- Consonant clusters of XIV- XVth century Vietnamese through the ancient Nom scripts in Quoc am thi tap

Abstract

This article studies the consonant clusters in ancient Vietnamese (XIVth-XVth century) through an analysis of the ancient Nom scripts in Quoc am thi tap of Nguyen Trai- the most important work in the history of Vietnamese. I reconstruct the phonology of 32 words which appeared 98 times. Fifteen consonant clusters are reconstructed by using some dialects and the demotic writting system in the text. They are: (1)*kl- (*ks-, *kr), *kl- (>*bl-), *kl- (>*ml-), (2) *khl- (*khr-, *khs-), (3)*tp- (*tb-), (4)*c’r-, (5)*ml-,(6)*km-, (7) *pl- (>*tl-, *bl-), (8) *?j-, (9) *kj-, (10) *kŋ-, (11) *ks- (>*kt-), (12) (*kt>-)*k⎣-, (13) *kd-, (14) *kh- và (15) *kn-. The result shows that Vietnamese historical phonology in XIVth-XVthcentury has lot of consonant clusters (compare with bl-, ml-, tl- in XVII thcentury Vietnamese).