Several scholars noted that the pronunciations of 天 “sky” tiān and 風 “wind” fēng in Bai appear to be akin to the western variants of the words attested in the paronomastic gloss dictionary Shìmíng 釋名. I will demonstrate in the current study that there are additional commonalities shared by both Bai and the ancient western dialect, termed Old Western Chinese (OWC) in this study. In both languages, one can identify words with zy- in Middle Chinese (MC) that are pronounced j-. Bai and Old Western Chinese use the same word (椹 shèn) for “fungus”. Furthermore, Old Chinese (OC) cluster *-p/t-s yields -t in both languages in lieu of yielding -j as observed in Middle Chinese. Last but not least, it appears that in both languages, words with *lˤ- (whence MC d-) and -ʔ (whence MC rising tone) are distinct from other words with d- in Middle Chinese. Hence, this paper puts the claim that Bai is akin to Old Western Chinese on a stronger footing. As a side note, judging from the fact that 四 “four” sì contains -t in Old Western Chinese and early Bai, its Old Chinese form most likely ends in *-[t]-s.

Even though the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) is one of the most popular instruments to assess anxiety today, only limited data is available about its psychometric characteristics and normative values in clinical Spanish populations. A study was conducted to test the psychometric characteristics of a Spanish adaptation of the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) in a sample of 918 outpatients being treated at a community mental health center in Spain. Results confirmed the adaptation’s high internal consistency (∝ = .91), substantial test-retest reliability at 8–10 weeks (r = .84, p < .01), and satisfactory convergent validity with the Anxiety (r = .86, p < .01), Somatization (r = .81, p < .01), Obsessive-compulsive (r = .60, p < .01), and Phobic Anxiety (r = .63, p < .01) dimensions of the SCL-90-R, and with the Anxious Thoughts Inventory (r = .57, p < .01). Gender differences in BAI scores did occur, so normative values appear separately for each gender.

This is the first study that provides normative, reliability, factor validity and discriminant validity data of the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; Beck, Epstein, Brown, & Steer, 1988) in the Spanish general population. Sanz and Navarro's (2003) Spanish version of the BAI was administered to 249 adults. Factor analyses suggested that the BAI taps a general anxiety dimension comprising two related factors (somatic and affective-cognitive symptoms), but these factors hardly explained any additional variance and, therefore, little information is lost in considering only full-scale scores. Internal consistency estimate for the BAI was high (α = .93). The BAI was correlated .63 with the BDI-II and .32 with the Trait-Anger scale of the STAXI 2, but a factor analysis of their items revealed three factors, suggesting that the correlations between the instruments may be better accounted for by relationships between anxiety, depression, and anger, than by problems of discriminant validity. The mean BAI total score and the distribution of BAI scores were similar to those found in other countries. BAI norm scores for the community sample were provided from the total sample and from the male and female subsamples, as females scored higher than males. The utility of these scores for assessing clinical significance of treatment outcomes for anxiety is discussed.