Axon wrote:Deinonysus wrote: The original Middle Chinese palatals were not preserved in Mandarin, because they were merged with the retroflex series. I believe the new palatal series in Mandarin started out as a phonetic, not phonemic, distinction where the alveolars would become palatal before an i, but it became phonemic after the deletion of some i medials.
I think it would still be considered a phonetic difference since are no minimal pairs in Mandarin with only a palatal/non-palatal consonant distinction. The palatal series in Mandarin evolved from dental, velar, and glottal stops and fricatives all becoming palatal before high front vowels.
Thanks for the correction!