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Serious problem here.

Clauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish, p. 507b:

F tümen properly ‘ten thousand’, but often used for ‘an indefinitely large number’; immediately borrowed from Tokharian, where the forms are A tmān; B tmane, tumane, but Prof. Pulleyblank has told me orally that he thinks this word may have been borrowed in its turn fr. a Proto-Chinese form *tman, or the like, of wan ‘ten thousand’ (Giles 12,486).

Source (pdf)

[VHM:  the "F" at the beginning of the entry means "Foreign loanword"]

Many years ago, I studied Tocharian with Donald Ringe here at Penn, and once read through the whole of Clauson looking at all the "F" words, so I have been aware of this alleged connection regarding 萬 for about a quarter of a century.

This gives rise to two questions:

1. Do Toch. A tmān; B tmane, tumane have an etymology within IE?
2. Is *tman "or the like" a legitimate reconstruction for Sinitic 萬 (MSM wàn)?  Cf. Schuessler mans, Baxter-Sagart /*C.ma[n]-s/, Zhengzhang /*mlans/.

Question 1 is for IE specialists to work on, question 2 is for Sinologists to work on.

The Chinese side of things is very tricky.  I follow Schuessler, not Baxter and Sagart, in not seeing any evidence for that initial "t".  But let's see what the experts say.

South Coblin:

If P said this to Clauson face to face, that must have been back in Pleistocene times. God knows what he would say today if he were still alive.

Wiktionary:

1. “Scorpion”: See 蠆 (OC *m̥ʰraːds);
2. “Religious dance; sorcery”: Perhaps from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-man (“medicine”). Compare Tibetan སྨན (sman, “medicine; she-demons worshipped by common folk”), Burmese မန်း (man:, “utter mystic words to heal or ward off evil”);
3. “Myriad” (10000): Schuessler (2007) considers the etymology of this sense Sino-Tibetan, and compares it with Tibetan འབུམ ('bum, “hundred thousand; complete; entire; multifarious”). Similar words are found in branches of Altaic and Tocharian; here they are treated as very old loanwords from Chinese, per Pulleyblank (apud Clauson, 1972), Beckwith (2009), Adams (2013) and Tremblay (2005).

It seems to me that Schuessler's Tibetan འབུམ ('bum, “hundred thousand; complete; entire; multifarious”) is much more convincing and less speculative.  Ever the cautious historical linguist that he is, Schuessler himself says (in a personal communication) that "The vowels do not agree completely, though. In short, the etymology of wàn is uncertain."

Alexander Lubotsky and Sergei Starostin:

Toch. A tmäm[underdot], Toch. B t(u)mäne 'ten thousand, a myriad' < PToch. *t(ə)mäne :: Proto−Turkic *Tümen 'ten thousand; very many' (OUygh. tümen, Turkm. tümen) < Proto-Altaic *ci[c hacek i breve under] ùmi 'a large number' (e.g. Proto−Korean *c[c hacek]ímɨín 'thousand').

Tocharian may have borrowed this Turkic word through a Middle Iranian intermediary (cf. Modern Persian tumän `ten thousand'), which would better account for the vocalism.

Source:  from p. 4 (261), no. 7 of "Turkic and Chinese loan words in Tocharian", in Brigitte L.M. Bauer and Georges-Jean Pinault, eds., Language in time and space: A Festschrift for Werner Winter on the occasion of his 80th birthday (Berlin / New York:  De Gruyter, 2003), pp. 257-269.

Donald Ringe:

No IE etymology for the Tocharian words.  We can't even securely reconstruct 'thousand' all the way back:  Greek and Indo-Iranian clearly share a word, and Latin *might* share it (there are problems); Germanic and Balto-Slavic share a word, but it's a different word; that's all.

Michael Weiss:

I don't think there is a good IE etymology for the Tocharian forms.   Bailey said that it was a loan from from a Middle Iranian source going back to an old Iranian *tu-ma:na-  'great-measure', but the u in TB is rare (2x vs. 14 for tm-) and late and probably an epenthetic vowel (so Winter in IE Numerals). tm- is not otherwise attested as a word-initial onset in Tocharian B.  The word is all over Central Asia: Pers. tuma:n '10 rials' is borrowed from Turkish. Cf. Uigh. tümäne Tungus tuman, Mongol tuma:n. Further Bailey's etymology is just bad for a lot of reasons.

So without a lot of investigation I'd say it's not implausible that the Tocharian words could have been borrowed from Chinese and  passed it on to Turkic or that it could have been borrowed into both independently.  The integration into the Tocharian -e class is not surprising since 100 has the same inflection.

Hannes Fellner:

I do think that Old Chinese should be reconstructed as *t.ma[n]-s. And I believe that Proto-Tocharian borrowed this word from Old Chinese. The Tocharian B forms with –u– are very rare and cannot reflect something original. So, there is no relation to words for 'thousand' in Balto-Slavic and Germanic (and also very likely none to an Iranian form akin to Old Persian tauman- 'strength').

Doug Adams:

My first response is, no, the Tch words do not have a great PIE etymology.  Some, myself included at times, have thought the t(u)- part might have some connection with the thou- of English thousand.  But that seems pretty unlikely now as any etymological equivalence with Germanic thousand (and its Baltic cognates) should show up with Tch **tuu- (long vowel) or **to-.  By any account –maan/mane does not match Germanic –and (or its Baltic equivalent), which, disguised, is the word for '100' (*'great 100' or the like).  And, of course, thousand is 1,000, not 10,000.

If the Chinese etymology is supportable (and that's a thicket mere mortals, let alone, angels, fear to tread), then it would look very attractive to me.  Of course if *tman or the like has no Sino-Tibetan support outside Chinese itself, we might have to look westward again.

Ron Kim:

Tocharian '10,000' not only does not have an IE etymology, but its shape makes a native origin unlikely.  The same goes for Old Russian тьма, universally considered a borrowing from Mongolian (cf. тумен for an army unit, presumably in origin of 10,000 men).

By sheer coincidence, Prof. Baxter dropped by ECIEC last June when it was at U. of Michigan and was chatting with me and Tao Pan (a student of Tocharian and Buddhist philology now at LMU München) about Old Chinese '10,000'.  As I recall, he was arguing that the Vietnamese evidence in particular suggests specifically an initial /t-/ for the Old Chinese form.  [VHM:  I'd love to know what that Vietnamese evidence is.]   That reminds me: you might be interested in a recent paper by Michaël Peyrot and Kristin Meier that argues for the traditional derivation of Old Chinese *mit ["honey"] from (pre-)Proto-Tocharian, based in part on the Sino-Vietnamese evidence.

Georges Pinault:

I would state that Clauson's notice is obsolete. Toch. B tumâne, A tmân are most probably borrowed from Chinese. The same word has been also independently borrowed in Jurchen, Old Turkic, etc. In any case, the Old Turkic word cannot be directly borrowed from Tocharian, because of the vocalism; I may add that Toch. B tumâne, A tmân does not have any meaningful IE etymology. The final -e of Toch. B is analogical from kante 'hundred' and yaltse 'thousand'.

Gerd Carling:

This is complex. As far as I understand, the explanation by Adams (2013:318) apud Winter 1991: the Tocharian word is ultimately borrowed from Middle Iranian, is possibly problematic due to the fact that it is attested in Modern Iranian only, indicating that the Iranian words may be borrowed from Turkic, which in turn is likely borrowed from Chinese (or, alternatively Tocharian, which possibly borrowed from Chinese).

I think the safest is to say that this is an early migration word, which possibly has Chinese as its ultimate origin. There is no reliable IE etymology for the Tocharian word.

Tsu-Lin Mei:

There is no merit to *tman.  Schuessler "mans" is what I would reconstruct.

Baxter-Sagart and Zhengzhang are totally speculative.  B & S *C.mans has a *C, which is a bad idea Baxter inherited from Bodman.  Bodman has C floating around in his OC “reconstruction”.  It is a place-holder.  But neither Bodman nor Baxter ever tell us what this “C” is.

1. In philosophy of science, we know if a hypothesis is not falsifiable, then it is not much of a theory.  We had caloric substance which explains heat and ether which is supposed to be the medium through which electro-magnetic waves travel (Nature abhors a vacuum). The B & S system with its brackets and tightly connected prefix and loosely connected pre-consonants is an unfalsifiable system, and therefore not a serious theory. B & S try to cover all the bases and produced a totally unmanageable and unintelligible system.
2. What is the origin of the ubiquitous C. in B & S ?  Jerry Norman in the 70s proposed Proto-Min, and the initial consonant system of the Proto-Min (PM) reconstructed comprises six manner groups, i.e., voiceless unaspirated (p-), voiceless aspirated (ph-), voiced plain (b-), voiced aspirated (bh-), voiceless softened (-p- ), and voiced softened (-b-).  It was on the basis of Norman’s PM that B & S developed their complicated system of pre-consonants.  But Jerry Norman in the last decade of his life totally changed his view.  South Coblin 2018 “Convergence as a Factor in the Formation of a controversial Common Min phonological configuration” reports at length Norman’s unpublished papers and his later view.  In Common Min, there are only three manner distinctions; voiceless unaspirated (p-), voiceless aspirated (ph-) and voiced plain (b-), just like Middle Chinese and Karlgren’s reconstruction of Old Chinese.  So neither B nor S did any field work on Min, did not follow the development in Proto-Min reconstruction, and picked up an outdated version of  Proto-Min reconstruction as the basis of their grand theory.
3. J. Tharsen came to the Cornell Classical Chinese seminar in Sept. 2017 to talk about his thesis on 梁其钟。 All went well until it came to Tharsen’s Old Chinese transcription into the B & S system.  The graduate students and faculty members were naturally interested how these OC transcription sounded and Tharsen had no answer.  He was persuaded by me to adopt instead Baxter 1992 Handbook system.  Schuessler in his review of B & S came to the same conclusion.

B & S thought this C could be N, m, p, t, k, G etc. Name your pick.

VHM conclusion:

I do believe that Old Turkic tümen ("ten thousand", but often used for "an indefinitely large number"), Tocharian A tmān; B tmane, tumane ("ten thousand"), and Sinitic 萬 (MSM wàn; Old Sinitic Schuessler /*mans/, Baxter-Sagart /*C.ma[n]-s/, Zhengzhang /*mlans/) ("ten thousand") are somehow related, but it is not clear to me what that relationship is.  Above all, I do not find any evidence within Sinitic or hypothetical Sino-Tibetan of an initial "t" at any stage of their development.

Cf.

Sinitic topolects

• Cantonese (Guangzhou, Jyutping): maan⁶ (Taishan, Wiktionary): man⁵
• Hakka (Sixian, PFS): van (Meixian, Guangdong): van⁴
• Min Bei (KCR): uāing
• Min Dong (BUC): uâng
• Min Nan (Hokkien, POJ): bān (Teochew, Peng'im): bhuêng⁷ / bhuang⁷
• Wu (Wiktionary): me (T3); ve (T3)
• Dungan:  (Cyrillic): ван (van, III)

Source

Descendants

• → Altaic:
  • → Chinese: 頭曼 (OC *doː moːn, “Touman, the first leader (chanyu) of the Xiongnu”)
  • Proto-Turkic: *Tümen (“ten thousand; an infinitely large number”)
    • Turkish: tümen (“ten thousand”)
  • Middle Mongolian: ᠲᠦᠮᠡᠨ (tümen, “ten thousand”)
    • → English: tumen (“an army unit of 10,000 soldiers, among the ancient Mongols”)
    • → Persian: تومان‎ (tumân)
      • → English: toman (“former currency of Iran”)
    • → Russian: Тюмень (Tjumenʹ, “Tyumen”)
      • → English: Tyumen (“city in Russia”)
    • Khalkha Mongolian: ᠲᠦᠮᠡ (tüme) / түм (tüm)
  • Tungusic:
    • Manchu: ᡨᡠᠮᡝᠨ (tumen, “ten thousand”)
      • → Chinese: 圖們／图们 (Túmén, “Tumen, city in China”), 圖們江／图们江 (Túmén Jiāng, “Tumen River, boundary river between China, North Korea and Russia”)
        • → Korean: 도문 (圖們, domun, “Tumen”)
        • → English: Tumen (“city in China”)
      • → Korean: 두만강 (豆滿江, duman-gang, “Tumen River”)
  • Korean: 즈믄 (jeumeun, “(obsolete) thousand”)
• → Tocharian:
  • Tocharian A: tmāṃ (“ten thousand”)
  • Tocharian B: t_(u)māne (“ten thousand, a myriad”)
• → Japanese: 萬 (まん) (man), 萬 (ばん) (ban, “ten thousand”)
  • → English: banzai (“Japanese battle cry; cry of enthusiasm”)
• → Korean: 만 (萬, man, “ten thousand”)
• → Vietnamese: muôn (“ten thousand; all, many”)
• → Vietnamese: vạn (萬, “ten thousand; myriad”)
• → Khmer: ម៉ឺន (məɨn), ហ្មឺន (məɨn, “ten thousand; official rank”)
• → Shan: မိုၼ်ႇ (mùen, “ten thousand”)
• → Lao: ໝື່ນ (mư̄n), ຫມື່ນ (mư̄n, “ten thousand; official rank”)
• → Thai: หมื่น (mʉ̀ʉn, “ten thousand; official rank”)

Source

Readings

• "An early fourth century AD historical puzzle involving a Caucasian people in North China" (1/25/19)
• "Of jackal and hide and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/16/18)
• "Of honey, bee, mead, and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (11/1/18)
• "China and Rome" (2/24/19)
• "Of reindeer and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/23/18)
• "Dung Times" (3/14/18)
• "Eurasian eureka" (9/12/16)
• “Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions” (3/8/16)
• “Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 2” (3/12/16)
• “Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 3” (3/16/16)
• “Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 4” (3/24/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 5" (3/28/16)
• "Of armaments and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 6" (12/23/17)
• "Of shumai and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (7/19/16)
• "Of felt hats, feathers, macaroni, and weasels" (3/13/16)
• "Of dogs and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (3/7/18)
• "Ur-etyma: how many are there?" (7/6/14)
• "Tocharian C: its discovery and implications" (4/2/19)
• "Sinitic for 'iron' in Balto-Slavic" (2/15/19)

[Thanks to Chris Button]

April 23, 2019 @ 10:16 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Historical linguistics, Numbers, Reconstructions

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