*s-b-rum

This etymon is not reconstructed in STC, but appears in VSTB pp. 225-6 and Matisoff 1983¹ #52.

This root occurs in the NE Indian Areal Group, Himalayish, and perhaps Lolo-Burmese (Ugong). There are possible Chinese comparanda (below). WT shows variation between -r- and -l-. The b- has been treated as a prefix and dropped everywhere but in WT and Chinese. For a similar doubly prefixed form set up for PTB, cf. *s-b-rul SNAKE. WT hlums reflects an alternant *s-lum. This *s- prefix seems to have preempted the initial consonant in Tsangla shum, wak◦tsa ɕum ‘placenta’.

We now consider this etymon to be independent of #680 PTB *s-lam WOMB / PLACENTA, even though they were treated as allofams in VSTB and Matisoff 1983.

Luce 1981 (“A Comparative Word-List of Old Burmese, Chinese, and Tibetan”) compares this root with 範 OC *b'i̯wɑ̆m, Mand. fàn, glossed by him as ‘mould, matrix’. See Matisoff 1983: #52 (“Transclucent insights”). For the semantic connection, cf. Latin and English matrix ‘womb; a situation or surrounding substance in which something originates’, ult. < mater ‘mother’.

範 OC *bʼi̯wɑ̆m, GSR #626d ‘mould; rule, law’; Li 1971: *bjamx; Baxter 1992: (*bjamʔ / *b(r)jomʔ); Mand. fàn.

Baxter does not reconstruct this word. There are several possible reconstructions in his system, as indicated above. The Chinese word 範 may be related to 凡 ‘general rule, pattern’, Mand. fán and 法 ‘law, model’, Mand. fǎ, reconstructed *b(r)jom and *pjap respectively by Baxter.
[ZJH]

妊 OC *ńi̯əm, GSR #667i ‘pregnant’; Li 1971: *njəmh; Baxter 1992: *njɨms; Mand. rèn.

Gong (1995 #368) proposed that this Chinese word was cognate to WT sbrum < *smrum. However, the vowel and initial correspondences are not regular, and the comparison is not found in Gong’s later publications. Schuessler 2007:441 treats 妊 rèn ‘pregnant’ as an internal Chinese derivation from 任 rèn ‘carry on the shoulder, to load’.
[ZJH]