Proto-Tai reconstruction of ‘maternal grandmother’ revisited: *naai A or *taai A?

Abstract

This paper proposes an alternative Proto-Tai reconstruction to the word ‗maternal grandmother‘, which has its modern forms taai B1 in most Northern Tai (NT), taai A1 in most Central Tai (CT), and naai A2 in most Southwestern Tai (SWT). Li (1971) gives *naai A as the proto-form of this word. He suggests that the Standard Thai form jaai A2 is the result of contamination with words of paired semantic contents. He further proposes that the dental stop initial t- of the same word in NT and CT is caused by similar contamination from the word *taa A ‗maternal grandfather‘. While this paper agrees with Li‘s observation on the development of SWT naai A2 to Standard Thai jaai A2, it considers the reconstruction of the proto-Tai form *naai A to be doubtful. First, this hypothesis does not explain the tone difference of this word between NT and CT. Second, word contamination from SWT to Standard Thai does not mean the parallel process has occurred from Proto-Tai to the common modern forms in NT and CT. Instead of Li‘s reconstruction *naai A, this paper proposes an alternative ProtoTai (PT) reconstruction *taai A for the word ‗maternal grandmother‘. It is proposed that the irregularity of this word in NT, CT and SWT has resulted from preventing homophones with the word ‗to die‘, for which Li (1977:119) gives its PT form *traaj A, and Pittayaporn (2009:704) gives *p.ta:j A. In both NT and SWT, the PT initials *t- and *tr- (or *p.t-) merged into t-, causing these two words to become homophones. In order to prevent the taboo word ‗to die‘, in NT the word ‗maternal grandmother‘ altered its tone (PT) *taai A > (NT) taai B1, while in SWT it altered the manner of articulation of its initial (PT) *taai A > (SWT) naai A2. In CT the initials *t- and *tr- (or *p.t-) did not merge, so that (PT) *t- > (CT) t-, and (PT) *tr- (or *p.t-) > (CT) th-/h-. Therefore in most CT the word ‗to die‘ becomes thaai A1 (such as Tay)/ haai A1 (such as Longzhou), while the word ‗maternal grandmother‘ remains taai A1. The Proto-Tai reconstruction of the word ‗maternal grandmother‘ as *taai A is further supported by historical evidence, which is denoted by the Chinese character 低 (Middle Chinese *tiei A) in the 12th century book Ling Wai Dai Da 岭外代答 (Tai 2006).