TY - JOUR SN - 1012-4195 T1 - On the Reconstruction and Development of *-b AU - LI Paul Jen-kuei Y1 - 1984/12/01 PY - 1984 DA - 1984/12/01 T2 - Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica JF - Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica JO - Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica JA - Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica VL - 55 IS - 4 SP - 789 EP - 795 Y2 - 1984/12/01 N2 - The reconstruction of Archaic Chinese *-b, *-d, and *-g is based on three main types of evidence: (1) rhymes in the Shih Ching, (2) hsieh sheng (phonetic compounds), (3) double readings in Ancient Chinese.  However, there are problems in reconstructing *-b: first, it is not attested in the rhyming of the Shih Ching; second, there are only a few cases indicating close contact between *-b and *-p.  The former problem can be explained by the fact that hsieh sheng represents an earlier stage than the Shih Ching and the change *-b＞*-d took place between these two periods. One purpose of this paper is to account for the latter problem. Archaic Chinese *-b is rare, as is Proto-Austronesian *-b and Proto-Indo-European *b.  Only a dozen reconstructed forms end with PAN *-b (Dempwolff 1934-38), and there are only a few cases of PIE *b in any position.  The rare occurrence of *-b is thus a universal feature. Voiced stops are phonetically more complex than their corresponding voiceless stops, and are more susceptible to change than the latter, especially when they occur in the word- or syllable-final position.  The reconstruction of *-b is partly based on the overall pattern of relationships in the sound systems. Parallel developments are shown in the different language families in this paper. The reconstruction of Archaic Chinese *-b is supported with three types of evidence: (1) hsieh sheng, (2) double readings and (3) common etymology. Some supporting evidence is provided by a comparison of similar phenomena in the other languages. ER -