This book by Nathan W. Hill is by any measure a valuable contribution to the historical phonology of the vast range of languages typically called Sino-Tibetan. The research involves not only the three languages mentioned in the title, but also quite a number of related languages, some of which are without a written tradition.
The author is aware of the sophisticated nature of the field he dares to explore, and certainly knows Paul Benedict's “Here anything can happen to anything – and often does”, and James Matisoff's “In this field you have to be a little crazy”, which are relevant to the problems the book under review scrutinizes. It is clear that such research will inevitably provoke different sorts of reaction from “narrow” specialists.
In addition to the three main chapters announced in the title, the book contains an almost exhaustive list of References; an Appendix: Complete list of correspondences; and three indexes: Verborum, Rerum et Nomum, and Legum. The first contains words from all languages which were used as cognates. The Rerum et Norum seeks to show the stages of how the conclusion of the value of this or that unit was achieved. The Legum reminds the reader of the essential laws of phonological correspondences, named after their discoverers. This organization of the book will definitely help readers find their way through the numerous examples of reconstructions.
The author really should have mentioned the problem of the reliability of the data of the languages involved in his analysis. He rejects out of hand many preceding reconstructions, calling them outdated, and relies mostly on Gong's work (1995). He also follows the Library of Congress system of transliteration which, to my mind, is sometimes of little help in presenting reconstructions, because it does not differentiate between indigenous languages with their own script, and those whose script is borrowed. Thus some cognates from the languages with borrowed script might be misleading, because too often the transliteration has very little in common with pronunciation. This is exactly the case with some of the Burmese cognates.
In all of the three stages of evolution of Burmese mentioned by the author (Old Burmese, Written Burmese, and Standard Burmese) there existed the spelling -ac, which in Old Burmese was inconsistently written -ac~ec~jat. All such spellings reflected the rime -iet or -iǝt (Yoshio Nishi, “The Proto-Lolo Burmese and Old Burmese sources of written Burmese -AC”, Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 9, 2016; and Rudolf Yanson, “Sources of Written Burmese –ac and related questions in Burmese historical phonology”, Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 10/2, 2017). It appears that the author is using different spellings of the same rime as different cognates. Thus, demonstrating that -a- in Burmese corresponds to Chinese -*е- before dentals, the Burmese cognate (rhyat “eight”) is used (p. 73). In fact, the Burmese vowel in this case has the value -ie-. In another case the author demonstrates the change *-е- to -a- before dentals by presenting Burmese tac “one” (p. 236). But, again, this word should have been presented as tiet. Obviously, the spelling -ac cannot be used to demonstrate that the initial of the cognate is not palatalized, as stated by the author (p. 16) because the meaning of, suppose, -cac is [ciet], therefore it is only natural to predict that initials before front high vowels are palatalized.
Such mixing of different spellings of the same rime, which is met not once in the book, fortunately does not cast doubt on the final reconstructions since they are substantiated by numerous cognates from other languages.
One additional point worth mentioning is the consistent spelling of Burmese pre-aspirated sonorants as postaspirated. It is a well-known fact that Burmese sonorants are pre-aspirated. I cannot imagine what could be behind such odd spelling, how is it motivated. For those who do not know Burmese such spelling might be misleading. Even the form of the symbol for pre-aspiration, which is a Burmese innovation, shows that aspiration should precede initial.
I do not agree with the treatment of the Old Burmese spelling iuw, which the author reconstructs as *uw (pp. 76–7). The digraph ui (the correct transliteration should be iu, otherwise it might be mixed with the final -uy) was introduced by the Burmese to reflect the new vowel as a correlate of the just appearing -e from -iy, i.e. -o. Since the new digraph consists of symbols for high front and back vowels it could have been understood by readers as denoting some middle vowel. Thus, adding the symbol -w as a final was intended to show the rounding of the new rime, so it was just a symbolic component of the rime without individual phonetic value. Therefore, the correct reconstruction of the spelling -iuw is -o, cognate to Tibetan -u. (See also E.G. Pulleyblank, “An interpretation of the vowel systems of Old Chinese and of Written Burmese”, Asia Major 10/2, 1963, p. 23.)
Overall, this is a very useful book. It offers detailed analysis of representative data from a variety of languages, followed by the author's insights, which to my mind testify to the academic maturity of the author, as well as his industriousness.
Those who read the book will certainly approve of its dedication to John Okell – unquestionably a distinguished person in the field of Burmese studies.
