STEDT Etymon #5910
2.0 Animals and Animal Verbs > 2.1 Animals of the Chinese Zodiac > 2.1.1 Rodents
#5910 PTB *C-rat SQUIRREL / WEASEL (provisional) |
This provisional etymon may turn out to be an allofam of #2663 PTB *s‑(l/r)e(y/ŋ) SQUIRREL / WEASEL and/or #6407 PTani *krə SQUIRREL (GENERIC), but will be kept separate from these two for now.
There is an interesting Chinese comparandum.
The widely attested etymon #2595 PTB *sram OTTER apparently has no suitable comparandum in Chinese.
On the other hand, the most common Chinese term for ‘otter’, 獺 Mand. tǎ, independently reconstructed e.g. as OC *r̥ˁat / [m‑r̥]ˁat, does seem to correlate phonologically with a certain set of lexemes in TB languages, for which we reconstruct PTB #5910 PTB *C‑rat SQUIRREL / WEASEL.
As regards semantics, we refer to the often observed tendency among languages to refer to marine or aquatic animals using, in part, land animal references; cf. English “hippopotamus”, “sea horse”, “porpoise”.
獺 OC *tʼlɑ̂t/*tʼlɑt, GSR #272i ‘otter’; Schuessler 2009:21-24i *rhât; B&S 2014:0272i *r̥ˁat / [m‑r̥]ˁat; Mand. tǎ or tà.
Note:
1) Schuessler 2009 reconstructs an OC reading, but does not offer a comparandum.
2) 獺 tǎ, in addition to its primary, aquatic/marine sense ‘otter’, may also refer to a land mammal, cf. 旱獺 hàntǎ ‘marmot’, lit. ‘dry ground otter’.