Burmo-Qiangic

The Burmo-Qiangic or Eastern Tibeto-Burman languages are a proposed family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Southwest China and Myanmar. It consists of the Lolo-Burmese and Qiangic branches, including the extinct Tangut language.

Classification

Guillaume Jacques & Alexis Michaud (2011)Jacques, Guillaume, and Alexis Michaud. 2011.
Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages
" ''Diachronica'' 28:468–498. argue for a Burmo-Qiangic branch of Sino-Tibetan ( Tibeto-Burman) with two primary subbranches, Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese. Similarly, David Bradley (2008) proposes an Eastern Tibeto-Burman branch that includes Burmic ( Lolo-Burmese) and Qiangic. Bradley notes that Lolo-Burmese and Qiangic share some unique lexical items, even though they are morphologically quite different; whereas all Lolo-Burmese languages are tonal and analytical, Qiangic languages are often non-tonal and possess agglutinative morphology. However the position of Naic is unclear, as it has been grouped as Lolo-Burmese by Lama (2012), but as Qiangic by Jacques & Michaud (2011) and Bradley (2008).

Sun (1988) also proposed a similar classification that grouped Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese together.

Jacques' & Michaud's (2011) proposed tree is as follows.

Bradley's (2008) proposal is as follows. Note that Bradley calls Lolo-Burmese ''Burmic'', which is not to be confused with '' Burmish'', and calls Loloish ''Ngwi''.

However, Chirkova (2012)Chirkova, Katia (2012).
The Qiangic Subgroup from an Areal Perspective: A Case Study of Languages of Muli
" In ''Languages and Linguistics'' 13(1):133–170. Taipei: Academia Sinica. doubts that Qiangic is a valid genetic unit, and considers Ersu, Shixing, Namuyi, and Pumi all as separate Tibeto-Burman branches that are part of a Qiangic Sprachbund, rather than as part of a coherent Qiangic phylogenetic branch. This issue has also been further discussed by Yu (2012).

Lee & Sagart (2008) argue that Bai is a Tibeto-Burman language that has borrowed very heavily from Old Chinese. Lee & Sagart (2008) note that word relating to rice and pig agriculture tend to be non-Chinese, and that the genetic non-Chinese layer of Bai shows similarities with Proto-Loloish.

Branches

Yu (2012:206–207)Yu, Dominic. 2012.
Proto-Ersuic
'. Ph.D. dissertation. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, Department of Linguistics. lists the following well-established coherent branches (including individual languages, in ''italics'' below) that could likely all fit into a wider Burmo-Qiangic group, in geographical order from north to south.

#('' Baima'') ossible Burmo-Qiangic substratum">substratum.html" ;"title="ossible Burmo-Qiangic substratum">ossible Burmo-Qiangic substratumref name="Chirkova">Chirkova, Ekaterina. 2008. On the Position of Baima within Tibetan: A Look from Basic Vocabulary. Alexander Lubotsky, Jos Schaeken and Jeroen Wiedenhof. Rodopi, pp.23, 2008, Evidence and counter-evidence: Festschrift F. Kortlandt.
#Qiang
#Rgyalrong language">rGyalrong
# Lavrung
# Ergong
#'' Choyo''
#'' nDrapa''
#''Guiqiong language">Guiqiong''
#''Muya language">Minyak''
#Ersuic languages">Ersuic
#'' Namuyi''
#''Shixing''
# Naish
#Pumi language">Prinmi
#Lolo-Burmese
#('' Bai'') ossible Burmo-Qiangic substratum">Bai languages">Bai'') ossible Burmo-Qiangic substratum

Additionally, Tangut language">Tangut, now extinct, is generally classified as a Qiangic language.

Yu (2012:215-218) notes that Ersu languages">Ersuic and Naic languages could possibly group together, since they share many features with each other that are not found in Lolo-Burmese or other Qiangic groups.

Proto-language reconstructions for some of these branches include:
*Proto-Qiang language, Rma (Sims 2017)Sims, Nathaniel. 2017. ''The suprasegmental phonology of proto-Rma (Qiang) in comparative perspective''. Presented at the 50th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, Beijing, China.
*Proto- Prinmi (Sims 2017)
*Proto- Ersuic (Yu 2012)
*Proto- Naish (Jacques & Michaud 2011)
*Proto-Lolo-Burmese (Matisoff 2003)
*Proto- Bai (Wang 2006)

Lexical evidence

Jacques & Michaud (2011)Jacques & Michaud (2011), appendix p.7 list the following lexical items as likely Burmo-Qiangic lexical innovations.

See also

*Bailang language

References

* Bradley, David. 1997. "Tibeto-Burman languages and classification". In D. Bradley (Ed.), ''Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas'' (''Papers in South East Asian linguistics'' No. 14) pp. 1–71, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. .
* Bradley, David. 2008. ''The Position of Namuyi in Tibeto-Burman''. Paper presented at Workshop on Namuyi, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, 2008.
* Jacques, Guillaume, and Alexis Michaud. 2011.
Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages
" ''Diachronica'' 28:468-498.
* Lama, Ziwo Qiu-Fuyuan (2012), ''Subgrouping of Nisoic (Yi) Languages'', thesis, University of Texas at Arlington
archived

* Sūn, Hóngkāi 孙宏开. 1988. Shilun woguo jingnei Zang-Mianyude puxi fenlei 试论我国境内藏缅语的谱系分类. (A classification of Tibeto-Burman languages in China). In: Tatsuo Nishida and Paul Kazuhisa Eguchi (eds.), Languages and history in East Asia: festschrift for Tatsuo Nishida on the occasion of his 60th birthday 61-73. Kyoto: Shokado.

External links

Burmo-Qiangic
(Sino-Tibetan Branches Project)

{{Lolo-Burmese languages

br:Yezhoù jingpoek-konyakek-bodoek
de:Bodo-Konyak-Jingpho-Sprachen