20 - Tibeto-Burman dental suffixes

Summary

The dental suffixes *-s, *-t, and *-n are particularly troublesome. All three suffixes appear only in roots with vocalic or semivocalic ending, in accordance with the general TB phonemic rule that consonant clusters occur only in root-initial position. In Tibetan, however, suffixed -s appears also after final -g, -b and -ŋ, -m, but not after dentals, hence -s is in many cases to be referred to *-ds or *-ns. Wolfenden, who has paid special attention to these suffixes, makes this type of reconstruction for many Tibetan roots, even where there is ample TB evidence for a vocalic ending, e.g. T *zan rather than *za ‘eat’ (in the face of TB *dza). As already shown above (n. 62), the West T data confirm the derivation of -s from *-ds in pus-mo < *puds ‘knee’ < TB *put cf. also the following root:

(412) T mkhris-pa <*mkhrids, West T thigs-pa ‘bile’, Nung s∂hi < *s∂hri ‘gallbladder’ (cf. No. 38), B sàń-khre ‘gall’ (sàń ‘liver’), G kha-khit ‘bile’ (kha ‘bitter’ = ‘liver’), Dimasa bikhlu <*bikhlit, id., from TB *(m-)kri-t.

The above root is a derivative of the following:

(413) Lepcha kri ‘bitter’, K khri ‘acid, sour’, Moshang ∂hi<*∂khri ‘acid’ (cf. No. 416), Dimasa khiri ‘sour’, from TB *kri(y).