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From my 10th grade high school world history class in 1959, I was intrigued by the evocative, mysterious Mamluks.  I was impressed by their achievements in statecraft, art, architecture, and many other fields.  Thus Mamluk is a word that is very well known in English, even to a rural highschooler in Osnaburg Township of Stark County in northeastern Ohio, but I never imagined that their name meant "slave".  Rather, I thought of the mighty Mamluks as military forces who were like knights, and in some cases were  even rulers who founded states of their own.  That they were, but I didn't realize they were of slave origin.

Mamluk (Arabic: مملوك mamlūk (singular), مماليك mamālīk (plural), translated literally as "thing possessed", meaning "slave", also transliterated as Mameluke, mamluq, mamluke, mameluk, mameluke, mamaluke, or marmeluke) is a term most commonly referring to non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) slave-soldiers and freed slaves to which were assigned military and administrative duties, serving the ruling Arab dynasties in the Muslim world.

The most enduring Mamluk realm was the knightly military class in Egypt in the Middle Ages, which developed from the ranks of slave soldiers. Originally the Mamluks were slaves of Turkic origin from the Eurasian Steppe, but the institution of military slavery spread to include Circassians, Abkhazians, Georgians, other peoples of the Caucasus, and Russians, as well as peoples from the Balkans such as Albanians, Greeks, and South Slavs (see Saqaliba). They also recruited from the Egyptians. The "Mamluk / Ghulam Phenomenon", as David Ayalon dubbed the creation of the specific warrior class, was of great political importance; for one thing, it endured for nearly 1,000 years, from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries.

Over time, Mamluks became a powerful military knightly class in various Muslim societies that were controlled by Arab rulers. Particularly in Egypt, but also in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and India, mamluks held political and military power. In some cases, they attained the rank of sultan, while in others they held regional power as emirs or beys. Most notably, Mamluk factions seized the sultanate centered on Egypt and Syria, and controlled it as the Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517). The Mamluk Sultanate famously defeated the Ilkhanate at the Battle of Ain Jalut. They had earlier fought the western European Christian Crusaders in 1154–1169 and 1213–1221, effectively driving them out of Egypt and the Levant. In 1302 the Mamluk Sultanate formally expelled the last Crusaders from the Levant, ending the era of the Crusades.

(source)

What set me to thinking about the Mamluks on this bright, brisk spring day in west Philadelphia near our beloved Clark Park?  Something even more far off and far-fetched than the Mamluks, namely, a Tang period (618-907) literary language short story called "Kūnlún nú 崑崙奴" ("The Kunlun Slave") written by Pei Xing (裴铏, 825–880).  We have touched upon the mythic Kunlun in several posts (see "Selected readings" below) and have even mentioned "The Kunlun Slave", but have not gone into detail about its contents.  You can read a plot summary and additional background here.  A complete translation is available online here and in print:

Pedro Acosta, "The K'un-lun Slave", in Karl Kao, ed., Classical Chinese Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic (Indiana University Press:  1985), pp. 351-356.

Suffice it for the moment to say that the hero of the tale is a Negrito slave who uses his extraordinary physical abilities — including leaping / "flying" over ten foot walls with two people on his back — to save his master's lover from a court official's harem.  All of this is very much in the tradition of Chinese knight-errantry and martial heroes (cf. wuxia), with touches of Taoist / Daoist transcendence and immortality, plus more recent kung fu escapades and exploits.

What primarily interests me in the remainder of this post are the implications of the fact that the hero's name is "Mólè 磨勒" (keep in mind throughout the rest of this post and whenever you encounter it in the context of the Tang classical tale that "Mole" is pronounced with two syllables).  You take one look at a name like that (lit., "mill-strangle / rein in / force / coerce"), and right away you suspect that it is the transcription of a foreign word.  As to what that foreign word might be, Professor James J. Y. Liu, wrote a fascinating book titled The Chinese Knight Errant (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), in which (p. 88)  he suggests that it derives from Arabic.

Before trying to figure out what Arabic word that might be, we need to reconstruct the Middle Sinitic sound of the name:  /muɑ^H//lək̚/.

Marcel Erdal wrote to me:  "The normal Arabic term for 'slave' is ^cabd, but Liu appears to have thought of an alternative term, mamlûk; that is, I think, perfectly possible."

Michael Bates, on the other hand, offers a different possibility:

Mole brings immediately to an Arabist's mind mawlā. A mawla was not, strictly speaking, a slave, but was expected to be obedient in a general way to his master, also called mawlā. [VHM:  Interesting — a word that signifies both "slave" and "master"!] The word means "linked;" in early Islam a convert to Islam was linked to the person at whose hands he converted. That person was also linked to his converts, but, though the term is reciprocal, the linkage is always between an inferior and a superior. In later centuries, mawlā came to have much more the dominant meaning:  mawlānā, "Our Lord," was used as a term of address to a king or potentate and also to a spiritual master. 

But in early centuries, the inferior meaning was much more prevalent. "His mawlas" is a common expression in the histories, referring to the "native" troops of a potentate. In most contexts, it would be equivalent to "servant," but not quite to "slave." It is also apposite to Arab: the troops of a governor were referred to in toto as "Arabs and mawlas." In historical translation, mawla in the two senses is often translated as "client" and "patron" in the old Roman sense.

Slave labels in all cultures tend to shy away from calling a slave a slave. In the US, the Constitution of 1789 avoided using the word "slave" while three times referring to slaves. So long as slavery existed, euphemisms like "servitude" were preferred to calling the institution by its real name.

So, I imagine the word mawla could be used as a personal name for a slave, especially among neighbors of the Arabs who did not understand the nuances of subordination.

I cannot see how mamluk could be reduced to mo – le, but mawla to mole seems an easy transition.

In the remainder of this post, we will be juggling a large number of variables that bear on the question of the origin, identification, and meaning of the negrito slave's name, Mole:  ethnicity, physical characteristics, geogenetics, history, philology, literature, and — naturally — linguistics (phonology, semantics, morphology, etymology, borrowing, etc.).

Keeping in mind the multiethnic origins of the Mamluks, let us examine more closely the bare linguistic facts about the term (variant forms mameluke, Mamaluke, mamaluke, mameluk, Mameluke, Mamluk, mamluk, mamluke, mammaluke, memlook [source]) itself.

Derived from the passive participle of the verb مَلَكَ‎ (malaka, “to take possession of”), from the root م ل ك‎ (m-l-k).

Noun

مَمْلُوك • (mamlūk) m (plural مَمَالِيك‎ (mamālīk))

1. 1. owned, in possession, belonging
      • ‏غير مملوك‎ extra commercium; res extra commercium (Islamic law: that cannot be owned by individuals)
   2. white slave, mameluke

(source)

See also AH Appendix II, Semitic Roots, p. 2075a.

Online Etymology Dictionary

Egyptian dynasty 1254-1517, originally a military unit comprised of Caucasian slaves, from French mameluk and directly from Arabic mamluk "purchased slave," literally "possessed," from past participle of malaka "he possessed" (compare Arabic malik, Hebrew melekh "king"). It is also the source of Portuguese Mameluco (n.) "mestizo, cross-breed between a white and a native Brazilian."

Michael Bates notes that mamlūk means literally "property," that is, "slave," but it was much less commonly used in the early centuries of Islam than later in the "Mamluk" era.

Moving on to focus on "mawla", Joe Lowry observes:

Mawlā ( مولى ) was the first thing I thought when I saw your word.  It is an important term in early Islam that we often translate as "client" and that is used for persons who attach themselves to an Arab tribe and acquire the tribe's genealogy (as a legal fiction) and protection. Patricia Crone described it as the way you gained entry into early Islamic society if not part of an Arab tribe.  It is a word that can also mean "master" or "patron" in addition to indicating a socially subordinate status.

It denotes a freed slave, who also acquires client status from the tribe of the former master.

From the root و ل ي‎ (w-l-y).

(source)

See also AH Appendix II, Semitic Roots, p. 2078a.

Pronunciation

• • IPA^(key): /maw.lan/

Noun

مَوْلًى • (mawlan) m (dual مَوْلَيَانِ‎ (mawlayāni), plural مَوَالٍ‎ (mawālin))

1. 1. chief; lord; master
   2. patron; client
   3. slave
   4. ally; friend; follower

(source)

Beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable whether the elusive Arabic word was Mamluk or mawla, or both, or neither, I asked John Huehnergard if it's possible that Mamluk and mawla are somehow related.  His reply:  "Both words have a preformative element ma- that appears on many nouns in Arabic and other Semitic languages."  End of that line of inquiry.

Now, if "Mole" ("slave") has an Arabic source, pace Professor James J. Y. Liu, we must ask how it could have come to be current in Sinitic by the 9th century, as is attested by the Tang story (but actually even earlier, for which see the "Historical sources" cited below).

It is commonly held that Muslim traders settled in China as early as 616 AD and that by the 9th century there were more than a hundred thousand of them in the Guangzhou / Canton area alone, and it is also said that by 1000 AD most import / export between what we now call "China" and the Middle East was in the hands of Muslims, be they Arabs or Persians. The rebel Huang Chao (835-884) is alleged to have slaughtered upwards of a hundred thousand foreigners during his attack on Guangzhou / Canton in 879.  These claims are putatively based both on Chinese texts and Arabic authors such as Abu Zayd Hasan Ibn Yazid Sirafi.  Although Hugh Clark, who knows the Chinese sources for Sino-Muslim relations during the "Middle Period" (let us say roughly Tang-Song [618-907; 960-1279] as well as anyone, questions the precise veracity of these dates and figures (see the "Appendix" below), there can be no doubt that significant numbers of Muslim traders were present in the southeast portion of East Asia by the 7th century and that their numbers continued to grow during the following centuries.  Consequently, Perso-Arabic customs and objects, and the words for them, would have entered the Sinosphere during that period.

Details aside, there is plenty of evidence for the presence of Muslims (Arabs and Persians) in Southeast Asia and East Asia during the Middle Period.


Selected references

Angela Schottenhammer, "China's Gate to the South:  Iranian and Arab Merchant Networks in Guangzhou during the Tang-Song Transition (c.750–1050)", Part II:  900–c. 1050  Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften / Austrian Academy of Sciences   AAS Working Papers in Social Anthropology  Volume 29  vienna   2015

_____, "Yang Liangyao’s Mission of 785 to the Caliph of Baghdād: Evidence of an Early Sino-Arabic Power Alliance?”, Bulletin d’École Française d’Extrême Orient, 101 (2015), 177-241."

Geoff Wade, "Early Muslim expansion in South-East Asia, eighth to fifteenth centuries", in David O. Morgan and Anthony Reid, eds., The New Cambridge History of Islam (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2010), 366-408.

Schottenhammer (2015 "Gate"), p. 3, n. 9:

"Huang Chao sacked the city of Guangzhou and wreaked a massacre among its foreign residents. The Arab geographer and writer Abū Zaid of Sīraf (writing in 916) speaks of 120,000 Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Magians being killed by Huang Chao, apart from Chinese. See Levy 1961: 113–4."

Levy, Howard S. 1961. Biography of Huang Ch’ao.  Berkeley, Los Angeles:  University of California Press).

Historical sources on ancient connections between East Asia and West Asia:

Berthold Laufer, Sino-Iranica: Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran (Chicago 1919)

New edition of Berthold Laufer's classic Sino-Iranica: Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran, Publication 201, Anthropological Series, Vol. XV, No. 3 (Chicago:  Field Museum of Natural History, 1919); republished as Sino-Iranica: China and Ancient Iran, Commodities and Cultural Exchange from 1000 BC to Medieval Times, intro. Brian Spooner (London:  I. B. Tauris, 2017).

Friedrich Hirth, China and the Roman Orient: Researches into Their Ancient and Medieval Relations as Represented in Old Chinese Records (Leipzig and Munich:  Georg Hirth; Shanghai and Hong Kong:  Kelly & Walsh, 1885).

Similar to my colleague Brian Spooner for Laufer's classic, I have written an introduction for a new edition of Hirth's tome that will be published later this year by I. B. Tauris in London.

With the level of contact and communication documented by Hirth and Laufer, the coming of Africans to Central and East Asia from West Asia is not unexpected.

Specialists debate over whether the blacks of East Asia came from Africa or Southeast Asia, e.g., 葛承雍 in 唐長安黑人來源尋蹤  (中華文史論叢 第65期 2001), who takes the latter position.

Since Negrito populations were already present in Southeast Asia from Neolithic times, while genetic and physical anthropological studies have shown that they are not closely to African blacks, the main origin of blacks in Middle Period China would have been either from Southeast Asia or from West Asia / Africa, but not in equal measure from both.  Rather, historical sources, culture predispositions, and physical appearance link the Kunlun nu more to Southeast Asia and thence to Oceania.  (see here and here)

Yuanfei Wang's fascinating article, "Java in Discord: Unofficial History, Vernacular Fiction, and the Discourse of Imperial Identity in Late Ming China (1574–1620)," positions: asia critique, 27.4 (November 2019), 623-652, has a great deal of information about the transnational trade in Kunlun slaves during the Ming period (1368-1644), including tribute of 300 of them from Java to the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368-1398).  The seemingly supernatural attributes (carrying capacity, swimming ability, and so forth) ascribed to the Kunlun slave of the eponymous Tang story and other early sources are continued in the Ming descriptions of these archetypal figures.

At the other end of the scale, we hear of the Kunlun nu already in the Book of Song 宋書, an official history written in 488 AD, in the "Biography of Wang Xuanmo" 王玄謨傳.

From the Southeast Asia vector:

During the Tang, Kunlun as people were known for having curly hair and black skins:

舊唐書 (official Old History of the Tang 945 AD) 197.5270 自林邑*以南, 皆卷髮黑身, 通號為"崑崙".

*Lâm Ấp (Vietnamese pronunciation of Middle Chinese 林邑, Linyi) was a Cham kingdom located in central Vietnam that existed from around 192 CE to 629 CE in what is today central Vietnam. and was one of the earliest recorded Champa kingdoms. The ruins of its capital, the ancient city of Kandapurpura is now located in Long Tho Hill, 3 kilometers to the west of the city of Huế.

(source)

On the Kunlun nu's extraordinary swimming abilities:

太平廣記 (978 AD) 龍三: 及海船崑崙奴名摩訶*, 善游水而勇捷, 遂悉以錢而貫之, 曰: "吾家至寶也."

(source)

*Another name for the Kunlun nu is móhē 摩訶, Middle Sinitic /muɑ  hɑ/, transcription of Sanskrit mahā ("great").

萍洲可談 (1119 AD) 卷二﹕海中不畏風濤，唯懼靠閣，謂之「湊淺」，則不复可脫。船忽發漏，既不可入治，令鬼奴持刀絮自外補之，鬼奴善游，入水不瞑。

This passage describes how being stranded on shoals or shallows is more feared by mariners than wind or waves (remember the Ever Given getting stuck in the Suez on March 23, 2021?).  If, in such cases, the ship suddenly springs a leak, then Kunlun nu (Kunlun slaves; here called "guǐ nú 鬼奴" ["ghost / demon slaves"]) are commanded to repair it from the outside with knife and wadding.  It says that they are good swimmers and don't close their eyes underwater.

So renowned were the Kunlun nu for their legendary swimming abilities that this 10th century geographical treatise even says that the name of the Kunlun slave in the Tang story is the same as the Turkic word for "fish" (bäliq).

太平寰宇記 38: 突厥名魚為磨勒.

See Sanping Chen, "Some Remarks on the Chinese 'Bulgar'", Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 51.1/2 (1998), 76 of 69-83.

Turkic Database:

Language                              Citation Form      Standardized Form

Altay	балык	balïk
Altay Tuvan	balǝɣ	balǝɣ
Azerbaijani	balıq	balïg
Baraba Tatar	palıq	palïq
Bashkir	балыҡ	balïq
Chanto Uyghur	bala:ɣ, belik	balāɣ, belik
Chuvash	пулӑ	pulă
Crimean Karaim	balɨq	balïq
Crimean Tatar	balıq	balïq
Crimean Tatar-Coastal Dialect	balɨq	balïq
Crimean Tatar-Orta Dialect	balɨq	balïq
Crimean Tatar-Steppe Dialect	balɨx	balïx
Cuman	baluc	baluk
Dolgan	балык	balïk
Dukhan	palək	palək
Fu-yü Gïrgïs	balĭh	balïx
Gagauz	balık	balïk
Georgian Urum	balɯx, balux	balïx, balux
Halych Karaim	балык	balïk
Ili Salar	ba:luχ	bālux
Ili Turki	balık	balïk
Iranian Azeri	balıx	balïx
Jungar Tuvan		balïk
Karachay-Balkar	чабакъ, балыкъ	čabaq, balïq
Karakalpak	балық	balïq
Karakhanid	balıḳ	balïq
Kazakh	балық	balïq
Khakas	палых	palïx
Khalaj	må̄yi	må̄yi
Krymchak	balɨq	balïq
Kumandy-Kizhi	балык	balïk
Kumyk	балыкъ	balïk
Kuu-Kizhi	балык,палык	balïk, palïk
Kyrgyz	балык	balïk
Lopnor Uyghur	baliq	baliq
Mishär Tatar	balïk	balïk
Mrass Shor	палық	palïq
Nogay	балык	balïk
Nogay-Karagash	балық	balïq
Ös	palïq	palïq
Sakha	балык	balïk
Salar	baluhu*	baluxu
Siberian Tatar	палыҡ	palïq
Soyot	балық	balïq
Tashkent Uzbek	balu:	bälu̇̄
Tatar	балык	balïk
Teleut	палық	palïq
Tobol-Irtysh Tatar	палык	palïk
Tòfa	балыӄ	balïq
Tomsk Tatar	палық	palïq
Trakai Karaim	балых	balïx
Tuba-Kizhi	балык	balïk
Tuha	balɨq	balïq
Turkish	balık	balïk
Turkmen	balyk	balïk
Tuvan	балык	balïk
Urum (Azovian)	балых, балык	balïx, balïx
Uyghur	بېلىق	beliq
Uzbek	baliq	bäliq
Western Yugur	yür	yür
Xyzyl	палых	pālïx

Since I only found the Turkic connection after I had done all the previous research, I now feel as though the good Professor James J. Y. Liu may have led me a merry Arabic chase, though I don't regret it, since I learned so much in following up all the leads for Mamluk and mawla.

Conclusion

We're not talking about the whole Kunlun population and onomastic.  We're talking about a known quantity that is much, much smaller, and about which we have a considerable amount of precise information.  The central figure of our search was a person with the name "Mólè 磨勒" (Middle Sinitic /muɑ^H//lək̚/) in the celebrated Tang tale, "Kūnlún nú 崑崙奴" ("The Kunlun Slave") — the focus is on nú 奴 ("slave") and "Mólè 磨勒" (Middle Sinitic /muɑ^H//lək̚/), not Kunlun (Middle Sinitic /kuən  luən/, Old Sinitic  [Zhengzhang]: /*kuːn  ruːn/).  Plus we have all of the contents of the tale itself which tells us a lot about what Mole was like, his character, his abilities, his attributes, his actions, his personality…, together with ancillary historical sources from the same and following periods.

Fiction is a part of history.  Fiction is not utterly divorced from history.  Fiction has a basis in history.  The language of fiction has a linguistic and philological foundation.  Nú 奴" ("slave") is a real word in Sinitic; "Mólè 磨勒" is evidently a foreign name borrowed into Sinitic.  These words didn't just fall down from the sky.  They weren't invented / coined by the author of the Tang story.  We are obliged to take them seriously, even though they are not palpable, physical objects that can be measured and analyzed by instruments.

When all is said and done, it seems to me that the Kunlun nu / slave was a well-known type starting already from before the early Tang period (618-907), that Kunlun nu came from Southeast Asia, that they were astonishingly well adapted to watery environments (i.e., they were not of a continental nature, as would blacks coming from West Asia and the African continent have been), and lastly, but most importantly for this Language Log post, because of their uncanny affinity with aquatic surroundings, it would not be surprising for someone who knew Turkic to give his cherished Kunlun slave the nickname "fish" (bäliq) > "Mólè 磨勒" (Middle Sinitic /muɑ^H//lək̚/).

Appendix

[What follows are questions (underlined) posed by me (VHM) with replies by the Song historian, Hugh Clark.  I've encouraged Hugh to write up his contrarian views on the history of Arabs and Persians in East Asia during the Middle Period and publish them in a reputable journal of our field.]

During the Tang period, how many Arabs and Persians were in Guangzhou?

This and the next are linked—obviously Huang Chao could not slaughter more than were there. I’m not sure if there is a way to answer either definitively, but I have long used what might be called the “factor of 10” as a rule of thumb. Presume that an historical number is inflated 10-fold, i.e., did armies numbering multiple 100,000s march across the Central Plain during the Zhanguo [Warring States] era? The 1944 Normandy landings, with all the mid-20^th century communications and logistical advantages, numbered ca. 150,000—that still leaves about 10,000 dead in Guangzhou, which is still an astonishing number.

What we cannot know (short of a find akin to the Geniza documents) is how many of those dead were west Asians, how many were SE Asians, how many may even have been natives of Guangzhou (Sinitic and otherwise) who worked for west/SE Asian merchant houses.

What was the main Arabic source for these matters?

As you’re no doubt aware, sources attribute this to Abu Zayd Hasan Ibn Yazid Sirafi. As far as I am aware there is no evidence he was anywhere near south China, nor did he mention a source, so that question is unresolved.

Do the Arabic and Chinese sources corroborate each other?

Again, as far as I know there is no reference in Chinese sources… none.

Muslim traders settled in China as early as 616 AD, correct?  Is it also true that by 1000 AD most import/export was in the hands of Muslims?

The 616 date is linked to a tradition that four Moslems arrived in Guangzhou to proselytize. Two stayed there, one went to Yangzhou, and the 4^th to Quanzhou. Problems galore!!

• The date is implausible—not for the possibility that traders might have arrived, and even perhaps brought news of a new religion (unlikely, but not impossible), but 616 is far too early for proselytizers to reach China.
• Supposing they did, the links to Guangzhou and Yangzhou are plausible, but Quanzhou 泉州…? First, in 616 the name referred to the city that later becomes Fuzhou, not to the city known today as Quanzhou. Second, neither modern Quanzhou nor Fuzhou were ports of call for the 南海 trade, so there was no reason for proselytizers to stop at either.

I have never read a suggestion that as of the early 北宋 [Northern Song] the trade was overwhelmingly in Moslem hands. However, there is pretty solid evidence that the first mosque in Quanzhou was built sometime soon after the close of, or possibly even during, the Interregnum, so traders who identified as Moslem apparently were already a part of the Fujian trade scene.

A century ago Fujita Toyohachi & post-War Mori Katsumi both argued that the massacre broke the Tang era trade links between West Asia and south China, opening the way for domestic (“Chinese”??) merchants to replace them through the 南海. However, Ouyang Xiu tells us (XWDS 68:846) that Wang Shenzhi, the 閩王, undertook improvement to the Fuzhou port and appealed to the 蠻夷商賈 to come, while his nephew/rival in Quanzhou 王延彬 earned the name 招寳侍郎 （五國故事）

It obviously is a reach to suggest those ManYi merchants were Moslems—far more likely they were SE Asians, and who knows what religion they adhered to (although Islam is plausible). What that evidence tells us, however, is that the rulers in Fujian sought to appeal to non-native traders who must have been bypassing Fujian en route to more established ports further north.

  I somehow doubt that tells you anything you don’t already know, but I thought I would offer it. What I would conclude, however, is that Huang’s army did perpetrate some kind of atrocity on reaching Guangzhou—nowhere near Abu Zayd’s 120,000 dead, but nasty all the same, and that the resident Moslem community was deeply affected.

Selected readings

"Kunlun: Roman letter phonophores for Chinese characters" (2/16/21)

"Kunlun: the origins and meanings of a mysterious place name " (2/24/21)

"An early fourth century AD historical puzzle involving a Caucasian people in North China" (1/25/19)

"European slaves in the year 1000 " (5/5/20)

"Slavs and slaves" (1/17/19)

"Cool slave / guy / tofu / whatever" (5/12/18)

"The bearded barbarian" (8/26/15) — especially this comment

"Misogyny as reflected in Chinese characters" (12/25/15)

Julie Wilensky, "The Magical Kunlun and 'Devil Slaves':  Chinese Perceptions of Dark-skinned People and Africa before 1500", Sino-Platonic Papers, 122 (July, 2002), 1-51.  free pdf

[Thanks to Geoff Wade, Sanping Chen, Hugh Clark, Carrie Wiebe, Michael Bates, William H. Nienhauser, Don Wyatt, Marcel Erdal, John Huehnergard, Valerie Hansen, Étienne de La Vaissière, and Yuanfei Wang]

May 11, 2021 @ 4:38 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Etymology, Language and culture, Language and ethnicity, Language and genetics, Language and history, Phonetics and phonology

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