Proto-Sino-Tibetan (PST) is the reconstructed

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattest ...

of the

Sino-Tibetan language family 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. ...

and the common ancestor of all languages in it, most prominently the

Chinese languages The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is ...

, the

Tibetan language Tibetan language may refer to: * Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard * Lhasa Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dialect * Any of the other Tibetic languages See also *Old Tibetan, the language ...

, Yi, Bai, Burmese,

Karen Karen may refer to: * Karen (name), a given name and surname * Karen (slang), a term and meme for a demanding woman displaying certain behaviors People * Karen people, an ethnic group in Myanmar and Thailand ** Karen languages or Karenic l ...

, Tangut, and

Naga Naga or NAGA may refer to: Mythology * Nāga, a serpentine deity or race in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions * Naga Kingdom, in the epic ''Mahabharata'' * Phaya Naga, mythical creatures believed to live in the Laotian stretch of the Mekong Riv ...

, although others exist.

Paul K. Benedict Paul King Benedict (; July 5, 1912 – July 21, 1997) was an American anthropologist, mental health professional, and linguist who specialized in languages of East and Southeast Asia. He is well known for his 1942 proposal of the Austro-Tai ...

(1972) placed a particular emphasis on

Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...

Classical Tibetan Classical Tibetan refers to the language of any text written in Tibetic after the Old Tibetan period. Though it extends from the 12th century until the modern day, it particularly refers to the language of early canonical texts translated from oth ...

, Jingpho, Written Burmese,

Garo Garo may refer to: People and languages * Garo people, a tribal people in India ** Garo language, the language spoken by the Garo tribe Places * Kingdom of Garo, a former kingdom in southern Ethiopia * Garo, Colorado * Garo Hills, part of the Ga ...

, and Mizo in his discussion of Proto-Sino-Tibetan.

Proto-Tibeto-Burman Proto-Tibeto-Burman (commonly abbreviated PTB) is the reconstructed ancestor of the Tibeto-Burman languages, that is, the Sino-Tibetan languages, except for Chinese. An initial reconstruction was produced by Paul K. Benedict and since refined by ...

may be considered as equivalent to Proto-Sino-Tibetan if

Sinitic The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is ...

is considered to be a lower-order subgroup within the Tibeto-Burman group.

Features

Reconstructed features include prefixes such as the causative ''s-'', the intransitive ''m-'', the miscellaneous ''b-'', ''d-'', ''g-'', and ''r-'', suffixes ''-s'', ''-t,'' and ''-n'', and a set of conditioning factors that resulted in the development of tone in most languages of the family. The existence of such elaborate system of inflectional changes in Proto-Sino-Tibetan makes the language distinctive from some of its modern descendants, such as the

Sinitic languages The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is ...

, which have mostly or completely become analytic. Proto-Sino-Tibetan, like Old Chinese, also included numerous consonant clusters, and was not a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey empha ...

Phonology

Benedict (1972)

The table below shows consonant phonemes reconstructed by Benedict (1972).

Peiros & Starostin (1996)

The reconstruction by Peiros & Starostin suggests a much more complex consonant inventory. The phonemes in brackets are reconstructions that are considered dubious.

Sound changes

Final consonant changes

The finals *-p, *-t, *-k, *-m, *-n, and *-ng in Proto-Sino-Tibetan remained in Proto-Sinitic and Proto-Tibeto-Burman. However, in Old Chinese, the finals *-k and *-ng that came after the close vowel *-i- underwent an irregular change of *-k＞*-t and *-ng＞*-n. In Proto-Tibeto-Burman, *-kw and *-ngw underwent a sound change to become *-k and *-ng respectively, while in Old Chinese those finals remained until Middle Chinese, where the finals underwent the same sound change. Furthermore, in Proto-Tibeto-Burman, the finals *-g, *-gw, and *-d underwent the following changes: # *-d＞*-y # *-gw＞*-w # *-g＞*-w when it follows the vowel *-u- # *-g＞*-∅ when it follows the vowel *a and *-a-.

Example of sound changes

Voiceless plosive finals

Nasal finals

Voiced plosive finals

Liquid finals

Vocabulary

Words which do not have reliable Sinitic parallels are accompanied by a (TB).

Social terms

Natural phenomena

Qualitative features of an object

Verb stems

Numbers

References

Sino-Tibetan languages

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. ...

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