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- Author or Editor: Alexander Vovin x
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The present paper deals with identification of the Khitan words preserved in Late Middle Chinese transcription in mixed language verses from the QIDAN GUO ZHI. I argue that the only cogent way for identifying these Khitan words correctly is using the up-to-date version of Middle Chinese reconstruction, and not viewing them through the anachronistic prism of Modern and/or Early Mandarin readings of Chinese characters. On this basis I provide critical assessment of certain identifications proposed by my predecessors as well as several new identifications.
This paper represents a long-needed criticism of Miller (2005) which carried over the famous discussion of Turkic böz ‘fabric’ in the micro-‘Altaic’ context even further East to Japan and Korea. I demonstrate that Miller’s arguments fail on historical linguistics and philological grounds for all five putative ‘Altaic’ families due in large extent to the faulty nature of either his argumentation or data, or both.
In this article I am surveying several possible loanwords from Koreanic languages (probably Koguryǒ and/or Bo-hai) into the Khitan language. Apart from explaining the origin of some of the Khitan words that have no Mongolic, other Central Asian, or Chinese etymologies, I will demonstrate that these loanwords can shed light on the decipherment of Khitan characters with unknown readings, and therefore advance the reconstruction and reading of the Khitan language itself.
