Case studies of lexical borrowing from northern non-Chinese languages into northern Chinese languages during the Song dynasty = 宋代北方漢語自非漢語的詞彙借貸個案研究

Abstract

The lasting impact of Song dynasty lexical borrowing on the Chinese language has often been overlooked. This study investigates how three non-Sinitic loanwords were borrowed into northern Chinese during the Song dynasty. The finding demonstrates that their influence extended beyond the lexical level to cause changes in phonetic and grammatical structures as well.

I first present phonetic evidence that traces the word piedao 撇道 ‘foot’ to Manchu-Tungusic languages, and argue that it was borrowed during the Jurchen occupation of northern China. While piedao is cognate with the Altaic root bul ‘muscle’, it underwent a reanalysis after entering Chinese, contributing to a new morpheme dao 道 that functions as a suffix for human body parts.

The second case focuses on the distal demonstrative pronoun wude 兀的. A comparative phonological analysis of the pronunciation of the character wu 兀 across Shanxi and Shaanxi dialects reveals that the demonstrative did not originate from the rusheng 入聲 (syllables that end in an oral stop) category to where the character wu belongs, suggesting that the demonstrative did not develop from native Chinese but was rather a Turkic loanword, possibly derived from the Turkic pronoun ol. The borrowing of this new demonstrative transformed the original binary demonstrative system (just distal and proximal) of northwestern Chinese into a ternary system with three levels – distal, medial, and proximal.

Thirdly, I demonstrate that the Chinese word dai 歹 ‘bad’ is not simply a Mongolian loanword from dain ‘war’, but actually represent the result of a chain of circular borrowing. It originated from Chinese di 敵 ‘enemy’, but was borrowed into Khitanese as tiɑ, and subsequently into Mongolian as daisun and dain, and eventually re-borrowed into Chinese as dai. This circular borrowing process underscores the frequent and deep contact between northern Chinese and Mongolian languages over a long historical period.