闽方言中的来母字和早期汉语

Lai Initial Words in Min Dialects and Early Chinese

闽方言中来母有1-,t-和s-三种读法,来自较早的*1-和*1h-。共同闽语的*1h-来自早期汉语包括清塞音的复辅音声母。苗瑶语和侗台语早期的汉借词可说明这一点。传统的靠文献构拟早期汉语的方法不是唯一可行之途。

In this paper, the author explores the Early Chinese origins of Lai-mu words in the Min dialects. He shows that there are three reflexes of this initial： s-（in the Western Min dialects）, t-and 1-. He proposes that these reflexes had different origins in Early Chinese. Fortunately a significant number of cognate forms exists in the Kam-Tai and Miao-Yao languages to allow us to trace the phonological development of the Lai-mu initials. The article demonstrates that, in addition to the traditional approach to Old Chinese which relies heavily on Xie-sheng characters, there is another way to approach the reconstruction of certain features of Early Chinese.