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Voicing alternation and sigmatic causative prefixation in Tibetan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2020

Guillaume Jacques
Guillaume Jacques*
Affiliation:
Southwest University, Chongqing, China / CNRS-CRLAO, Paris
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

The present paper discusses the hypothesis according to which a devoicing sound shift *sb- > sp-, *sd- > st-, *sg- > sk- took place in pre-Tibetan. I show that all examples supporting this putative sound shift have better explanations, and that this hypothesis creates more problems than it solves. In addition, I discuss data from modern Tibetic varieties, showing that no typological parallel for such a sound shift is attested.

Keywords

TibetanOld ChineseDevoicingCausativeAlternationsHistorical phonology
Type
Article
Information
Bulletin of SOAS , Volume 83 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 283 - 292
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London, 2020

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Footnotes

Tibetan transliteration follows Jacques (2012a), and Middle Chinese is based on the system of Baxter (1992), with the onset consonants converted to IPA symbols.

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