Prefixes "yǒu" ("to have") and "wú" ("to not have") in Old Sinitic

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My brother Denis and I have long been intrigued by the use of the prefix yǒu 有 ("there is / are / exist[s]") in a wide variety of circumstances in Old Sinitic:  e.g., before the word for family temples (yǒu miào 有廟), before the names of barbaric tribes (yǒu Miáo 有苗), and before place names (yǒu Yì 有易).  We wonder whether similar constructions exist in other languages.

This contrasts with, or complements, the presence of many ancient place names in south-central China that begin with the prefix wú 無 ("there is / are / exist[s] not"), e.g., Wúxī 無錫 / 无锡, a city in southern Jiangsu province, eastern China, approximately 80 miles to the northwest of Shanghai, between Changzhou and Suzhou.  The literal meaning of the two characters used to write the name of Wuxi is "does not have tin", which would have great significance for the history of bronze metallurgy.  Despite the existence of old stories that Wuxi once had tin deposits and was called Yǒuxī 有錫 ("has tin"), but later changed its name to Wúxī 無錫 ("has no tin") when the deposits were worked out, I believe they are far-fetched, apocryphal, and based on folk etymologies.

Wuxi means "without tin" literally. The name "with tin" (有錫) was once adopted during the short-lived Xin Dynasty. Despite varied origin stories, many modern Chinese scholars favor the view that the word is derived from the "old Yue language" or, supposedly, the old Kra–Dai languages, rather than reflecting the presence of tin in the area.

(source)

The role of substrate languages in the formation of Sinitic and its constituent languages and topolects is woefully understudied.  Although there has been good work done on the importance of Austronesian and Austroasiatic languages on Cantonese, Taiwanese, and so forth, it is scattered and needs to be gathered together, synthesized, and systematized.  Scores of earlier Language Log posts (a portion of which are cited in the "Selected readings") mention such research while signaling the need for expanded and coordinated investigations.

The contrasting pair of yǒu 有 ("there is / are / exist[s]") and wú 無 ("there is / are / exist[s] not") prefixes in Old Sinitic may be purely a curious coincidence having nothing to do with their apparent meaning in later stages of the development of Sinitic.  Their true origins remain to be ferreted out and clearly identified.

 

Selected readings



12 Comments

  1. Scott P. said,

    July 31, 2021 @ 9:17 am

    Despite the existence of old stories that Wuxi once had tin deposits and was called Yǒuxī 有錫 ("has tin"), but later changed its name to Wúxī 無錫 ("has no tin") when the deposits were worked out, I believe they are far-fetched, apocryphal, and based on folk etymologies.

    What about Malventum having its name changed to Beneventum?

  2. Richard Futrell said,

    July 31, 2021 @ 9:56 am

    Could these be remnants of Baxter and Sagart’s “loosely attached preinitials”?

  3. Chris Button said,

    July 31, 2021 @ 10:12 am

    I think the role of yǒu probably connects back to its early use in the oracle bones as an honorific modifier before nouns (often also found in a sense of "abundant" before crops). Takashima has written a lot about that role. Not sure about wú though…

  4. Jim Hargett said,

    August 1, 2021 @ 6:28 am

    The mountain name 峨眉[嵋]山 shares a similar folk-etymology origin. One 晉 dynasty source explains the source of the mountain's name in this way: 峨眉 … 兩山首相望如蛾眉 ("The tops of Emei's two peaks face (or gaze at) each other like moth-eyebrows"). According to this explanation, then, the mountain's two main peaks resemble the twin, symmetrical antennae of a silkworm moth. In a short article published long ago I tried to show that the name "Emei" is probably non-Chinese in origin. Here is the reference: "Where Are the Moth-Eyebrows? — On the Origins of the Toponym 'Omei shan'", Han-hsueh yen-chiu 漢學研究 12.1 (1994): 335-48.

    Of course, there are many old Chinese place-names that are suspiciously non-Chinese in origin (the 杭 in 杭州 is another one). But until reliable sources emerge with answers to these questions about origin, for now I suppose we can only speculate.

  5. John H said,

    August 1, 2021 @ 7:26 am

    I've lived in Wuxi for some time now. Although I knew the name literally means "no tin", I've always been a bit sceptical, suspecting that it was a misrendering of a local place name in a separate language.

    I once lived in the village of Benniu (奔牛) outside Changzhou, but don't know whether the name really does mean "running cow" or it's another local place name that's got lost in translation.

  6. Hugh Clark said,

    August 1, 2021 @ 8:33 am

    I have long been intrigued by the place name Quanzhou 泉州. Local tradition claims it is a descriptive name: "prefecture of springs," but there really aren't that many springs. Yue Shi 樂史 in his TPHYJ 太平寰宇記 explained that the indigenous inhabitants were known as the 泉郎, explaining that they were the local 夷戶, also known as the 游艇子. In an essay currently under review I argue that 泉郎 might have been the Sinitic transcription of an indigenous term of self-reference.–i.e., a phonetic rendering of an indigenous Austronesian language. I'd love to know what the pronunciation of 泉郎 might have been in the Nanbei chao era–a question that I believe is complicated by the likely local early Song (i.e., time of TPHYJ) pronunciation of the term.

  7. WGJ said,

    August 2, 2021 @ 2:32 am

    For me, the most intriguing ancient Chinese place name by far has always been Kunlun. Given how old and culture-historically important the mountain has been, it's crazy its origin still hasn't been determined – in fact, there isn't even a majority consensus theory.

    https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%98%86%E4%BB%91%E5%B1%B1_(%E7%A5%9E%E8%AF%9D)

  8. Bastian said,

    August 2, 2021 @ 3:14 am

    As for other languages, isn't the "not exist" morpheme/prefix in essence what is called abessive/caritive/privative (also: anticomitative, deprivative) in descriptions of other languages, i.e. a 'without'-marker?

  9. Victor Mair said,

    August 2, 2021 @ 5:38 am

    @WGJ

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

    https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=50257

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

    https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=50380

    "Persian peaches of immortality" (1/22/21)

    https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=50030

    Follow the links.

  10. Polyspaston said,

    August 2, 2021 @ 2:30 pm

    Coptic has existential ⲟⲩⲛ̄ (e.g., ⲟⲩⲛ̄-ⲟⲩⲣⲱⲙⲉ ϩⲙ̄ ⲡⲏⲓ, there is a man in the house) and its negative ⲙⲛ̄ (ⲙⲛ̄-ⲣⲱⲙⲉ ϩⲙ̄ ⲡⲏⲓ, there is no man in the house). They are necessary for an indefinite noun to be the subject of a sentence with adverbial predicate, and are not used with definite nouns. I don't believe they're used as widely as the Old Sinitic prefixes discussed here, however.

    They derive from the older verb wn ("to exist", or perhaps "to be present") and the negative existential marker nn-wn (e.g., nn-wn rmT, there is no man (lit. doesn't-exist (a) man). They also form part of the possessive expressions ⲟⲩⲛ̄ⲧⲉ- and ⲙ̄ⲛⲧⲁ- (e.g., ⲟⲩⲛ̄ⲧⲉ-ⲡϩⲗ̄ⲗⲟ ⲡϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ, the monk has the book). This expression is often explained as ⲟⲩⲛ̄ + the relative marker ⲛ̄ⲧⲉ, but I suspect it actually goes back to an older expression wn m-di, "(X) exists in the possession of (Y)".

  11. Victor Mair said,

    August 3, 2021 @ 7:53 am

    From Randy J. LaPolla:

    There is another way to look at this, though, from p. 49 of this paper: Randy J. LaPolla, "Sino-Tibetan Syntax", in William S-Y. Wang and Chaofen Sun, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 45-57:

    Yu (1980, 1981, 1987) argues that the other examples of marked word order, such as noun-attribute (as in sang rou ‘tender mulberry’, Qu Xia 区夏 ‘Xia District’) and noun-adposition order (he gives examples with yu 于, zai 在, and yi 以), are also remnants of the original Sino-Tibetan word order. Qin and Zhang (1985) argue that the early Chinese expressions of ‘you + country name’ (You Shang 有商 ‘Shang Country’, You Xia 有夏 ‘Xia Country’, etc.) should be seen as examples of noun-attribute order, with you meaning ‘country’. They point out that noun-attribute order is not at all uncommon in the earliest Chinese, especially in names of places and people, such as in Qiu Shang 邱商 ‘Shang Hill’, Di Yao 帝尧 ‘Emperor Yao’, Zu Yi 祖乙 ‘Ancestor Yi’.

  12. Chris Button said,

    August 3, 2021 @ 8:06 pm

    Qin and Zhang (1985) argue that the early Chinese expressions of ‘you + country name’ (You Shang 有商 ‘Shang Country’, You Xia 有夏 ‘Xia Country’, etc.) should be seen as examples of noun-attribute order, with you meaning ‘country’.

    What an interesting suggestion. Not sure if it's mentioned in the article (I'd love to see a copy), but this actually seems like it might work in terms of Old Chinese phonology as well with 有 quite plausibly being used for 國.

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