ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Proto-Southern Mǐn finals will be reconstructed based on comparisons of six modern dialects. In total there are in total 82 finals, involving eight contrasting vowels (*a, *e, *i, *ø, *o, *u, *ɯ and *ɿ) and seven different final consonants (*-m, *-n, *-ŋ, *-p, *-t, *-k and *-ʔ). Nasalized finals such as *ã, *ẽ and *oãi will also be reconstructed. The chapter will also discuss the environments where these finals occur and their historical origins (from Proto-Mǐn). More than 370 examples are given to illustrate our reconstructions. Finals with the *ø, *o and *ɯ vocalism appear to have more diverse reflexes in modern dialects than other finals. From this, it is clear that those finals can be taken as indicators of dialectal subgrouping, as will be shown in chapter 5. It has also been noted that etyma with *a vocalism plus *-ŋ or *-k endings occasionally have doublets stemming from the *ɯ vocalism, e.g. chuāng 窗 ‘window’ (see example 77). How this feature came into being is still unknown. Finally, variant forms will be reconstructed for these etyma.
