Open LinguList opened 7 years ago
Further steps to investigate this obviously invole:
I am convinced that the "luk/ŋ"-part in "stone" originally means "stone/rock", as it recurs in the word for "rock" in Burmish languages. The etymology for Burmese remains unclear though, and it might be an innovation there, while Achang shows an old ST form, and the other Burmish languages show a Burmish-only innovation (which is also present in most cases of Achang).
There is one interesting pattern in Achang:
vs.
Remember: Xiandao luʔ⁵⁵ vs. Achang laŋ³¹
Now compare this with our tree-example:
vs.
tseŋ⁵⁵ is classifier for "tree" in Achang (we need to include all classifiers in the dataset with more concepts, they are interesting and can give valuable hints). The glottal stop in Xiandao is strange, but the other varieties have k as final, maybe even error in the data. Anyway, given that ST languages often have a form like "laŋ" for stone, while we have the "lak"-like form in Burmish, with Achang as an exception, we might assume that you are originally right, and the saŋ for tree in Achang is also genuin. But it is too early to conclude this: we need to look deeper into this pattern.