Sino-Tibetan: vulva

This paper attempts the megalocomparison of the lexeme “vulva” across a number of languages distributed throughout East and Southeast Asia. The canonical syllable of Sino-Tibetan includes a possible prefix plus root; modern “vulva” forms from Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages suggest their historical source was a bi-syllabic morpheme which later split into two independent roots in some languages. The author tracks the surface similarities of forms in Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages which lead him to propose Sino-Tibetan *dzu(k) mat and Proto-Chinese *tsɿ mat (and several van ant proto-roots). These roots are based on modern forms from two major southern Sinitic languages, Min tsi mai and Kejia tsɿ piet and such Tibeto Burman languages as Burmese-Written tʃok pat and Hpun-Northern (Megyaw) tsÙ maʔ, zÙʔ mà. The author suggests that Mandarin tɕi pa “penis” also shares the same historical source but has undergone a process of phonetic attrition and semantic flip- flop. Many “vulva” forms distributed across genetically related and unrelated languages of Southeast Asia and Japan appear to be related either as cognates or contact loans. The Appendix listing forms from many languages and dialects of this broad geographical area concludes the paper