{"word_count": 391, "character_count": 2423}
In a recent post (here), I showed that the STEDT etymon #601 'PTB *m/s-tuːk SPIT' contains two distinct etyma, one of which has no Chinese counterpart, and the other is cognate with the Chinese word 吐 thuX/H &#60; *tʰˤaʔ, *tʰˤaʔ-s 'to spit'.&#160; That Chinese word is not listed in the STEDT as a cognate of etymon #601. It does occur in the STEDT, but under another etymon, #603, given as 'PTB *m/s-twa SPIT'. This is how the Chinese word is presented at the bottom of the page for&#160; #603 (accessed today, July 10, 2019):Chinese comparandum吐 OC *t’wɑ̂, GSR #31m ‘spit’; Coblin 86: OC *thuarh; B &#38; S 2011: *tʰˁaʔ; Mand. tǔ.吐 OC *t’wɑ̂, GSR #31m ‘vomit’; B &#38; S 2011: *tʰˁaʔ‑s; Mand. tù.There is much confusion here. The Chinese character 吐 does indeed have two Middle Chinese readings, thuX and thuH (Rising tone and Departing tone, respectively), and the corresponding OC reconstructions in the Baxter-Sagart 2011 system are unquestionably *tʰˁaʔ and *tʰˁaʔ‑s; but the mentions OC *t’wɑ̂, GSR #31m ‘spit’/‘vomit’; Coblin 86: OC *thuarh relate to a different word: 唾 *tʰˤoj-s &#62; thwaH &#62; tuò ‘to spit’. While 吐 refers to the action of spitting out anything that is in one's mouth, 唾 is used mostly of liquids, such as saliva, wine or blood.Of the non-Sinitic forms listed by the STEDT under etymon #603, Written Tibetan tho (in the noun tho-le 'spit') is evidently a cognate of 唾 *tʰˤoj-s, as first pointed out by Coblin in 1986, and not of 吐 *tʰˤaʔ, *tʰˤaʔ-s. Tibetan loses final -j; moreover,&#160; a Tibetan cognate of 吐 would end in -g. Whether the Idu Luoba form a³¹ tiu⁵⁵ kʰɹi⁵⁵  'phlegm', listed by the STEDT under #603, has any connection to 唾 or Tibetan tho&#160; is anybody's guess. In the TGTM group, Thakali has two words glossed as 'saliva': tho&#160; and thuj. Only one of these—the former— is a possible cognate of 唾 , Tibetan tho; not both as the STEDT implies. The correct alignment of STEDT etyma and Chinese words for 'spit' is as follows:STEDT#STEDT etymonChinese cognate according to STEDTChinese cognate601 (I)PTB *m/s-tu:k SPITnonenone601 (II)PTB *m/s-tu:k SPITnone吐 *tʰˤaʔ, *tʰˤaʔ-s603PTB *m/s-twa SPIT吐, 唾唾 *tʰˤoj-sRecall that the vowel in #601 (II) was shown to be *a (here).ReferencesCoblin, S. (1986) A Sinologist's handlist of Sino-Tibetan Lexical Comparisons. Monumenta Serica Monograph Series XVIII (Roman Malek, ed.). Nettetal: Steyler Verlag.[cite]&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;