15.9.5.23:59: A FIRST LOOK AT SUN 2004 AND SHI 2013
Two days ago, I had the opportunity to glance at Sun Bojun's 金代女真语 (Jin Dynasty Jurchen; 2004), the first monograph on the subject that I have ever seen, and Shi Jinbo's 西夏文教程 （A Tangut Course; 2013).
I was disappointed to not see any examples of Jurchen script in Sun's book. Perhaps I just missed them.
I did, however, see many formulae of the type
*Jin Jurchen > [standard written] Manchu
which I think should have been rewritten as
*Jin Jurchen : [standard written] Manchu
since it is clear that the Jin Jurchen forms cited (which are not homogeneous: e.g., *weike/oho/uyike 'tooth') are often not directly ancestral to the standard written Manchu forms, though there is no doubt of cognancy: e.g., there is no regular sound change *s > j to justify deriving Manchu bujan 'forest' from Jin Jurchen *busan (transcribed in the History of the Jin Dynasty in Chinese as 僕散 *pusan*).
The section of Shi's book that interested me the most was the list of Tangut verbs with stem alternations on pp. 333-338. Shi grouped those 44 verbs into four classes which end in the following rhyme types in my Tangut transcription:
I. -i/-o (11 verbs)
II. -u/-o (12 verbs)
III. -i/-y (6 verbs)
IV. -e/-i (11 verbs), -on/-en (1 verb), -i/-o (again!; 3 verbs) -u1/-u2 (1 verb; the only case of grade alternation)
I don't understand why he grouped four types of verbs in class IV, including -i/-o verbs that should have been in class I.
*9.6.1:28: 僕 'servant' had *b- (< *N-ph-?) in the Middle Chinese lexicographical tradition but has [pʰ] in modern standard Mandarin. However, its initial was transcribed as
<b>
in the Khitan small script, implying that its Liao Chinese initial may have been *p-, the regular reflex of Middle Chinese *b-. Jin Chinese is presumably the descendant of the northeastern dialect that I call Liao Chinese, so I assume 僕 also had *p- in Jin Chinese. Liao and Jin Chinese voiceless unaspirated stops correspond to stops transcribed as voiced in Khitan and Jurchen. (Those Khitan and Jurchen consonants may have been voiced unaspirated despite their transcription: e.g., <b> may have been [p].) The modern standard Mandarin reading [pʰu] for 僕 may descend from a bare Old Chinese root *phok without a nasal prefix.