’t exactly know where this reading came from either (it’s in Tenrei banshō meigi, which makes it likely that it’s already in the original Yùpiān). I don’t know of any instance of the character 豩 in (received) ancient texts, and, as a matter of fact, I think it’s quite doubtful that Xǔ Shèn really knew a then-extant character ⟨豩⟩; it’s likely that its inclusion in Shuōwén was just to make sense of the graphic composition of ⟨豳⟩ and ⟨燹⟩.

The source of the other reading seems to be clearer. We have Táng sources glossing 豩 as 頑也 “stubborn, stupid” with the explicit sound-gloss xwaen. This seems to be a word etymologically related to {頑 ngwaen “stubborn, stupid”}; a straightforward transposition to OC would be *ŋ̊ˤron > xwaen : *ŋˤron > ngwaen. B&S on the following slides reconstruct xwaen < *X.pˤrər and ngwaen < “maybe *N-X.pˤrər” instead—but isn’t it obvious how tenuous this is, to weave two stacked pre-initials out of basically nothing? The association of {xwaen “stubborn, stupid”} with the character 豩 seems to have arisen at a very late date: the earliest dictionary to give 豩 this reading seems to have been Tángyùn 唐韻 (post 732). The two only examples of 豩 in this sense in Hànyǔ Dà Zìdiǎn are in the Táng and Sòng dynasties respectively, and I couldn’t find any usage earlier than the Táng dynasty. I would readily agree with Duàn that this is a later people’s reading into the character, not the contemporary people’s reading of the character. To say that it had a xiéshēng and/or etymological connection with the pin reading in OC times is completely unfounded.

There’s no grounds at all, then, for arguing that the xwaen reading is in the same etymological family as the pin reading. The appearance that the two readings are related at all is most probably a philological artefact.

the proposed word-family “fire” #

I’ll cite the relevant slides in full:

(slide 14)

1. ‘fire’
⿵鬥燹 phjun : an old character for 紛 ‘numerous and messy’
The phonetic is
燹 xwijH ‘fire’
whose own phonetic is
豩 pin or xwaen ‘stupid’
just mentioned.
This makes the case that 燹 xwijH ‘fire’ began in *X.p-
In addition, the vowel must be *ə and the final consonant *-r

(slide 15)

燹 xwijH ‘fire’
only differs from the well-known 火 xwaX ‘fire’ in
pharyngealization of the initial
火 rhymes with vowel *ə in the Shi Jing: Baxter-Sagart
reconstruct *[qʷʰ]ˤəjʔ
one should reconstruct *X.pər(ʔ)-s for 燹 and *X.pˤərʔ for 火
good cognate words.

(slide 17)

This clarifies the uses of 豩 as a phonetic
豩 pin ‘stupid’ < *pər
豩 xwaen ‘stupid’ < *X.pˤ<r>ər
豩 ngwaen ‘stupid’, maybe < *N-X.pˤ<r>ər
燹 xwijH ‘fire’ < *X.pər(ʔ)-s
燹 senX ‘fire’, maybe < *sə-pˤər(ʔ)-s
⿵鬥燹 phjun ‘numerous and messy’ < *pʰər

First, two inconsequential corrections here: to regularly derive MC xwijH, I think the OC reconstruction should be *-rər-s with the *-r- medial, not *-ər-s; since senX is checked, the OC ending should be *-ʔ, not *-(ʔ)-s.

We’ve already established that the readings assigned directly to the graph 豩 itself are probably unreliable. Let’s look at the “fire” items now. 燹 (which is, yet again, rather poorly attested in early texts) is commonly assigned the following three readings:

B&S must be correct that xwijH is related to the usual item for “fire” in Shījīng that consistently rhymes with *-əj. There are some other relevant items with complex histories of sound-writing correspondence:

But as we’ve seen, the larger xiéshēng series that 燹 belongs to actually seems to reflect *PƏN:

There’s a discrepancy here, one that B&S set about to resolve by merging everything into one series with complex onsets *X.p- > xw- and *sə.p- > s-, and singleton onsets *p(ʰ)- > p(h)-.

I’m unsure about the place of the s- items (senX, sjenX) in this, but in any case I don’t believe that B&S are necessarily right in reconstructing *X.p- ~ *p(ʰ)- to explain the xw- and p(h)- alternants. What we have is two sets of words that, although seemingly connected by phono-orthographical processes (xiéshēng and jiǎjiè), are nevertheless phonologically disparate. In cases like this, barring things like scribal errors, there are two main possibilities:

Here, a homonymic interchange could well have happened, since there is a word in the “domain” of *PƏN (that is, it would have been completely inline with [⿵鬥燹] phjun and 豳 pin xiéshēng-wise) with a meaning that is closely related to “fire” (that is, it would make complete sense if it could once be written with 燹):

It’s plausible that 燹 originally could write the word {*bən > MC bjun “to burn, to set on fire”} (or a related word), and was only by association of “fire” that it got associated with {MC xwijH “fire”}. Of course, this is a mere surmise, but it’s no more of a surmise than reconstructing a complex onset that is poorly corroborated elsewhere. In any case, the evidence we have on hand is far from enough to conclude etymological linkage.

comparative evidence for “fire” #

I’m moderately informed about the philological aspects of Old Chinese, but unfortunately not very knowledgeable about Trans-Himalayan comparative linguistics. There’s just two things that I want to address:

The second point can be elaborated nicely by the “fire” items. because B&S reconstruct *X.pˤərʔ etc. for the related items, they find that it “corresponds very well to the TB reconstruction” #2152 PTB *bʷar ⪤ *pʷar BURN / FIRE / KINDLE / ROAST, and that “Proto-Austronesian *dapuR ‘cooking fire’” is also a cognate.

This can be justified, but it doesn’t lend any credibility to the actual Old Chinese reconstruction. how about, for instance, the reconstruction *m̥ˤəjʔ > xwojX, *m̥əjʔ > xjw+jX, *m̥rəjs > xwijH? They see obvious correspondences in Burmese mīḥ, Old Tibetan mye (Hill 2019, The historical Phonology of Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese, p. 76) and Japhug smi “fire”, and are supported Chinese-internally at least by the Hán Shī orthography ([⿰火尾] with phonetic 尾 pointing to *MƏJ). Which reconstruction is more correct? The comparative evidence does not tell us, because both seem to have plausible cognates.

I think it’s fundamentally misguided to base Old Chinese reconstruction on extra-Sinitic comparative data, like a lot of OC reconstruction attempts have done (including rather influential ones like Zhèngzhāng’s). In principle, comparison like this really should happen after Old Chinese reconstruction, in order to reconstruct nodes higher up in the tree. How can you begin the process of the Comparative Method if you don’t even know one of the comparands yet? It would have led to self-fulfilling cognates—whether the OC reconstruction is correct or not doesn’t even matter.

Of course, B&S do not present the comparative data as further evidence; they simply say that they are evidence that the xw- items are secondary. This is acceptable. However, since these comparands don’t really provide more credibility to the reconstruction, they are just building higher and higher upon very unsteady foundations.

comparative evidence for “flower” #

I have said that I have no problem with the following comparisons that B&S make (slide 22):

葩 phae ‘flower’ vs. 花=華 xwae ‘flower’
荂 phju ‘flower’ vs. 荂 xju ‘flower’ (same character)

Both pairs show ph- ~ xw- alternation; in addition, the rimes -ae and -ju should only differ in OC by presence or absence of onset pharyngealization.

B&S compare these “flower” items with Proto-Karen *phɔᴬ ‘flower’ and Proto-Austronesian *pahpah ‘petal, leaf, flower’. I think this comparison could be onto something, but I don’t think it necessarily clarifies the etymological link between the chinese ph- and xw- items. Even if the ph- items were related to the Karenic and Austronesian items, the xw- items could still be unrelated. Since the xw- items are far more common in early texts, a likely scenario is that the xw- items are the usual unmarked terms, perhaps inherited from ST, and ph- items are loaned/areal.

uh… hang on, let’s go back to the “fire” family again #

B&S have to admit that the simplification of the complex onset *X.p- must have happened at a very early date for their proposal to make sense xiéshēng-wise:

(slide 26)

Date of the change
The character 華 ‘flower’ was created in Western Zhou.
old form: 【U+26F93】
The phonetic is 于 *ɢʷa
于 *ɢʷa is an acceptable phonetic for MC xw- but not for p(h)-
for instance 冔 MC xju ‘ceremonial cap’
this argues that U+26F93 was already pronounced with xw- in western
Zhou.
we do not have an upper date.

This would date the sound change to before Western Zhou. If that’s the case, the previous argument for the 豩 series becomes even more tenuous, since that was hinged on *X.p- still being able to interact xiéshēng-wise (writing-wise) with *P-…

(slide 17, reprise)

豩 pin ‘stupid’ < *pər
豩 xwaen ‘stupid’ < *X.pˤ<r>ər
豩 ngwaen ‘stupid’, maybe < *N-X.pˤ<r>ər
燹 xwijH ‘fire’ < *X.pər(ʔ)-s
燹 senX ‘fire’, maybe < *sə-pˤər(ʔ)-s
⿵鬥燹 phjun ‘numerous and messy’ < *pʰər

…and to make this make sense, we’ll have to assume that all of those characters, and indeed all of those character-morpheme correspondences, had been created and established by Western Zhou, which is a bold claim corroborated by quite literally nothing. ⿵鬥燹 had been completely unattested before Shuōwén, for example, which is about a millennium too late.

conclusion #

These are the details on what I find unconvincing with the presentation. If there’s anything I’m wrong about, please tell me. In short, my problem is basically the same as the problem I had with some claims in B&S (2014), namely that they are sometimes just building jenga towers on an already uneven table. Only this time they’re even less—way less—rigorous about it.

I have nothing more to say for now. I wish you a happy life. See you later.

footnotes

  1. Technically 10, since there are two pairs of items meaning “flowers”. ↩︎

  2. the word, not the orthographic form, which could also write a number of other items, notably {phanH “half the body of an animal presented in a sacrificial ceremony”} ↩︎

  3. “Shì Pàn-Huàn” 釋判渙, in Zhōngguó Wénhuà Yánjiū Huìkān 中國文化研究彙刊 vol. 6. ↩︎

  4. The Sòng edition of Yùpiān gives two fǎnqiè, 裨列 and 匹列. ↩︎

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