Is GIVE reliable for genealogical relatedness? A case study of extricable etyma of GIVE in Huī Chinese

Abstract

This study provides an etymological study of one of the basic lexical items GIVE in a sample of 24 varieties of Huī Chinese, a lesser-known transitional group of Sinitic languages. By the historical-comparative method and phonological reconstruction, this study reveals over ten distinct etyma of GIVE in these geographically adjacent and genetically affiliated Huī dialects, such as ‘distribute’, ‘take’, ‘stretch’, ‘hold’, ‘give’, ‘pass’, ‘provide’, and ‘deliver’. This study questions the basicness and semantic stability of GIVE as one of the basic items and provides empirical support for earlier findings that the resistance to borrowability of the seemingly basic lexical items in the 100 Swadesh list and the Leipzig-Jakarta List is only moderately reliable.

Keywords

• give
• huī chinese
• swadesh list
• historical-comparative method
• semantic borrowability