Re: Chinese again (was VMs: excessive frequency of doubles...)

["Philip Neal" <philipneal_vms@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> It means that it behaves like Chinese, a restricted
> set of initials combining with a set of finals, different.
> So I could do the same with Chinese, but it would be
> too easy.

Slightly off topic but since Chinese has come up yet
again, I have been reading The Roots of Old Chinese
by Laurent Sagart. It is yet another improvement on
Karlgren in the spirit of Pulleyblank, Baxter etc. What
interested me is that Sagart claims to show that the
lost initial consonant clusters of Old Chinese (kl- pl-
and so on) frequently survive as disyllabic words in
the modern dialects. He has examples of the same
two-syllable word from as far apart as Shanxi and
Fujian with etymologies in Old Chinese.

Philip Neal

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