*d-yak

The source of this prefix is a matter of speculation, but cf. the apparently prefixal dental that occurs before other roots referring to the upper limb in scattered TB languages: e.g. [Himalayish] WT dpuŋ ‘shoulder’; [Qiangic] rGyalrong tekhlye ‘upper arm’; [Asakian] Kadu tapaung, təhù ‘arm’, Sak takú ‘arm’, Lui takhu ‘arm’; [Naga] Ao Chungli teben ‘arm’, tashikang ‘wing’, Ao Mongsen tüpen, tücha ‘arm’, tacha ‘wing’, Yacham Tengsa taka ‘wing’; [Tani] Taraon ta:lõ ‘feather’.

We assign to this allofam reflexes with affricate initials (e.g. Tujia, Qiang, Naga).

The cluster dl- is not tolerated in most TB languages¹, so that the presence of the dental prefix has favored the palatalization of the root-initial lateral.

This allofam is the immediate source of the Karenic forms assembled below #773 PKar *ɁdeɁᴰ WING.

Forms from Northern Naga languages show initial variation among the simple palatal semivowel, dental stops, and palatal affricates: e.g. Tamlu bɯn-yak, Tangsa ³pul-džak, and Nocte ¹ʌ-dʌk, all meaning ‘leaf’. To Weidert belongs the credit for identifying the morphemic structure of these compounds as “tree-hand”. For convenience’s sake, we list all these forms under the present allofam.

翼 OC *gi̯ək, GSR #954d ‘wing’; Li 1971: (*rək); Baxter 1992 #469: *ljɨk; B & S 2011: *ɢrəp; Schuessler 2007:570; Mand. yì.

ZJH: As discussed in Handel 2009:133-134, if reconstructed with initial OC *l- (a view shared by Schuessler 2007:570), this is a perfect match to PTB *lak, a comparison that is preferable to *d-yak. Chinese 翼 ‘wing’ yì and 亦 ‘armpit’ yì thus differ only in the reconstructed main vowel (*ə vs. *a), both of which correspond regularly to PTB *a. The nature of the word-family relationship of the two words within Chinese is unclear.

Note that Baxter & Sagart (2011) reconstruct coda *-p for 翼 yì, with “dialectal” development of *-p to later *-k, because they believe this is the same word as that written with the homophonous character 翌, also ‘wing’, which has phonetic 立 ending in *-p. Their reconstruction would separate 翼 ‘wing’ yì and 亦 ‘armpit’ yì into two different Chinese words families, and preclude the comparison of the former to the *lak/*yak family of PTB arm/hand/wing roots.