Extract
Once again Old Chinese yan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and an [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].
In a recent number of this journal, harking back to one of the late George Kennedy's important contributions to Old Chinese grammar, Paul Goldin proposes, as if it were a brand new idea, that the hypothetical pronoun *an that Kennedy supposed had fused with the preposition yu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'in' to give yan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in the meaning 'in it' was none other than "an [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or yan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] itself" (Goldin 2003). As it happens he was anticipated in the first part of this suggestion by my very first publication on Old Chinese grammar entitled "A Case of Sandhi?" (Pulleyblank 1958). I suggested that the expression ruo gan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'a certain number; how many?' could be interpreted as combining ruo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'like', reconstructed by Karlgren as niak, and an [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], which, like Goldin. I thought might be the hypothetical ...
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