*tow-la

This binome, used both for the actual animal and as a sign of the zodiac, is here set up for convenience as a PTB etymon, but it seems really to be a borrowing from Chinese to languages in several different areas of the Sinosphere. It apparently is derived from a compound meaning RABBIT-DONKEY, the point of comparison being the long ears of both species. Cf. Chinese 兔 tù ‘rabbit’, 驢 lyú ‘donkey’, and 騾 luó ‘mule’. Some forms in TB languages are more recently borrowings from the Mandarin binome tùzi, with the suffixal morpheme 子 zi as second element.

The same semantic association between DONKEY and RABBIT is to be found in #1432 PTB *(b/g)waŋ DONKEY / ASS / RABBIT, and has been well-attested in Indo-Aryan; see #5357 IA *kharāyō HARE / RABBIT and #5358 IA *khara-gośa HARE / RABBIT.

This morpheme was evidently borrowed into Qiangic before the “brightening” of earlier *a to Qiangic i took place.

The Tujia forms mao³ tao² and mau²¹ tho⁵⁵ li⁵⁵ look as if they have incorporated Mandarin māo ‘cat’, with the tertium comparationis this time being the whiskers common to both species. On the other hand, the Achang word for ‘donkey’, m̥ʑaŋ³¹ mau³¹ ɿiʔ³¹, where the first syllable definitely means HORSE, has the same cat-like morpheme as the second syllable.

In Nungish, Bai, Lisu, and several Yi dialects, the words for DONKEY seem to be compounds consisting of this binome as first element followed by a root meaning HORSE, even though the independent words for ‘horse’ in these languages are somewhat different.

In Lalo (Western Loloish), the present binome means both ‘rabbit’ and ‘donkey’. The fuller form, haq-thoq-loq, literally “rat-rabbit” disambiguates the word in favor of RABBIT. Alternatively, this Lalo compound might refer to a different species, the pika, as in Northern Lisu hæ̃³⁵ thɔʔ²¹ la³³ ‘Tibetan pika’.

In short, there seems to have been a good deal of interplay, not to say confusion, among morphemes referring to several different animal species. See the semantic diagrams.

兔 OC *t’o, GSR #63a ‘rabbit’; B & S 2011: *l̥ˁa-s; Mand. tù.