Talk:食

Marking senses as obsolete

@Wyang Was it intentional to mark all senses of 食 as obsolete? From my knowledge of Cantonese, "to eat" at least is still in use —umbreon126 08:27, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

It's probably hard to split tags. The way I read it - obsolete in Mandarin, current in dialects but it's not too obvious, I agree. perhaps it makes sense to use "or": {{cx|obsolete|or|Cantonese|Hakka|Min|lang=zh}}, which will give "(obsolete or Cantonese, Hakka, Min)". --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 08:57, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

The obsolete template represents disuse in Modern Standard Chinese, so if it is accompanied by dialectal context tags, then that means "obsolete in Standard Chinese, but used in other dialects"; otherwise, it means "obsolete in all dialects". Wyang (talk) 03:59, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Distinct etymologies in Min

I have added a new etymology (Etymology 3) for Min Nan chia̍h. I'm not familiar with Min Dong and Min Bei, and I don't know whether the vernacular readings of 食 in those topolects are cognate with Etymology 1 or Etymology 3 or have yet another origin. Freelance Intellectual (talk) 11:04, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

@Freelance Intellectual: I know you've cited those two sources for this split, but I'm wondering if there's actually any reasoning/evidence given in those sources to say conclusively that they are etymologically unrelated to etymology 1. This claim seems to go against most sources, so we should probably be careful about splitting the etymologies based on two sources only. The Min Bei colloquial form is more likely to be unrelated, but that will require more investigation to see how it fits. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 04:47, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: These sources don't give an in-depth discussion for this word, but both sources are very careful in their treatment of etymology. I know that many sources state that "chia̍h" and "si̍t" are colloquial and literary readings of 食, but I haven't seen an argument based on regular sound changes -- if you know of one I would certainly be interested to see it! Based on rime books, 食 has the 職 rime in Old Chinese, but as far as I know, this rime has led to colloquial Hokkien terms that do not resemble "chia̍h", e.g. 職 "chit", 熄 "sit", 拭 "chhit" (taking these examples from Wiktionary! I'm really impressed by how much Hokkien is on here!) In contrast, other colloquial Hokkien words ending with "-iah" seem to derive from different Old Chinese rimes, e.g. 壁 "piah" (錫), 席 "sia̍h" (鐸), 石 "sia̍h" (鐸), 額 "gia̍h" (鐸). So there's certainly a challenge in connecting colloquial "chia̍h" to literary "si̍t".

Speaking more generally, I would like to know how I should approach writing this kind of entry. While I've been active on Wikipedia for some time, I'm new to Wiktionary. Before splitting the etymologies, I read Wiktionary:Etymology, which says etymologies should not be to verbose, and I read Wiktionary:About_Chinese, which gives the entry on 干 as an example -- but the entry on 干 has no sources. I also looked up a few other characters with etymologically unrelated colloquial and literary readings in Hokkien and noticed some variation -- 人 has no references, while 肉 and 欲 have references, and 一 has a combined entry for both etymologies, which goes against Wiktionary best practice as I understand it. (I will certainly hold off editing the 一 entry until I'm clear on best practice!) I thought two sources would be sufficient, particularly since Yang Hsiu-fang is enough of an authority on Hokkien etymology that she was part of the Taiwanese Ministry of Education's committee to decide standard characters for Taiwanese Hokkien. In trying to look up other sources, I have just found that Norman (1991) also gives no character for "chia̍h". And to answer my own question about other Min dialects, Norman also gives Fú'ān and Fúzhōu terms cognate to "chia̍h", and gives a hand-written character (which I think is 饁 but I'm not 100% sure) for terms in Jiàn'ōu, Yǒng'ān, and Jiānglè dialects. Freelance Intellectual (talk) 16:09, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

@Freelance Intellectual: This word basically exhibits coastal Min (Min Dong, Min Nan and Puxian Min) vs. inland Min (Min Bei, Min Zhong, Shaojiang Min). There are certainly challenges if we focus on the rime, but 秋谷裕幸 (in 閩北區三縣市方言研究) seems to treat all the Min words as 食 but having anomalies in pronunciation. 中川裕三 (in 汉语方言解释地图) treats the Min forms as 食, and Bit-Chee Kwok (in Southern Mǐn: Comparative Phonology and Subgrouping) also treats the Min forms (at least the coastal Min forms) as 食. Unless there's a clear etymon we can trace to that is different from the ST etymon given, we could probably take a laxer approach to etymology, i.e. the Min forms probably still are related to 食 and ultimately derive from the same ST etymon. It might also be nice to point out certain phonological inconsistencies across dialects. This reminds me of 短, where the Min forms are generally considered to have a different etymology but OC reconstructions seem to allow for them to be under the same etymology.

Now, as for how we should approach these kinds of entries, I'd say we should include in-text citations as much as possible. The etymologies at 干 and 人 were likely added before we had a good in-text citation system, which we have implemented relatively recently. The reason for 一 not being split is because it is easier to talk about their etymologies together - perhaps this shows why it's all the merrier for 食 not to have a split etymology. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 17:32, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the references! I have basically the same question you asked me: is there any evidence or reasoning given in those sources to say they are etymologically related? The comparative method is fundamental to historical linguistics, and I certainly don't see why we should take a "laxer" approach. We could perhaps say that the etymology is disputed, but I would first like to see what these sources say. A coastal vs. inland split doesn't tell us whether the difference is due to phonetic changes or different lexical choices, and from what I've seen I would lean towards the latter. If I've understood you correctly, the first two sources you mention give *all* Min forms as related to 食 -- for Min Bei "iè" this seems like quite a leap phonetically (although I am not familiar with Min Bei, and maybe there are some relevant sound changes), and Norman proposes an alternative Old Chinese etymon. Freelance Intellectual (talk) 18:15, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

@Freelance Intellectual: 中川裕三 and Kwok don't have much details on their treatment of 食. 秋谷裕幸 gives a few points that we can work with:

• The initial shouldn't be a problem. For some words with the 船 or 禪 initial, they are read with a zero initial or [ɦ] in Min Bei, while it is [ts] in Min Nan and [s] in Min Dong, e.g. 船: Jian'ou yɪŋ³, Xiamen tsun², Fuzhou suŋ².
• The tone shouldn't be a problem either. All of them have the expected tone from 全濁入.
• The rime is probably the area for contention, as you've pointed out. In Min Bei, Min Zhong and Shaojiang Min (as well as certain dialects of Hakka and Hunan/Guangxi Tuhua), it is irregularly read like 咸山攝開口三四等入聲, while in Min Nan and Min Dong, it is irregularly read like 梗攝開口三四等入聲. (That being said, I think these rimes are phonetically quite similar: 開口, 三四等, 入聲.)

What should we make of this? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 20:59, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: If this proposed etymology requires an irregular sound change, that's probably why other authors are sceptical. Given how character-based folk etymologies are so common, I'm generally hesitant to believe etymologies that follow popular character choices unless there's good evidence -- especially in cases like this, where 食 has a long pedigree in being used to write "chia̍h". So I guess it depends on how plausible it is to have an irregular sound change. Can you explain what 咸山 means -- is that two rimes that have merged? And does this source give reconstructed phonetic values?

I haven't found any further sources beyond the three I mentioned so far, but inspired by Norman and Mei (1976), I decided to compare Kwok (2018)'s reconstructed proto-Min (thanks for the reference) to a reconstruction of proto-Austroasiatic. Kwok reconstructs "tsiaʔ8" for proto-Min-Nan, but is uncertain for proto-Min (endnote 11 of chapter 2), agreeing with Norman that the inland Min varieties use unrelated terms for "eat". It turns out that in Sidwell and Rao (2015)'s reconstruction, the proto-Austroasiatic word for "eat" is "ca:?" (where "c" is a palatal stop). Given that Min Nan has no palatal stops, "c" would have to be mapped to something, and "ts" or "tsi" would be a reasonable approximation. In fact, Proto-Mangian (the closest extant Austroasiatic group) is reconstructed by Hsiu (2016) to have "tsɔʔ", with an affricate. So this seems close. On the other hand, I know Sagart (2008) is sceptical of an Austroasiatic substrate for Min, so this etymology isn't without problems either -- but I thought it would be worth mentioning. The word for "eat" in proto-Kra-Dai and proto-Austronesian don't look plausible. It's really a shame the Minyue didn't leave written records. Freelance Intellectual (talk) 11:04, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

@Freelance Intellectual: Yes, 咸山攝 means 咸攝 and 山攝 merged. Unfortunately, I don't think 秋谷裕幸 gives any reconstructed phonetic values. We can have a comparison of the relevant rimes:

Character	食	色	隻	接
Rime type	曾攝開口三等入聲	曾攝開口三等入聲	梗攝開口三等入聲	咸攝開口三等入聲
Old Chinese (Baxter-Sagart)	*mə-lək	*srək	*tek	*tsap
Middle Chinese (Baxter)	*zyik	srik	tsyek (tsy- + -jek)	tsjep
Xiamen (Min Nan)	tsiaʔ	sik	tsiaʔ	tsiʔ
Proto-Min Nan (Kwok)	*tsiaʔ	*sik	*tsiaʔ	*tsiʔ
Fuzhou (Min Dong)	sieʔ	saiʔ	tsieʔ	tsieʔ
Qilin Bayin (戚林八音) (闽东区古田方言研究)	*siaʔ	*sek	*tsiaʔ	*tsiek
Jian'ou (Min Bei)	iɛ	sɛ	tsia	tsiɛ

I know phonetic similarity is probably not a good argument. Another point to think about: would it be possible to argue that this common word probably has some irregularity because it comes from a different stratum? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 18:28, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: If it comes from a different stratum, we would expect it to be regular with respect to that stratum. The standard account is that there are two "colloquial" strata, from the Han and Nanbeichao waves of immigration. In some cases we get both of these plus the literary Tang stratum -- for example, Klöter (2005) compares 席 and 石, where we can see a regular correspondence between the rimes in each stratum: -io̍h, -ia̍h, -e̍k (Han, Nanbeichao, and Tang, respectively). Looking at other etyma with the same reconstructed Old Chinese rime as 食, I can only find colloquial readings in -it, e.g. 翼, 拭, 織. So it might actually be that Min Nan "si̍t" derives from a "colloquial" stratum (Han or Nanbeichao), and is only "literary" in the sense that it contrasts with the more informal "chia̍h".

After searching Schuessler (2007) for Proto-Min, I found that the entry for 嚼 *dzjak refers to Proto-Min *dzʰiak "to eat" (for Proto-Min, Schuessler follows Norman's reconstruction). This strikes me as plausible -- "eat" and "chew" are fairly close semantically, and phonetically there are other etyma with the same reconstructed Old Chinese rime and a colloquial Min Nan "iah" rime, such as 削 and 杓, which are both in the Taiwan MoE dictionary: 削, 杓 (where Wiktionary gives 杓 as an alternative form of 勺). I propose updating this entry to follow Schuessler's etymology. Freelance Intellectual (talk) 17:25, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

@Freelance Intellectual: Are you sure Proto-Min *dzʰiak would give tsiaʔ in Xiamen? I'm pretty sure *dzʰ becomes tsʰ in Xiamen. Is this a mistake in Schuessler? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 17:58, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: I think you're right that it's a mistake. Schuessler cites Norman in the list of abbreviations (PMin), but not in the entry for 嚼, so I'm not sure which source is being used here. I can't find discussion of words meaning "eat" except in the paper I already discussed above, but there's no explicit reconstruction. An unaspirated *dz- would match Norman's account of how Proto-Min relates to the modern dialects (while *dzʰ- wouldn't match), and it would also match Schuessler's reconstruction -- e.g. compare 齊, where Schuessler also refers to Proto-Min, and there is no aspiration in Middle Chinese, Old Chinese, or Proto-Min. Freelance Intellectual (talk) 09:34, 13 March 2019 (UTC)