The Gyalrongic languages (also known as Rgyalrongic or Jiarongic) constitute a branch of the

Qiangic languages 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 ...

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

, although some propose that it may be part of a larger Rung languages group, and do not consider it to be particularly closely related to Qiangic, suggesting that similarities between Gyalrongic and Qiangic may be due to areal influence. However, other work suggests that Qiangic as a whole may in fact be

paraphyletic In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...

, with the only commonalities of the supposed "branch" being shared archaisms and areal features that were encouraged by contact. Jacques & Michaud (2011) propose that Qiangic including Gyalrongic may belong to a larger Burmo-Qiangic group based on some lexical innovations.

Geographical distribution

The Gyalrongic languages are spoken in

Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, mainly in the autonomous Tibetan and Qiang prefectures of Karmdzes and Rngaba. These languages are distinguished by their conservative morphology and their phonological archaisms, which make them valuable for

historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

. Gyalrongic languages are spoken predominantly in the four counties of Ma'erkang, Li, Xiaojin, and Jinchuan in Aba Prefecture, western

.Nagano, Yasuhiko and Marielle Prins. 2013
rGyalrongic languages database
Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku). Other Gyalrongic lects are spoken in neighboring Heishui, Rangtang, Baoxing, Danba, and Daofu counties.

Classification

The Gyalrongic languages share several features, notably in verbal morphology. More recent classifications such as Lai et al. (2020) split Gyalrongic into West and East branches: * West Gyalrongic ** Khroskyabs (formerly known as ''Lavrung'') ** Horpa (or ''Stau'') ** Tangut * East Gyalrongic (or ''Gyalrong'' proper) The Gyalrong languages in turn constitute four

mutually unintelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

varieties: Eastern Gyalrong or Situ,

Japhug Japhug is a Gyalrong language spoken in Barkam County, Rngaba, Sichuan, China, in the three townships of Gdong-brgyad (, Japhug ), Gsar-rdzong (, Japhug ) and Da-tshang (, Japhug ). The endonym of the Japhug language is . The name Japhug (; ...

, Tshobdun, and Zbu. Khroskyabs and Horpa are classified by Lin (1993) as a "western dialect" of Gyalrong, along with Eastern Gyalrong and the "northwestern dialect" (Japhug, Tshobdun, and Zbu). Otherwise, the scholarly consensus deems the distance between Khroskyabs, Horpa, and the Gyalrong cluster is greater than that between the Gyalrong languages. For example, ''Ethnologue'' reports 75% lexical similarity between Situ and Japhug, 60% between Japhug and Tshobdun, but only 13% between Situ and Horpa. Huang (2007:180) found that Horpa (Rta’u) and Gyalrong (Cogrtse) share only 15.2% cognacy, with 242 cognates out of a total of 1,592 words. The

Khalong Tibetan language Khalong Tibetan (or ''Khalung''; also known as Rdo or Rdoskad) is a Tibetic language of Sichuan, China, once considered a dialect of Khams. It is spoken in Zamtang County of Ngawa Prefecture. Phonological and grammatical details reflect a Show ...

has a Gyalrongic

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 ...

. The

Chamdo languages The Chamdo languages are a group of recently discovered, closely related Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Chamdo Prefecture, Tibet.Suzuki, Hiroyuki and Tashi Nyima. 2018Historical relationship among three non-Tibetic languages in Chamdo, TAR ''Pr ...

(consisting of Lamo, Larong, and Drag-yab, a group of three closely related Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in

Chamdo Chamdo, officially Qamdo () and also known in Chinese as Changdu, is a prefecture-level city in the eastern part of the Tibet Autonomous Region, China. Its seat is the town of Chengguan in Karuo District. Chamdo is Tibet's third largest city ...

, eastern

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

) may or may not be Qiangic.Suzuki, Hiroyuki and Tashi Nyima. 2018
Historical relationship among three non-Tibetic languages in Chamdo, TAR
''Proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (2018)''. Kyoto: Kyoto University.Jacques, Guillaumes. 2016
Les journées d'études sur les langues du Sichuan

References

*Duo Erji ��尔吉 1984. '' A study of Geshezha of Daofu County'' ��孚语格什扎话研究 China Tibetan Studies Press ��国藏学出版社出版 *Gates, Jesse P. 2012.
Situ in situ: towards a dialectology of Jiāróng (rGyalrong)
'. M.A. thesis, Trinity Western University. *Gates, Jesse P. 2014. ''Situ in Situ: Towards a Dialectology of Jiarong (rGyalrong)''. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 80. Munich: Lincom Europa.

External links

rGyalrongic Languages Database
(CLDF Dataset on Zenodo )
Proto-rGyalrong reconstruction
(Sino-Tibetan Branches Project) {{Na-Qiangic languages Qiangic languages br:Djiarongeg