On Proto-Mienic plosive initials

Abstract Mienic languages constitute one of two branches of the Hmong-Mien language family, Hmongic and Mienic, and are distributed over a vast area from southern China to Southeast Asia. Based on the published data, this paper argues that certain correspondence patterns found between Mienic languages provide evidence on specific phonological states of Proto-Mienic initial consonants, which have been lost in all modern Mienic languages: Proto-Mienic has prenasalized plosives in its initial consonant inventory.