In this paper the theory of the evolution of basic color terms introduced by Berlin & Kay is applied to Mandarin Chinese. The data was collected using the fieldwork methods, color list and color-naming tasks. The rainbow order of colors does not affect the list task results. The results, i.e. basic color terms, are calculated according to the procedure in Davies & Corbett. There are nine basic color terms in Mandarin. Ranked according to the cognitive salience criterion they are the following:hóng‘red’,huáng‘yellow’,lu‘green’,lán‘blue’,hēi‘black’,bái‘white’,zǐ‘purple’,fěn‘pink’, andhuī‘gray’. Of the fully developed set of BCTs only the terms for ‘brown’ and ‘orange’ are absent. There are no real gender differences for the BCTs. Mandarin is a Stage VII basic color vocabulary language. The absence of the Stage VI term for ‘brown’ is explained using the wild-card theory. As a result Mandarin is not a counter-example to the theory of basic color terms. We suggest that the termchéng‘orange’ is the next candidate for basic status in Mandarin. There are two competing terms for basic ‘brown’zōngandhè. If one competing term for ‘brown’ (with high probability the termzōng) becomes basic, Mandarin Chinese will have a full set (eleven) of basic color terms.

The human Y-chromosome has proven to be a powerful tool for tracing the paternal history of human populations and genealogical ancestors. The human Y-chromosome haplogroup Q is the most frequent haplogroup in the Americas. Previous studies have traced the origin of haplogroup Q to the region around Central Asia and Southern Siberia. Although the diversity of haplogroup Q in the Americas has been studied in detail, investigations on the diffusion of haplogroup Q in Eurasia and Africa are still limited. In this study, we collected 39 samples from China and Russia, investigated 432 samples from previous studies of haplogroup Q, and analyzed the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) subclades Q1a1a1-M120, Q1a2a1-L54, Q1a1b-M25, Q1a2-M346, Q1a2a1a2-L804, Q1a2b2-F1161, Q1b1a-M378, and Q1b1a1-L245. Through NETWORK and BATWING analyses, we found that the subclades of haplogroup Q continued to disperse from Central Asia and Southern Siberia during the past 10,000 years. Apart from its migration through the Beringia to the Americas, haplogroup Q also moved from Asia to the south and to the west during the Neolithic period, and subsequently to the whole of Eurasia and part of Africa.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00438-017-1363-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The present study explores rhyme correspondences between Finnic (~Uralic) and Sinitic languages, taking the Finnish-ala and-aja rhymes as an example. Two rhyme correspondences are established: (1) Finnish-ala ⇔ Mandarin [-(∑ u)əˑn] ⇔ Cantonese [-(w)ɐnˑ] ⇔ Taiwanese [-uˑn]; (2) Finnish-aja ⇔ Mandarin [-(∑ u)ɑˑ] ⇔ Cantonese [-(w)o̞ ˑŋ] ⇔ Taiwanese [-o̞ ˑ]. The rhyme correspondences are supplied with ten Sino-Finnic (including Uralic) shared etymological items.

The paper reports a panchronic philological study on the official colours of Chinese regimes. The historical accounts of the Chinese regimes are introduced. The official colours are summarised with philological references of archaic texts. Remarkably, it has been suggested that the official colours of the most ancient regimes should be the three primitive colours: (1) white-yellow, (2) black-grue yellow, and (3) red-yellow, instead of the simple colours. There were inconsistent historical records on the official colours of the most ancient regimes because the composite colour categories had been split. It has solved the historical problem with the linguistic theory of composite colour categories. Besides, it is concluded how the official colours were determined: At first, the official colour might be naturally determined according to the substance of the ruling population. There might be three groups of people in the Far East. (1) The developed hunter gatherers with livestock preferred the white-yellow colour of milk. (2) The farmers preferred the red-yellow colour of sun and fire. (3) The herders preferred the black-grue-yellow colour of water bodies. Later, after the Han-Chinese consolidation, the official colour could be politically determined according to the main property of the five elements in Sino-metaphysics. The red colour has been predominate in China for many reasons.