PhDniX's blog

Medio-Passives of the Primae Waw verbs

A final conundrum among a whole slew of conundrums among these among the primae waw verbs is the behaviour of the mediopassive derivation.

In general, I don't think we are quite ready to reconstruct the Proto-Berber at all yet, a bunch of Berber languages show vastly different formations, which do not seem obviously reconcilable, but even sticking to the Tuareg forms, the mediopassive of the primae waw verbs behaves really weird.

First the normal verb, here we see that the mediopassive is created through an m prefix and added the |Ə-A-->| vowel pattern to the aorist stem. Thus we get: ikrəs (< *yăkres) 'to tie', and yămmăkrăs (< *yəmmăkrăs) 'to be tied together'. So if the primae waw verbs like *ăkkəs 'to remove' should behave like 'normal' triradical verbs, one would expect either something like *yəmăkkăs or if in this stem a *u should appear (maybe from *ăw?) one might predict something liek yəmukăs.  Since the presence of *u seems to triger a all-Ə vocalism in the stem, one would probably expect *yəmukəs.

Instead, we basically get a combination of the two. Indeed an u appears, and this turns the aorist voalism into all-Ə, but... the geminate doesn't disappear giving us Tuareg yəmmukkəs 'to be removed'. I don't know what to make of that.

*vcc verbs act as expected. yakər 'to steal' has a mediopassive yămmakăr (< *yəmmakăr), keeping the low-vowel aorist, and simply using the long vowel as a regular long vowel slot.

So with the *wcc roots, you end up with both u and gemination being in a kind of quantum superposition, one time one comes out, and the other time the other, and we don't fully understand the conditioning, but then the mediopassive comes along and both come out!

More Proto-Berber Primae Waw

After my previous blogpost, Maarten Kossmann pushed back in the comments on Twitter on the idea that *əw really yields *u, which is something that would be needed to derive *əssuɣəd from *əssəwɣəd. There are, namely several cases where u and əw really seem to remain distinct, especially in the *CəCC-an plural pattern. Thus *a-ḍăwwal pl. *i-ḍəwl-an 'brother-in-law' where the later does not surface as **iḍulan in several dialects but as iḍəwlan, for example in Figuig. Now that could perhaps be explained as the result of analogy, but Prof. Kossmann pointed out two other words where that absolutely cannot be the case, as there (surprisingly!) is no *w in the singular:

• Riffian ḏ̣aḏ̣ pl. i-ḏ̣əwḏ̣an 'finger' (though surprisingly not Figuig ḍaḍ pl. i-ḍuḍan)
• Riffian aẓwar pl. iẓəwran 'root' besides e.g. Kabyle a-ẓar pl. i-ẓuran which suggests a regularized but originally irregular alternation between singuler a-ẓar pl. i-ẓəwran.

Not only do we see here that *əw apparently does not yield *u in all dialects (but causative əssuɣəd always has u), but we also see yet another example of an a corresponding to the presence of a w, as in the instrument nouns like a-satəl from the root ăttəl.

With noun formations, we have a certain amount of formations that we can explore, which would generate some different possible formations. Nouns typically have the shape CăCVC or CCVC (from syncopated *CəCVC?) where V can be any vowel. The middle radical can also be geminated, but we can pretty clearly count that out as an option since we know the outcome of that from *a-ḍăwwal, there *w is just retained.

So could it be that the a comes from the loss of an intervocalic *w or, at least a pre-vocalic *w? Assuming that *t-addar-t pl. *t-udr-en 'house' are indeed from the root *wdr 'to live', we'd reconstruct these as *ta-wăddar-t and *ti-wədr-en. Depending on the relative chronology of the univerbation of the noun prefix to the noun (it was surely at one point a definite article or something like that) that either suggests the sound laws: *awă > a and *iwə > u or *wă > a and *wə > u.

Words like *urəɣ 'gold' (cf. iwriɣ 'to be yellow') make it clear that *a-wrəɣ or *a-wərəɣ yields *urəɣ, so that for the vocalisation of *u from *w we can probably posit *Vwə > *u and possibly *aw > u. So What could 'finger' and 'root' be similarly from something like *a-ḍăwad or *a-ḍăwăd (or perhaps even *a-ḍ(ə)wăd/*a-ḍ(ə)wad)?

If we assume this, this has implications for our causatives of Primae waw verbs, and revives an idea I have had kicking around in my head before, one would have to assume that *əssuɣəd goes back to *əssəwəɣəd. This runs into some trouble with especially the perfect in light of how I reconstruct heavy verbs with four vowels, but this is something that can be resolved with some shuffling of relative chronology.

One reason why it's attractive to posit *əssəwəɣəd with a vowel between the w and the rest of the root, is because it would resolve a bit of irregular behaviour that is widespread in Berber dialects. The verb *ănkər 'to get up' in many dialects (irregularly) assimilate the *n to k, thus yielding kkər, but in a number of dialects this *n reappears again in the causative, e.g. Kabyle kkər caus. ssənkər.  That is beautifully explained if there was a *ə in between the first and the second radical of the root, blocking the assimilation in the causative that took place in the underived root.

To make this work, the instrumental formation (*a-satəl) would also have to historically have had an intervocalic *w that become a *a. Not unsurprising, I would suspect instrumental formation is ultimately a kind of nominalization from the causative 'a thing which you make/cause to wrap').

However, this could not be reconstructed as *a-s-ăwătəl as that would predict that the normal instrumental formation would be **a-săɣănəs, but comparative evidence makes it pretty clear it's *a-săɣnəs. I think we can sneak in a ə between the second and third root consonant and posit a syncope of some kind (as we would need to do in the causative *əss-əlməd < əssələməd), but there is very little reason to assume that *ă ever syncopated. So... *a-s-ăwətəl? That would suggest that *ăwə yields yields *a. This would mean 'finger' could also be from *a-ḍăwəd. This solution is pretty ad hoc and only really solves this specific problem, which isn't great.

It does, however, resolve our issue why the agent noun doesn't show the same behaviour. We saw that for the agent noun we expect *m-|ă...ă/a|, but with instrumentals of Primae waw stems it shows up with an initial *u! So *a-n-uḍăf could come from *a-n-ăwḍăf, with yet another shift: *ăw > u. Again this is fairly ad hoc, but it doesn't run into big trouble I think.

So to sum up (assuming vocalisation of *w happened before the noun prefix became part of the root):

• *(ə)wə > *u (əssuɣəd, urəɣ)
• *ăwə > *a (a-ḍad?, a-satəl)
• *əwC > *əw
• *ăwC > *u

There is a final issue that I don't think is fully resolved yet, these Primae waw verbs are also an important source of words with word-initial *e that do not come from an earlier *a. Thus forms like *eḍəs 'sleep' (verb *ăṭṭəs) and eləs 'fleece' (verb *ălləs), *eɣəd 'embers' (verb ăqqəd 'to burn') but also a fairly widespread pattern *ec̄ac of verbal nouns which seems reconstructible, e.g. in Tuareg eqqad 'cauterizing' from əqqəd 'to cauterize', cf. Fig. iqqad from qqəd 'to burn'.

Prasse derives these from *a-Hĭɣĭd and *a-Hĭqqad. *a-Hĭ quite nicely yields *e, in a pretty similar way as it does in word-final position in verbs, əmda + 1sg -əɣ yields əmdeɣ which in Prasse's reconstruction would be something like *əmdăH-ĭɣ. We could perhaps rewrite this rule with *w so that *awĭ yields *e and *awŭ yields *u, but that would require us to assume that these contractions only happened once the prefix had become part of nominal stem and we have the assume that Pre-Proto-Berber had a distinction between *ĭ and *ŭ  (which is not unreasonable, but there's not that much evidence for it).

The reason why this is necessary is because stems with a long vowel as stem initial vowel (verbal stems of the type *agəm) do not yield e once they come in contact with the prefix but just i. e.g. Tuareg abər 'to take a handful' VN ibbur not **ebbur. Prasse explains the *e in eqqad as lowering of *i to e under influence of a, That words for those forms, but it doesn't explain the *e vowel in *eḍəs, *eləs, *eɣəd.

It is fine of course to assume that the contraction only happened once the prefix had univerbated with the rest of the noun stem, but it yields a rather ugly reconstruction where *ăwə yields *a whereas *awə yields u or e (presumably depending on whether it is *awŭ or *awĭ), which is... phonetically not so plausible, even if it doesn't  technically get me in trouble. Historical linguistic explanations should not only work (which this one does) but also be plausible (not so sure if this one is)... Rewriting the rules with prefix univerbation in mind:

• *awŭ > *u
• *awĭ > *e
• *ĭwĭ > *u (*ĭ is probably requires here to explain why it is *əssigəm from *agəm but *əssuɣəd from *ăqqəd)
• *ăwə > *a
• *əwC > *əw
• *ăwC > *u

So, err, who knows. I don't know if it's any good yet. I've solved all the problems, but it requires a lot of ad hoc sound changes which are moreover not phonetically particularly plausible... I wonder if there is a possibility to think of a suprasegmental labialization which is used to explain difficult things in Chadic... but not entirely sure where to start with that.

Proto-Berber Primae Waw: Is it really a /w/?

Last time I talked a bit about an interesting possible connection of how Berber and Semitic treat verbs with initial w as the first root consonant, both of them notably seem to lack the w in the underived prefix conjugation, but reappears on other derivations. Thus yaqid but causative yūqid in Semitic, and *yăqqəd but causative *yəssuɣəd in Berber.

But as I was looking into the morphology of the Berber Primae-Waw, I noticed (and Prasse noticed with me) something strange: It is true that something which becomes a *u appears in the Verb and in verbal derivations of the group of verbs like *ăqqəd, but Berber-internally it is not actually all that obvious that it's in fact a *w element. While it is plausible that *yəssəwɣəd would become *yəssuɣəd, Berber internally there is little to stop you from simply saying that it is just a plain vowel that is added to the root.

The plain vowel that is added, however, is qualitatively different from the plain vowel that is added in verbs that in the underived form have a plain vowel already. As in those kinds of verbs like *agəm 'to draw water' the plain vowel becomes *i:

	Aorist	Perfect	Causative Aorist
v̄cc stems	agəm	ugăm	əssigəm
c̄c stems	ăqqəd	əqqăd	əssuɣəd

This difference in behaviour is not at all implausibly explained with the presence of an ancient *w (Pre-Proto-Berber *issīgim or *issiHgim versus *issiwɣid)

The strange thing, however, and this is something Prasse noticed already, the plain vowel that appears in these roots has surprisingly v̄ like behaviour (v̄ is a "plain vowel slot" which depending on whether the vowel pattern requires low vowels or high vowels surfaces as *a or *i,*u respectively. Thus a v̄cc verb in the Aorist (which has a |low-high| pattern surfaces as agəm but in the Perfect (which has a low-high pattern) surfaces as ugăm.

This is most notable in in the nouns of instrument. Nouns of instrument in Proto-Berber are formed by a prefix *s- followed by a |low-high| pattern, where the last high vowel show up as both long and short. So:

• *ăɣnəs 'to put on a veil' -> *a-s-ăgnəs 'veil'
• *ălsəʔ 'to get dressed' -> *a-s-ălsuʔ 'garment', 
• *aləy 'to hang' -> *a-saləy 'hook'
• *arəʔ 'to open' > *ta-s-aruʔ-t 'key'

However things get weird with our c̄c verbs, here the instrumental noun behaves as if it is a v̄cc stem, thus:

• *ăttəl 'to wrap' gives us *a-s-atəl 'envelope of cloth'

So how should we understand this if the plain vowel that appears is supposed to come from *w? Is this *a-s-ăwtəl, and do we have to assume that *ăw > *a /_C? *wC clusters are certainly not so common in Berber, but also not so uncommon that this etymology works without a hitch. The most obvious examples are *a-wtul  pl. *i-wətl-an 'rabbit' and *a-wtəm pl. i-wətm-an 'male'. These can be resolved in a number of ways:

• The VwC cluster occurs accross a morpheme boundary, so that may cause different behaviour.
• The preceding vowel (at least in the free state) is *a and not *ă, which may have cause different behaviour.
• It is possible that these words originally had a short vowel in the stem (this is how Prasse would perhaps reconstruct them), i.e. *a-wətul and *a-wətəm.

There are not many other places where the presumably *w yields *a, but one example might be the word *t-addar-t pl. t-udr-en 'house', which is presumably derived from the verb idir pf. əddăr 'to live'. But, if we must derive this from a dropped *w, we would have to reconstruct *ta-wăddar-t pl. *ti-wədr-en. So now we have an example of not only *ăw shifting to *a but also (a)wă shifting to *a!

Another place where we would predict a *ăw in pre-Proto-Berber is in the agentive formations, which are formed with a prefix -m/n- followed by a |low-low| vowel pattern, where the last vowel may either be short or long. Thus, we see:

• ccc stems: *a-m-ărwal 'a flee-er' and *e-m-ărwăl 'id.' <- *ărwəl 'to flee'
• v̄cc stems: *a-m-araw 'a parent' <- *arəw 'to give birth'
• cc stems: *a-m-ădad 'biter' and *e-m-ădăd 'id.' <- *ădəd 'to bite'

But here instead of getting the expected a as was the case with the instrumentals, we instead find an u!

• c̄c stems: a-n-uḍăf < ?a-n-ăwḍăf 'someone who holds' <- ăṭṭəf 'to hold'.

The instrumental and the agentive therefore cannot easily be reconciled, they give two different answers of what *ăw should yield.

Moreover, reconstructing *t-addar-t 'house' as *ta-wăddar-t also runs into problems. At least in Ghadamsi, in a not atypical te-CăCC-e verbal noun formation, c̄c stems do show an actual *wă, e.g. ta-waɛn-e 'load, burden' < *te-wăɣn-e <- *ăqqən 'to tie up', some varieties of Tuareg seem to show the same behaviour. In verbal nouns *w does show up in other verbs as well, in Central Moroccan Berber, for example the verbal noune of ddu < *əddu 'to go' is tawada < *ta-wad-a (plain vowel *a in the stem not fully understood).

But it is also clear that *w in certain contexts does really yield plain vowels, at the very least *u and *e. For example, the stative verb iwriɣ 'to be yellow' with adjective *wăraɣ- (cf. Semitic *w-r-ḳ!) has an extremely well-attested derivation *urəɣ 'gold'.

There are also clear examples of c̄c verbs with verbal nouns of this type: Central moroccan Berber lləf 'to divorce', verbal noun uluf. And also *idir pf. *əddăr 'to love' has a well-attested derivation *t-udər-t 'life'. 

Prasse would like to derive those *u's from *ta-Hədər-t, where *Hə yields u but we might be able to rewrite the rule where *wə yields u. This would get us in trouble. This gets us in trouble with i-wətm-an 'males', but that can definitely be an analogical restoration from the singular. And while we don't understand the singular t-addar-t 'house', we could explain nicely the plural *t-udr-en as coming from *ti-wədr-en then.

Sometimes *e shows up instead, such as in ăṭṭəs 'to sleep' VN eḍəs 'sleep'. In almost all cases *e is a secondary vowel harmony result of *a, but that cannot be the case for words like this. This is one of the few places in Berber where *e seems to be 'real'. It is tempting to derive it from something like *a-yəḍəs  > eḍəs or *a-wiḍis > eḍəs (and then *a-wuruɣ > urəɣ).

So summarizing all these we end up with a number of conflicting outcomes for what would be assumed to be a *w. Sometimes just behaviing like a consonant *w, sometimes behaving like a plain vowel slot that can just take an low-vowel pattern (instrumentals), sometimes with as an exceptionally *u-colouring plain vowel...

*wă	*wă (*te-wăɣn-e), *a (*t-addar-t)
*ăwC	*a (*a-s-atəl), *u (*a-n-uḍăf)
*V-wə	*u (*urəɣ), *e (*eḍəs), *wə (*i-wətm-an)
*əwC	*u (əssuɣəd)

I'm not really sure how to resolve these competing outcomes. Some I think could be gotten rid of as secondary, especilly the *wă/*wə outcomes, but others... I don't know. Thoughts?

Proto-Berbero-Semitic Primae Waw Verbs

So after our Summerschool course Benjamin Suchard and I were excited to finally get working on a paper together, something we've always wanted to do but somehow the stars never aligned. We had a cool idea about a parallel between the Proto-Semitic and Proto-Berber morphological behavior of roots that probably had an initial *w radical.

Turns out Prasse's Law of Berber Historical Linguistics reared its head ones again. Prasse's Law goes as follows:

Whenever you find a new insight into Proto-Berber historical linguistics, Karl-G. Prasse already saw it but wrote it in such an oblique way that you only understand what he meant after you've reinvented the wheel.

So since someone else saw it, on its own there's not much to publish I think, so let me write up the basic idea here. I might write about some more confounding features of Proto-Berber Primae Waw stem morphology in a next post.

Proto-Berber has a series of biradical verbs which in their underived form have an initial geminate, e.g. *ăffəɣ 'to go out', *ăqqəd 'to burn', *əddu 'to go'. In derived forms, most notably the causative these forms degeminate their geminate and a vowel u appears before it: *əssufəɣ, *əssuɣəd, *əssudu. This looks like whatever caused the geminate in the underived forms is something u-like. So people have imagined that we're looking at some kind of assimilation of *wc > c̄. There is also at least one pretty compelling Berber-Semitic parallel that might suport that *aqqəd 'to burn' sure looks like Sem. *w-ḳ-d 'to burn' (e.g. Ar. waqada).

However, we have a pretty good sense how both normal forms and causative forms are supposed to look and this runs into trouble, let's compare the causatives of this type to the regular triradical type:

	Underived		Causative
	Proto-Berber	Pre-Proto-Berber	Proto-Berber	Pre-Proto-Berber
Regular	ălməd	ălməd	əssəlməd	əssəlməd
Primae-Waw	ăqqəd	ăwɣəd	əssuɣəd	əssəwɣəd

The problem is that, if we assume that *wc yielded a geminate, then we would expect it to have yielded a geminate in the causative as well, but there it vocalises to u.

This is where Benjamin noted: Well in Semitic Primae Waw verbs behave quite weird too, sometimes the *w (notably in underived verbs!) disappears altogether. You can still see this quite nicely in Classical Arabic: walada impf. yalidu not **yawlidu, the causative however, does mainting the *w in the prefix conjugation. ʔawlada impf. yūlidu (ultimatly from *yusawlid-). Thus Benjamin's idea was: what if the geminate found in the underived form isn't due to assimlation at all, but just lengthening of the initial radical of an original biradical -CvC- stem. that would resolve our problem!

	Underived		Causative
		Berb-Sem		Berb-Sem
Semitic	aḳid	< *aḳid	usawḳid	< *usv̆wḳid
Berber	ăqqəd		əssuɣəd

And it's pretty attractive too. You could understand the gemination in Proto-Berber either as simply being there for the verb to fill up the triradical shape needed for the light verb.

But there is in fact some very similar geminative behaviour in heavy verbs (verbs with three vowels), there too we see that the consonant that comes after the Person-Number-Gender prefixes are geminated, which yields alternations between the aorist and imperfect (e.g. əddukəl 'to walk together' impf. ətt-ədukul).

The comparison is note quite perfect because the imperfect of the primae waw verbs does not degeminate the stem geminate (ăkkəs impf. ətt-ăkkăs not *ətt-ăkăs), but that's something that could quite easily be explained with some analogy I think.

Anyway, this explanation reveals a highly specific and unusual morphophonological behaviour of Primae-waw verbs that is shared between Semitic and Berber, a nice point in favour of Proto-Berbero-Semitic I think. But as I said, we got Prasse'd, he said it already in 1973, albeit much more succinctly and much more briefly:

La semivoyelle tombe, mais la 2" subit un gémination compensative. Nous preférons nouns exprimer ainsi, au lieu de dire qu'il y a assimilation des 1" et 2" parce que d'une part le sémitique et l'égyptien connaisent aussi la perte d'une semivoyelle initiale, mais sans gémination compensative, et que d'autre par le berbère lui-même ne connaît pas ailleur des assimilations de cette espèce (p. ex. au milieu des quadrilitères).

Or to put it in English:

The semivowel (of the primae wāw verbs) drops, but the second radical undergoes compensatory gemination. We prefer to express ourselves as such, instead of saying that it is an assimilation of the first to the second radical on the one hand because Semitic and Egyptian also have the dropping of the initial semivowel, but without compensatory gemination, and on the other hand because Berber itself doesn't have any out assimilation of this kind (for example in the middle of quadriradical stems).

Our comment that the loss of the wāw in the underived stem but reappearance in the causative, just like in Semitic is not spelled out by Prasse specifically, although I have little doubt that such behaviour is what he had in mind. I'm curious about Prasse's comment about Egyptian. I'm aware there is some weirdness with the initial w- but it is no doubt conditioned differently on account of Egyptian not having a prefix conjugation, but I'd love to hear how it does function there, if anyone knows, drop a comment!

Issues with Lexical Comparison of Berber within Afroasiatic

I have just finished a really inspiring and interesting course at the Leiden Summer School named "Reconstructing Afro-Asiatic" together with Benjamin Suchard, Marwan Kilani, Ahmed Sosal and Maarten Mous. A big aim of the course was to introduce an audience (and, to be honest, each other) to the specific challenges we see in the reconstruction of our respective Afro-asiatic language families of specialty, Berber (Me), Semitic (Suchard), Egyptian (Kilani) and Cushitic (Sosal and Mous).

In the past years a contingent of Leiden scholars have made steady headway into pre-Protolanguage reconstructions of especially Berber and Semitic, and have found a number of really interesting and strikingly specific morphological commonalities especially between Berber and Semitic, but on occasion have also lead to notable comparisons with Egyptian (Kossmann & Suchard 2018; Van Putten 2018; Suchard & Groen 2021; Suchard 2021). This is an exciting development, and has made me much more optimistic about the prospects of Afro-Asiatic reconstruction. And there is much more than what is presented just in these papers especially with Semitic, but also ni other languages. We can reconstruct quite specific plural formations in common between Berber and Semitic (e.g. Ar. fāris pl. fursān vs. Proto-Berber *a-ǵăllid pl. *i-ǵəldan; Ar. kalb pl. kilāb versus. Proto-Berber *a-ǵălzim pl. *i-ǵəlzam), the prefix conjugation, the suffix conjugation and adjective formation (article on this forthcoming by me very soon!), the shape of the infinitive PSem. *parās³-  PBerb. *a-lămad, and of course the feminine marker *-t.

Still, we are stuck with an issue: even though we can reconstruct really significant amounts of specific morphology, but vocabulary has lagged behind. In my fairly strict estimation, I've so far found about 30 lexical comparisons between Semitic and Berber (my strongest language families of the bunch) that I actually consider compelling. Yet, Gábor Takács who by now has published 15 articles on "Some Berber Etymologies" speaks of an "immense Afro-Asiatic heritage in the Berber lexical stock" and has collected no less than 609 (!) comparisons. That's 20x more than what I have found! Militariev has found 518 entries in his records. Did I not look hard enough?

No, the issue is that I find almost none of them convincing. Militariev's dictionary is, as far as I'm concerned, completely useless. As Lameen Souag has shown years ago, Militariev really lacks the required knowledge of Berber to even be able to recognize obvious cognates within the language family. Takács' work is significantly less problematic in this regard. As a whole he typically correctly identifies cognates within Berber. But Takács has refused to engage with Berberists that have worked on Proto-Berber reconstruction, despite important treatises on the topic having existed for several decades now (they, in fact, typically go completely uncited).

Even disregarding typical methodological issues:

• Comparing isolated words in one language family with isolated words in another;
• allowing for absurd amounts of semantic leeway
• Assuming ad hoc "root extensions" without explanation whenever you have a consonant too many or too few, etc.

the etymologies simply fail to connect with anything we know about the proto-language.

Length alternation between go-on and kan-on readings

Japanese doesn't have many long vowels in native vocabulary, but in Sino-Japanese it has many. But as with the native ones, these are almost invariably the result of contractions of bi-moraic diphthongs.

• 登 Middle Chinese toŋ > Middle Japanese toũ > tō
• 當 MC taŋ > MJ taũ > tɔ̄ > tō
• 通 MC tuwŋ > MJ tuũ > tū
• 刀 MC *taw > MJ tau > tɔ̄ > tō
• 答 MC *top > MJ topu > tofu > tou > tō
• 蹋 MC *dap > MJ dapu > dafu > dau > dɔ̄ > dō
• 丁 MC *teŋ > MJ teũ > tyō
• 鳥 MC *tew > MJ teu > tyō
• 笘 MC *tep > MJ tepu > tefu > teu > tyō
• 中 MC *ṭjuwŋ > MJ tiũ > tyū
• 丁 MC *teŋ > MJ (kan-on) teĩ > tē

For all of these, the length thus stems from an approximation of heavy syllables (not known to Japanese at the time) by making a bimoraic syllable.

But this is not the only origin for vowel length in Sino-Japanese. In a couple of cases fairly simply syllables in Middle Chinese take on a long vowel in Sino-Japanese in the kan-on layer but not in the go-on layer. Such cases fascinate me, because the difference is not easily explained Japanese-internally, and thus seems to suggest a real (and somewhat unexpected) phonetic difference between the go-on and kan-on layers.

The main differences between go-on and kan-on (most of which must be attributed to the underlying Chinese dialects) can be summarized as follows:

• Voicing distinction:
•     go-on: voicing distinction is maintained MC t, d > MJ t, d;
•     kan-on: MC t ,d > MJ t, t
• Initial nasals:
•     go-on: Initial nasals are maintained MC m, n > MJ m, n;
•     kan-on: become prenasalized stops MC m, n > MJ b, d
• Vowel breaking:
•     go-on: MC e, æ and ɛ break before velar finals to ~ia MC *mek > *miak > MJ myaku; MC *bæk > MJ byaku; MC *tṣɛŋ > MJ syaũ > syō;
•     kan-on: doesn't break (and reflects e  (= e) differently from æ/ɛ (= a)): MC *mek > MJ beki; MC *bæk > MJ haku; MC tṣɛŋ > MJ saũ > sō
• Palatalization of Division III:
•    go-on: Division I was still pharyngealized/ Division III non-pharyngealized initials, are not distinguished in this layer: MC 五 *ŋo [ŋˁə] > J go;  MC 魚 *ŋjo [ŋə] > J go; 
•     kan-on: Division I has become unpharyngealized/Division III has become palatalized, they are distinguished in this layer: MC 五 *ŋo [ŋˁə] > J go;  MC 魚 *ŋjo [ŋʲə] > J gyo

But there is a group of syllables that has short vowels in the go-on layer, and a long vowel in the kan-on layer. This happens in the Division I -uw and its Division III equivalent -juw rhymes.

Compare:

• MC 口 *kʰuw; go-on: ku; kan-on kou > kō
• MC 頭 *duw; go-on: du; kan-on tou > tō
• MC 母 *muw ; go-on mu, mo; kan-on bou > bō
• MC 留 *ljuw; go-on ru; kan-on riu > ryū
• MC 酒 *tśjuw; go-on syu; kan-on siu > syū
• MC守 *śjuw; go-on syu, su; kan-on siu > syū
• MC 九 *kjuw; go-on ku; kan-on kiu > kyū

As we have already seen, long vowels seem to stem from diphthongs. It therefore stands to reason that in the kan-on layer both of these finals must have been diphthongs, whereas in the go-on layer they were monophthongs. I am not able to reconstruct why Baxter & Sagart originally decided to represent these rhymes with a final w and if sino-japanese played a role in that. I would assume so, but I'm just reinventing the wheel here for my own satisfaction.

Knowing that Japanese *o can come from ə (transcribed in Middle Chinese as <o> typically) it seems attractive to reconstruct the kan-on reflex of the division I rhyme as *-əw which then naturally gives rhis to kan-on ou > ō. But the Middle Chinese that fed into the go-on layer, this must have been a monophthong (or at least a diphthong that did not allow approximation with <ou> = [əu]) so something like *-u.

口 MC kʰuw ; MC Go-on dialect: kʰˁu > go-on ku; MC kan-on dialect kʰəw > kan-on kou

As for the -juw rhyme, it is more difficult to reconstruct what the rhyme would have looked like in the Kan-on layer of Middle Chinese. But it can't have been *-jiw, as it behaves distinct from it (-jiw becomes -yū in the go-on layer). Here too -jəw seems like an option. A -jow rhyme does not exist so, we could slot it in there. But other rhymes that have MC o in it, show up with -yo- rhymes in kan-on, so presumably the vowel of the diphthong was higher, e.g. ɨ. Again, in the go-on dialect these must have monophthongized.

九 MC kjuw; MC go-on dialect ku > go-on ku; MC kan-on kʲɨw > kan-on kiu

It's interesting to note that this reconstruction (əw besides ɨw) perfectly mirrors the middle Chinese reconstruction of Zhengzhang Shangfang. Probably not a coincidence (did not check what that reconstruction is based on), but an independent conclusion on my end!

I say that in the MC go-on dialect, these diphthongs were monophthongized. But it is actually likely that we are rather dealing with a lack of of diphthongization. The -uw and -juw rhymes are reconstructed as coming originally Old Chinese monophthongs -u and -uw.

OC *-o > MC Div I -uw; Div III -ju
OC *-u > MC Div I -aw, -uw; Div III -juw

So one might in fact imagine that the go-on layer, which also in its lack of palatalization in the Division III appears appears to predate Middle Chinese proper, is actually continuing the Old Chinese vowel system in this regard.

Japanese o can come from both ə and o, so OC *-o being borrowed with Japanese -u is a bit surprising. But there are good reasons to think that the Old Japanese o was actually a rising diphthong wo, which possibly did not feel like a good match for approximating Old Chinese *o. Thus we might tentatively reconstruct the Chinese dialect that feeds into the go-on layer with this distinction maintained:

口 *kʰˁo > Go-on ku
九 *ku > Go-on ku

Whereas the Chinese dialect that feeds into the kan-on layer has all the typical Middle Chinese breaking of these vowels:

口 *kʰˁo > *kʰəw > Go-on kou
九 *ku > *kʲɨw > Go-on kiu

Some musings on Japanese onbin changes

Japanese is a weird language. In its modern form it is surprisingly regular and nice, but to compensate its historically attested linguistic history seems to be utterly filled with irregular sound laws. It's not always clear to me whether these sounds laws really are irregular, or whether the spelling of Japanese (and tendency towards historical spellings) just renders these developments extremely opaque. My sense is that the culture of Japanese historical linguistics seems less concerned with regular sound change than is typical from researchers in the indo-europeanist tradition. Whether that lack of concern is truly because it is concerningly irregular, or just not figured out well enough, I do not really know. But in this blogpost I'm going to attempt to present some thoughts on it that will hopefully make it look more regular...

Disclaimer: what I know about Middle Japanese is based entirely on textbook descriptions like Frellesvig's A History of the Japanese Language, and some searches on Wiktionary. Both are thoroughly in the camp of "not so bothered by irregular sound laws", so take all I say with a grain of salt, but perhaps it'll be resonating with someone, perhaps I'll be reinventing the wheel, and all this has been figured out but is just badly described in English literature (My Japanese is definitely not good enough to read Japanese historical linguistics in Japanese).

So my issue today is with the so-called onbin 音便 "euphonic" sound changes. These are reductions of certain consonants with the vowel u/i. that happens at some point early in the Middle Japanese period. It seems that historical spellings continue to represent much more archaic phases of these words.

What is worth knowing his that what today in Japanese are voiced consonants, were originally pre-nasalized consonants. The onbin sound changes often come in two types vocalic and consonantal, and while to some extent vocalic versus consonantal seems to be a Western versus Eastern dialects distinction, Standard Japanese has a rather eclectic mix of both (presumably because Standard Japanese is based on the Eastern Tokyo dialect, but for centuries before that the Western Kyoto dialect was the central prestige dialect). For now I will assume that the irregularity in terms of consonantal versus vocalic outcomes is purely the result of dialect mixing.

The Onbin changes are as follows:

• pi  > Vocalic u; Consonantal C (nipi-ta 'new field'> niuta > nyūta; > niCta > nitta)
• pu > Vocalic u; Consonantal C (taputwo- 'exalted' > tauto > tōto; > taCto > tatto)
• bi > Vocalic ũ (ũ causes pre-nasalization of the next word); Consonantal N (N likewise causes prenasalization of the next word) (ywobite 'to call and' > yoũte > yōde ; > yoNte > yonde)
• bu> Vocalic ũ; no known  consonantal outcome. (*sabu-sabu-si 'lonely'> saũsaũ > sōzō)
• mi > Vocalic ũ; not sure if there is an attestecd consonantal outcome,
• Frellesvig says N, but there I disagree and that's why I'm writing this blogpost (ko-miti 'small road' > koũti > kōji)
• mu > Vocalic ũ; not sure if there is an attested consonantal outcome, Frellesvig says N. *pi-muka 'personal name' < east) > piũka > hyūga).
• ki > Vocalic i; Consonantal C. (okite > oite; tuki-tati > tsuitachi; ikite 'to go and' > iCte > itte [only example of consonantal outcome?]).
• ku > Vocalic u; no known consonantal outcome. (yoku 'well' > you > yō (not typically reduced in standard Japanese but seen in yōkoso 'welcome')
• gi > Vocalic ĩ; no known consonantal outcome. (tugite > tuĩde > tsuide)
• gu > Vocalic ũ; Consonantal N (kagupasi- 'fragrant' > kaũpasi > kōbashī; > kaNpasi > kanbashī; But also a non-reduced form (a loan from the literary language?) survives: kagupasi > kaguwashī.
• ni > Consonantal N; no known vocalic outcome. sinite 'to die and' > siNte > shinde.

However, these are not the only reductions of such syllables attested in the language. Especially the nasal syllables, i.e. mi, mu and ni leave no syllabic trace whatsoever, but instead purely leave a trace as pre-nasalization.

Thus pi-muka(si) 'turning to the sun; east', same etymology as hyūga about in Modern Japanese becomes higashi 'east'.

ko-miti 'small road' shows up as a surname kodi > koji こぢ 【小路】

uri-nipa 'selling courtyard' > uriba(but nipa uncompounded has no reduction and becomes niwa 'garden' these days ba can also be used on its own outside of compounds with a specialized meaning "place")

pumi-te 'writing+hand' > fude  not funde

This last one is especially puzzling because a phonetically identical verbal form pumite 'to step and' does have a Consonantal outcome: funde.

Frellesvig considers these non-moraic outcomes to be part of the same shift, and thus neglects to explain how pumite "brush" and pumite "to step and" would have different outcomes. As I understand it, the reason why these two shifts are considered part of the same shift is because they continued to be spelled historically so it's hard to see any historical layering that might be going on. Still I would be inclined to see this in two different layers.

What is striking about the forms that have only pre-nasalization as a trace is that they are all nominal compounds, whereas the moraic onbin changes occur both before morphological suffixes and in nominal compounds. This is a weird distribution, since if anything 'suffixes' are more part of the preceding word (and thuse suspectible to reductions sooner) than compounds, which may still be treated as somewhat separate words.

It is perhaps attractive to think of forms such as fumite 'to step and' as infinitive fumi 'stepping' + an auxiliary verb te, and that these were still considered separate words at the time that pumite 'brush' was a compound. And at this stage a first reduction of mi, mu and ni took place yielding only to pre-nasalization. And then in a later stage the full set of true onbin changes take place. But it seems to me that this is not so easy. The -te gerund suffix has been around from the Old Japanese period, and there is nothing to suggest that it was considered a separate word except the difference in behaviour that we see here.

But taking the difference in behaviour as the reason to analyse this as a separate word, is of course circular. It has to be a separate word because it behaves differently, and because it behaves differently we conclude it was a separate word. This may not even be wrong just unfalsifiable and unprovable.

Then there is of course the issue of pairs like higashi and hyūga which both seem to come from the same compound *pi-muka-, where the latter avoided the proposed early compound reduction while the form did not. This could be understood perhaps as the same compound being re-compounded at a later stage, after *pi-mukasi turned into pigasi and the form was no longer understood to be such a compound.

There is no satisfying solution to this for me yet, just trying out some thoughts... It's difficult to find the examples of compounds where only pre-nasalization is left, in part because authors tend to just consider them part of onbin changes, and not a separate sub-group (which it should be, whatever solution you come to). fude, -ba, koji and higashi are the only ones I'm aware of. Are they the only once around? Are there more? Would love to hear from anyone who knows of a list of such forms. Might be easier to to make sense of the patterns that way.

====

There is still the other issue that even the Moraic onbin changes are by no means regular. Where *nipi-ta gives us nyūta, the normal non-onbun outcome of nipi is well-attested in place names and some words too:

*nipi-duma > nihizuma > nīzuma 'new wife', not **nyūzuma

*nipi-gata > nīgata (a placename), not **nyūgata

*nipi-pada > nīhada 'skin where two lovers first touch'

This last one is clearly a recent compound as hada did not even undergo the expected shift to wada. The regular outcome should have been nyūwada. And this might the the "solution" to understanding these compounds, they might be compounds that all post-date the onbin changes. In many cases that seems defensible, and even in the cases where the compound does predate the onbin changes, they were probably morphologically transparent enough for them to be analogically re-compounded without the onbin changes at a later stage.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for now. Again: happy to hear of other examples of compounds where *mi, *mu and *ni only yield pre-nasalization, without a moraic N or ũ.

Some more thoughts on Buddhist Japano-Chinese recitation

Thinking some more on the recitation, I realize that while in modern Japanese lengthening the CV syllables to CV̄ causes massive mergers of C(y)o with Cō syllables, C(y)u with C(y)ū syllable and Ce with Cē syllable, if we go back to early middle Japanese, those issues are not there at all.

Modern day Japanese /ō/ derives from a shocking number of different sequences: au, apu, aũ, waũ, ou, opu, oũ, eu (> yō), epu (>yō). None of them, however, would have been homophonous with a short /o/ that was lengthened to [ō].

The same is true for /ē/ which either comes from ei or eĩ.

ū likewise can come from ipu, iũ and uũ.

As /ī/ and /ā/ don't really occur in Chinese nor Japanese vocabulary, lengthening these would not lead to big disagreements either. I thought it'd be fun to reconstruct the Heart Sutra in early middle Japano-Chinese pronunciation, with the short syllable lengthened to be metrically equivalent to Middle Chinese CvC syllables. So here it is:

仏説摩訶般若波羅蜜多心経
bussetsu(busset?) mākā  pannyāpārāmītā sinkyaũ

観自在菩薩
kwanzizai bōsat

行深般若波羅蜜多時
gyaũ zin pannyāpārāmītā zī

照見五蘊皆空
seu ken gōun kai kuũ

度一切苦厄
dō issai kūyaku

舎利子
syārī sī

色不異空    空不異色
siki pū ī kuũ        kuũ pū ī siki

色即是空    空即是色
siki soku zē kuũ kuũ soku zē siki

受想行識           亦復如是
zyū sau gyaũ siki yaku bū nyō zē

舎利子
syārī sī

是諸法空相
zē syō popu kuũ saũ

不生不滅 不垢不浄
pū syaũ pū metsu (met?) pū kū pū zyaũ

不増不減
pū zoũ pū gen

是故空中無色
zē kō kuũ tyuũ mū siki

無受想行識
mū zyū sau gyaũ siki

無眼耳鼻舌身意
mū gen nī bī zessin-ī

無色声香味触法
mū siki syaũ kaũ mi soku popu

無眼界 乃至無意識界
mū gen kai          nai sī mū ī siki kai

無無明 亦無無明尽
mū mū  myaũ     yaku mū mū myaũ zin

乃至無老死   亦無老死尽
nai sī mū rau sī yaku mū rau sī zin

無苦集滅道
mū kū zipu metsu(met?) dau

無智  亦無得
mū tī      yaku mū toku

以無所得故
ī mū syō tokkō

菩提薩埵
bōdaisattā (bōdisattā?)

依般若波羅蜜多故
ē pannyāpārāmītā kō

心無罣礙    無罣礙故
sin mū kē gē       mū kē gē kō

無有恐怖
mū ū kū pū

遠離一切顛倒夢想
on rī issai tentau mūsaũ

究竟涅槃
kuũ kyãu nē pan

三世諸仏
sansē syō butsu (but?)

依般若波羅蜜多故
ē pannyāpārāmītā kō

得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提
toku ānokutārāsanmyakusanbōdai

故知般若波羅蜜多
kō tī pannyāpārāmītā

是大神呪    是大明呪
zē dai sin syū      zē dai myaũ syū

是無上呪
zē mū zyaũ syū
是無等等呪
zē mū toũ toũ syū

能除一切苦   真実不虚
noũ dio issai kū sinzitu pū kō

故説般若波羅蜜多呪
kōsetsu pannyāpārāmītā syū

即説呪曰
soku setsu syū watsu

羯諦羯諦波羅羯諦
gyātei gyātei pārāgyātei

波羅僧羯諦菩提薩婆訶
pārāsoũgyātei bōdī sowakā

般若心経
pannyā sinkyaũ

The Recitation of the Heart Sutra in Japan

I've written before about how Japanese Buddhist recitation of Classical Chinese imposes a metrical equivalent on bisyllabic Chinese readings of words, e.g. 色 shiki is pronounced twice as fast as 自 ji, clearly in an attempt to retain some of the monosyllabic rhythm that the Middle Chinese originally had (色 is MC ʂik and 自 is dzi^H).

The other day I was reminded of this again, because someone on Twitter posted a photo of the Heart Sutra which was written not in Classical Chinese, as one might expect but instead it was transcribed phonetically in hiragana along with recitational notes (thank you Sven Osterkamp, I would have certainly missed that if you hadn't pointed it out!). What's cool about the text is that it uses the sign 引 to point out that short syllables should be stretched out to be just as long as typically bimoraic syllables. 

Something I hadn't quite realized until I saw it written out like this, is that this recitational practice actually destroys  some contrasts as well, since a word like  空 kuu (MCkʰuŋ) and 究 ku (MC kjuw^H) end up becoming homophonous. Historically these were probably kept distinct, since the Sino-Japanese pronunciation of old -ŋ final words, which have now become long vowels, appear to have retained some trace of the final nasal, transcribed by Frellesvig as Ũ and Ĩ. Thus these two in recitation were probably pronounced kuũ and kuu, thus distinct.

What else was interesting about this transcription is that it is written in historical spelling, which reflect Middle Japanese pronunciation rather than modern pronunciation, giving us some insight into what early recitation may have sounded like. Because I'm interested in artful linguistic use, I couldn't resist to listen to some recitations of the Heart Sutra of which there are plenty of Japanese recitations on YouTube. As I was doing it though, I ran into all kinds of surprising things. Let me just post some observations.

仏	説	摩	訶	般	若	波	羅	蜜	多	心	経
bus-	setsu	mā	kā	han	nyā	hā	rā	mī	tā	shin	gyou

The title of the Sutra, in our hiragana transcription does not seem to have been considered part of the recitation, since it lacks the 'lengthening' instructions. But in recitation it appears to generally be read long like that.

Another puzzling thing is that the transcription of 般若波羅蜜多 is hannyaharamitta, that is, with the expected reading of 蜜 mitsu assimilating to the next ta. That is what we would expect, and in non-recited Japanese, indeed seems to be how it is pronounced, but it's very clear if you listen to the recitations that the syllable is simply pronounced mī. It strikes me that the recitation is actually remembering an ancient irregular reading of this character, as it is a better match for the Prakrit that it is supposed to represent, namely: paññapāramitā 'perfection'of wisdom' < prajñapāramitā. In fact, if we turn back the sound law of *p > h, the Japanese pronunciation is quite an excellent match for the Prakrit pronunciation: pannyāpārāmītā, but the match is better without the reflex of the final *-t of 蜜.

Notice also the automatic voicing of shin-gyou. 経 MJ kyaũ is typically voiceless, but due to liaison with preceding nasals ends up voiced.

観	自	在	菩	薩
kan	jī	zai	bō	sā

This is the first thing that really made me raise my eyebrows. The hiragana transcription of 菩薩 has bōsatsu, and that is exactly what we would expect, and indeed bosatsu is the modern Japanese pronunciation for 'Bodhisattva', but time and time again as I looked for recitations, I keep on hearing bōsā, lacking the final syllable. What's going on? I did find one recitation that has the pronunciation as I expected, but clearly that is not the norm.

My guess of what is going on, as Frellesvig (2010: 316ff.) points out, Japanese, in Sino-Japanese vocabulary, actually posessed a word-final -t. How widespread that was is not so clear, but Christian transcriptions like fotnet suru 'get fever' (Modern hatsunetsu suru) and connit 'today' (Modern konnichi) leave little room for doubt. Could it be that the traditional pronunciation here was bōsat, and that the t was simply lost rather than reinstated as a full syllable in the reading tradition?

行	深	般	若	波	羅	蜜	多	時
gyou	jin	han	nyā	hā	rā	mī	tā	jī

Just want to point out here that gyoujin has voiced the initial consonant of 深 due to the lost final nasal of gyou. Historically: gyaũ-sin > gyaũ-zin.

度	一	切	苦	厄
dō	is-	sai	kū	yaku

The fact that issai simply retains its geminate makes it clear that the recitation style of hannyaharamitta really is strange.

無	眼	耳	鼻	舌	身	意
mū	gen	nī	bī	zes-	shin	nī

The combination of 身意 read as shinnī, is interesting. In modern Japanese the reading of 意 is i, not ni. This is clearly a case of historical liaison of a syllable final n to a word that historically started with w. There are several examples of this in Japanese, for example 天王tennou 'heavenly king' is irregular from the modern readings of the character ten + ou. However, ou comes from MJ waũ ultimately from MC ɦuaŋ. Japanese has a fairly regular rule nw > nn. Thus here too we have a historical memory in the recitation from a time that this verse was approably recited mū-gen-nī-bī-zet-sin-wi!

I haven't found any note anywhere that explicitly notes that this character was pronounced with initial w however, and historically in Middle Chinese it appears to have been ʔi. Such a w-less reading also seems to explain the irregular reading of 新発意 'new monk/convert (to Buddhism)' as shinbochi < sin-bot-i, although it is also read sinbotchi which perhaps can be derived from sin-bot-wi. The Sino-Korean pronunciation is ui which really does seem to suggest the existence of a w- initial reading.

無	智		亦	無	得
mū	chī		yaku	mū	toku
以	無	所	得	故
ī	mū	shō	tok-	kō

Nothing too special with these lines, but I liked the alternation of the assimilated final -k stem in tokkō besides toku in the previous line. But that's in line in what you would simply expect if it were natively pronounced.

菩	提	薩	埵
bō	dai	sat-	tā

While 薩 was pronounce sā in the two character version of the word for bodhisattva, here with the full four character transcription, 薩 simply behaves as expected, and we end up with a fairly good rendering of the Prakrit bodhisatta.

無	有	恐	怖
mū	ū	kū	fū

Here I thought it was nice to see the archaic go-on pronunciation of 有 as u surface rather than the kan-on yū. In fact, all readings of this sutra are go-on (this is typical for Buddhist chants), but for this character, in Sino-Japanese vocabulary the kan-on pronunciation is much more common, I know words like 有名 yuumei 'famous' (which I suppose would be umyou in go-on :-)) etc. 

It's also cool to see that 有 read as yū has the general meaning 'existence', but the moment you read it as u it means bhava, i.e. the Buddhist technical term for 'existence'.

三	世	諸	仏
san	zē	shō	butsu

Evidence that the bōsā at the beginning really is weird, because here we have sanzeshobutsu 'All buddhas of past, present and future' not bū or something like that. (Again notice also the neat voicing of san+se > sanze).

阿	耨	多	羅	三	藐	三	菩	提
ā	noku	tā	rā	san	myaku	san	bō	dai

Once again a nice bit of Sanskrit/Prakrit phonetic spelling: anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi "The supreme perfect enlightenment"

即	説	呪	曰
soku	ses-	shū	watsu

I was surprised by the reading watsu for 曰. I looked in some dictionaries and could only find Go-on woti > ochi and Kan-on wetu > etsu. I'm not sure what the story is here. The middle chinese rhyme class is 月, which gives go-on gwati (and gwatu) and Kan-on gwetu. But I see now that another go-on that I was unaware of is goti. So I suppose oti next to watu makes sense even though no dictionary I could check records it.

羯	諦	羯	諦	波	羅	羯	諦
gyā	tei	gyā	tei	hā	rā	gyā	tei
波	羅	僧	羯	諦	菩	提	薩	婆	訶
hā	rā	sou	gyā	tei	bō	jī	so	wa	kā

Again a transcription of Sanskrit: gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā

Some interesting things happen here. In this recitation we've seen 菩提 "bodhi" already, and every time it was pronounced bōdai, but in this Mantra it becomes bōji. Why? Wiktionary tells me it is a 'corruption' of bodai, but boji < bodi is obviously a better match for bodhi than bodai is. Is this, like the mī reading of 蜜 mitsu a case where the reading tradition retains a more accurate pronunciation of what it should be, where the information of the characters could not have given that?

There is good reason to think that that is the case, because there is yet anore place where something really cool happens, namely the word that comes right after 薩婆訶 which is read sowakā, that is with two SHORT syllables rather than the stretched out sound for CV syllables we have seen so far. In other words, the pronunciation seems to retain an actual memory that 薩婆 represents only a single Sanskrit syllable, and is therefore made metrically equivalent to the syllable that follows: 訶.

It is also worth noting that not only is that 'rythm' irregular, also the reading of 薩 as so is irregular. This is the same character we find in the second syllable of our vexing bosatsu~bōsā 'Bodhisattva' word. so is in no way a typical or reasonable reading of the character, whose go-on reading is sati and kan-on reading is satu from Middle Chinese sat.

We therefore see that, despite the Classical Chinese composition of this Sutra, the Japanese Buddhist reading tradition seems to have some memory of the proper Sanskrit pronunciation that isn't filtered through a spelling pronunciation of the Chinese characters! Instead it is a genuine memory of an oral tradition!

That's it for now. I know nothing about Classical Chinese (I literally have no clue what the heart sutra says), I probably made some silly mistakes here and there, and I have no idea how much of this is actually known already... but it seems really worthwhile to study the interaction of reading tradition and writing of Buddhist recitation, perhaps even in a more comparative scope, comparing it to thinks we see in Quranic or Hebrew recitation etc.

Proto-Berber: *ăbbəḱ pf. *əbbắḱ impf. *əttăbbăḱ 'to pinch'

• Western/Kabyle
  • Kb. bbi 'to pinch, sting'
  • Tashl. bbi 'to bite, sting, cut'
  • CMB bbəy 'to cut, pluck'
• Zenatic
  
  • Rif bbi 'to pinch'
  • Fig. ppəy 'to pick up one after the other'
  • Mzab bbi 'to grab and take along, pick'
  • Ouar. bbi 'to take'
• Libyan
  • Ghd. ăbbək 'to pick up, one by one'
  • Nef. bbi 'to pick up, harvest'
  • Awj. əbbək 'to sting, plant vegetables'

Notes

Awjila and Ghadames occasionally have a k reflex for word-final y in other varities. While not entirely without its problems, Kossmann (1999: 186ff.) suggests that these verbs originally ended in *ḱ. This strikes me as a good suggestion.

References

Kossmann (1999: 187 {526})

NZ: BY6

• Western/Kabyle
  • Kb. bbi 'to pinch, sting'
  • Tashl. bbi 'to bite, sting, cut'
  • CMB bbəy 'to cut, pluck'
• Zenatic
  
  • Rif bbi 'to pinch'
  • Fig. ppəy 'to pick up one after the other'
  • Mzab bbi 'to grab and take along, pick'
  • Ouar. bbi 'to take'
• Libyan
  • Ghd. ăbbək 'to pick up, one by one'
  • Nef. bbi 'to pick up, harvest'
  • Awj. əbbək 'to sting, plant vegetables'

Notes

Awjila and Ghadames occasionally have a k reflex for word-final y in other varities. While not entirely without its problems, Kossmann (1999: 186ff.) suggests that these verbs originally ended in *ḱ. This strikes me as a good suggestion.

References

Kossmann (1999: 187 {526})

NZ: BY6