Mruic or Mru–Hkongso is a small group of
Sino-Tibetan languages
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. ...
consisting of two poorly attested languages,
Mru and
Anu-Hkongso. Their relationship within Sino-Tibetan is unclear.
Peterson & Wright (2009)
[Peterson, David A. and Jonathan Wright. 2009. ''Mru-Hkongso: a new Tibeto-Burman grouping''. Paper presented at The 42nd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (ICSTLL 42), Chiang Mai.] proposed the name ''Mru–Hkongso''.
Classification
Matisoff (2015)
[Matisoff, James A. 2015]
''The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus''
Berkeley: University of California.
PDF
classifies Mru as part of the
Northeast India
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, ...
n
areal group, a
linkage that includes
Tani,
Deng (Digaro), "
Kuki-Chin–Naga",
Meithei,
Mikir, and
Sal
Sal, SAL, or S.A.L. may refer to:
Personal name
* Sal (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or nickname
Places
* Sal, Cape Verde, an island and municipality
* Sal, Iran, a village in East Azerbaijan Province
* Ca ...
.
On the other hand,
Bradley (1997) classifies Mru as part of
Lolo-Burmese
The Lolo-Burmese languages (also Burmic languages) of Burma and Southern China form a coherent branch of the Sino-Tibetan family.
Names
Until ca. 1950, the endonym ''Lolo'' was written with derogatory characters in Chinese, and for this reas ...
, based on Löffler's (1966) observations that Mru shares many phonological and lexical resemblances with Lolo-Burmese.
The ''Mru-Hkongso'' group was first proposed by Peterson & Wright (2009),
who do not consider it to be a subgroup of
Lolo-Burmese
The Lolo-Burmese languages (also Burmic languages) of Burma and Southern China form a coherent branch of the Sino-Tibetan family.
Names
Until ca. 1950, the endonym ''Lolo'' was written with derogatory characters in Chinese, and for this reas ...
.
Peterson (2017:205)
[Peterson, David. 2017. "On Kuki-Chin subgrouping." In Picus Sizhi Ding and Jamin Pelkey, eds. ''Sociohistorical linguistics in Southeast Asia: New horizons for Tibeto-Burman studies in honor of David Bradley'', 189-209. Leiden: Brill.] notes that Mru and Hkongso do not have any features characteristic of
Kuki-Chin languages
The Kuki-Chin languages (also called Kuki-Chin-Mizo, Kukish or South-Central Tibeto-Burman languages) are a branch of 50 or so Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in northeastern India, western Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh. Most speakers of the ...
that have been identified by VanBik (2009), including lack of the
sound change Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s > ''tʰ'', lack of Kuki-Chin-type verb stem alternation, and lack of the singular first person pronoun (1.) *''kaj'' which is present in most Kuki-Chin languages.
Peterson (2009)
[Peterson, David A. 2009]
"Where does Mru fit into Tibeto-Burman?"
Paper presented at ''The 42nd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics'' (ICSTLL 42), November 2009, Payap University, Chiangmai, Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...
. considers Mru-Hkongso to be a separate Tibeto-Burman branch, and notes the following similarities between Mru-Hkongso and
Bodo–Garo languages.
*
Bodo–Garo *=''kho'' 'accusative';
Mru =''k(öj)'' 'accusative' (
Hkongso locative =''ko'')
*
Bodo–Garo *=''ba'' ‘also’; Mru-Hkongso =''pö'' ‘also’
*
Bodo–Garo *–''ram'' 'locative nominalizer';
Mru –''ram'' 'locative nominalizer'
*
Bodo–Garo *=''gVn'' 'future marker';
Mru –''köm'' ~ ''kön'' 'irrealis marker' (
Hkongso ''ham'')
*
Bodo–Garo *–''(k)ha'' 'past marker';
Mru –''khaj'' ~ -''hö'' 'past marker' (
Hkongso ''kö'' ?)
*
Bodo–Garo *–''dV'' 'imperative marker';
Mru –''diö'' 'imperative marker' (
Hkongso ''de'')
Peterson (2009)
considers the similarities with Bodo–Garo to be due to the possible early split of Mruic from a Tibeto-Burman branch that included Bodo–Garo (see also
Central Tibeto-Burman languages
Central Tibeto-Burman or Central Trans-Himalayan is a proposed branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family proposed by Scott DeLancey (2015) on the basis of shared morphological evidence.
DeLancey (2018)DeLancey, Scott (2018). ''Internal and exte ...
and
Sal languages).
Grammar
Both
Mru and
Hkongso display SVO (
subject-verb-object) order instead of the SOV word order typical of most Tibeto-Burman languages.
[Ebersole, Harold. 1996. ''The Mru Language: A preliminary grammatical sketch''. Ms.][Jonathan Michael Wright. 2009. ]
Hkongso Grammar Sketch
'. MA thesis, Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics. Bai,
Sinitic, and
Karenic are the only other Sino-Tibetan language branches with primarily verb-medial (SVO) word order.
References
{{Sino-Tibetan languages
Sino-Tibetan languages