満洲語の口蓋化音/š/と [š] と

抄録

In spoken Manchu, i. e. the Sibo dialect in the Ili valley, west of Dzungaria, the consonant s is always palatalized as [š] before the highvowel i, wherever it may occur. Also, the consonant that was transcribedby the Manchu letter normally representing s was Romanized by some Western scholars in the XVIIth through XIXth centuries as š, s, sh, etc., which presumably indicated [š], when followed immediately by i. Althoughsome other scholars in that period used the Latin alphabet s (or Cyrillic alphabet c) for the same consonant in the same environment, their Romanization was surely not a phonetic transcription but rather atransliteration of the Manchu script into the Latin (or Cyrillic) alphabet.
Since the transcription of phonemes of a language in its native scriptusually reflects the speakers' concept of the phonemic level, and not ofthe phonetic level, the syllable transcribed with the Manchu letters sand i denotes /si/. Thus, it is certain that /s/ in /si/ in literary Manchurepresented [š], both initially and intervocalically as an environmentalvariant of /s/. In fact, judging from an investigation of the Chinesetranscription of Jurchen words appearing in the Sino-Jurchen glossaryproduced in the XVth century, the syllable /si/ in Manchu words correspondsto *ši in any position in the cognate words in Jurchen, a pre-Manchulanguage. The Jurchen syllable *si is found only in Chinese loansderived from Chinese si.
On the other hand, Manchu had a consonant that was transcribed bythe Manchu letter normally representing š. This consonant, i.e./š/, however, always preceded the vowels other than i since [ši] was regarded as/si/ then, as a result of a sound change, *ši>si, which had taken placebefore the appearance of the Jurchen language. The syllable /ši/, so transcribedin Manchu script, appears only in Chinese loans of which theoriginal sound was si with a retroflex in its syllable initial.
To sum up, in literary Manchu the sound value of /s/ preceding vowelsother than i was [š], but when preceding i it was [š]. On the otherhand, the sound value of /š/ was [š] before vowels other than i, but [š], a loan pronunciation, when preceding i.
Thus, it can be said that conclusions on Altaic or Tunguz comparativelinguistics such as in Nikolaus Poppe's and Johannes Benzing's, which were reached by regarding the Manchu /si/ as [si], and not as [ši], have to be revised.