The Greater Bai or simply Bai languages () are a putative group of
Sino-Tibetan languages proposed by
Zhengzhang
Zhengzhang Shangfang (; ; 9 August 1933 – 19 May 2018) was a Chinese linguist, known for his reconstruction of Old Chinese.
Zhengzhang was born as Zheng Xiangfang ( ; ) in Yongjia County, on the outskirts of Wenzhou. As and have the same ...
, a linguist, in 2010, who argues that
Bai and
Caijia are
sister languages.
[Zhèngzhāng Shàngfāng 张尚芳 2010. Càijiāhuà Báiyǔ guānxì jí cígēn bǐjiào 家话白语关系及词根比较 In Pān Wǔyún and Shěn Zhōngwěi 悟云、沈钟伟(eds.). Yánjūzhī Lè, The Joy of Research 究之乐-庆祝王士元先生七十五寿辰学术论文集 II, 389–400. Shanghai: Shanghai Educational Publishing House.] In contrast,
Sagart (2011) argues that Caijia and the
Waxiang
Waxiang (; ) is a divergent variety of Chinese, spoken by the Waxiang people, an unrecognized ethnic minority group in the northwestern part of Hunan province, China. Waxiang is a distinct language, very different from its surrounding Southwest ...
language of northwestern
Hunan constitute an early split off from
Old Chinese.
[Sagart, Laurent. 2011]
Classifying Chinese dialects/Sinitic languages on shared innovations
Talk given at Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l’Asie orientale, Norgent sur Marne. Additionally,
Longjia and
Luren are two extinct languages of western
Guizhou closely related to Caijia (Guizhou 1984).
[Guizhou provincial ethnic classification commission 州省民族识别工作队 1984. ''Report on ethnic classification issues of the Nanlong people (Nanjing-Longjia)'' 龙人（南京-龙家）族别问题调查报告 m.s.][Guizhou Province Gazetteer: Ethnic Gazetteer 州省志. 民族志(2002). Guiyang: Guizhou Ethnic Publishing House 州民族出版社]
Languages
The languages are:
*
Bai
*
Cai–Long languages:
[Hölzl, Andreas. 2021]
Longjia (China) - Language Contexts
''Language Documentation and Description'' 20, 13-34. Caijia,
Longjia,
Luren
Hölzl (2021) shows that
Caijia,
Longjia, and
Luren are all closely related to each other as part of a linguistic group that he calls ''Ta–Li'' or ''Cai–Long''.
Bai has over a million speakers, but Longjia and Luren may both be extinct, while Caijia is highly endangered with approximately 1,000 speakers. The
Qixingmin people of
Weining County, Guizhou may have also spoken a Greater Bai language, but currently speak
Luoji.
Similarities among
Old Chinese,
Waxiang
Waxiang (; ) is a divergent variety of Chinese, spoken by the Waxiang people, an unrecognized ethnic minority group in the northwestern part of Hunan province, China. Waxiang is a distinct language, very different from its surrounding Southwest ...
, Caijia, and Bai have been pointed out by Wu & Shen (2010).
Gong Xun (2015) has suggested that Bai may be an outlier Sinitic language with a
Qiangic
Qiangic (''Ch'iang, Kyang, Tsiang'', Chinese: 羌語支, "''Qiang'' language group"; formerly known as Dzorgaic) is a group of related languages within the Sino-Tibetan language family. They are spoken mainly in Southwest China, including Sichuan ...
substratum
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
, noting that Bai has both a Sino-Bai vocabulary layer and a pre-Bai vocabulary layer. Gong (2015) also suggested that the
Old Chinese layer in Bai is more similar to early
3rd-century central varieties of Old Chinese in
Ji,
Yan, Si, and
Yu that display the phonological innovation from
Old Chinese *l̥ˤ- > *xˤ-, than to the eastern Old Chinese varieties (i.e.
Qingzhou and
Xuzhou, etc.) that later impacted
Middle Chinese, which show
OC *l̥ˤ- > *tʰˤ- >
MC th-. This east-west dialectal division in Old Chinese has also been noted by Baxter & Sagart (2014:113-114).
See also
*
List of unrecognized ethnic groups of Guizhou
*
Greater Bai comparative vocabulary list (Wiktionary)
References
{{Sino-Tibetan languages
Sino-Tibetan languages