The Sal languages are a branch 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. ...
spoken in
northeast India
, native_name_lang = mni
, settlement_type =
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, image_alt =
, image_caption =
, motto =
, image_map = Northeast india.png
, ...
, parts of
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
, and
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
.
Alternative names
''
Ethnologue'' calls the group "Jingpho–Konyak–Bodo", while
Scott DeLancey (2015)
refers to it as "Bodo-Konyak-Jinghpaw" (BKJ). Glottolog lists this branch as �
Brahmaputran (brah1260)��.
Classification within Sino-Tibetan
Scott DeLancey (2015)
[DeLancey, Scott. 2015. "Morphological Evidence for a Central Branch of Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan)." ''Cahiers de linguistique - Asie oriental'' 44(2):122-149. December 2015. ] considers the Sal languages, which he refers to as ''Bodo-Konyak-Jinghpaw'' (BKJ), to be part of a wider
Central Tibeto-Burman group.
Internal classification
noted that the
Bodo–Garo,
Konyak, and
Jingpho (Kachin) languages, as well as the extinct
Chairel language
Chakpa ( Meitei exonym: Loi) is an extinct Sino-Tibetan language that was spoken in the Imphal valley of Manipur, India. It belonged to the Luish branch of the Sino-Tibetan family. Chakpa speakers have been shifted to that of Meitei language. V ...
, shared distinctive roots for "sun" and "fire".
proposed a grouping of the Bodo–Garo, Konyak (Northern Naga), and Jingpho languages, characterized by several shared lexical innovations, including:
* *sal "sun" (STEDT
2753
* *war "fire" (STEDT
2152
* *s-raŋ "sky" (STEDT
3571
* *wa "father" (STEDT
5484
* *nu "mother" (STEDT
1621
Burling (1983) called the proposed group Sal, after the words ''sal'', ''san'' and ''jan'' for "sun" in various of these languages.
argues that some of Burling's proposed innovations are either not attested across the Sal languages, or have cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages. Nevertheless, Matisoff (2013)
accepts Burling's Sal group, and considers *s-raŋ 'sky/rain' and *nu 'mother' to be the most convincing Sal innovations.
The family is generally presented with three branches (, ):
* The
Bodo–Garo languages, including the
Bodo and
Koch languages, are spoken in the northeast Indian states of
Assam
Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...
,
Meghalaya
Meghalaya (, or , meaning "abode of clouds"; from Sanskrit , "cloud" + , "abode") is a state in northeastern India. Meghalaya was formed on 21 January 1972 by carving out two districts from the state of Assam: (a) the United Khasi Hills and J ...
and
Tripura
Tripura (, Bengali: ) is a state in Northeast India. The third-smallest state in the country, it covers ; and the seventh-least populous state with a population of 36.71 lakh ( 3.67 million). It is bordered by Assam and Mizoram to the ea ...
.
* The
Konyak languages are spoken by the
Naga people
Nagas are various ethnic groups native to northeastern India and northwestern Myanmar. The groups have similar cultures and traditions, and form the majority of population in the Indian states of Nagaland and Manipur and Naga Self-Administere ...
in southeastern
Arunachal Pradesh
Arunachal Pradesh (, ) is a state in Northeastern India. It was formed from the erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and became a state on 20 February 1987. It borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south. It shares ...
and northeastern
Nagaland
Nagaland () is a landlocked state in the northeastern region of India. It is bordered by the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh to the north, Assam to the west, Manipur to the south and the Sagaing Region of Myanmar to the east. Its capital cit ...
(both in northeastern India). This group is called Eastern Naga by and Northern Naga by other authors. (The remaining languages of Nagaland belong to the separate
Kuki-Chin-Naga group.)
* The Kachinic or
Jingpho–Luish languages
The Jingpho-Luish, Jingpho-Asakian, Kachin–Luic, or Kachinic languages are a group of Sino-Tibetan languages belonging the Sal branch. They are spoken in eastern India and Burma, and consist of the Jingpho (also known as Kachin) language and ...
include
Jingpho (Jinghpaw, Singhpo or Kachin), spoken in northern
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
and adjacent regions, and the
Luish (or Sak) languages spoken in western Burma.
Shafer had grouped the first two as his Baric division, and also combines them as a subbranch.
Bradley (1997) tentatively considers
Pyu and
Kuki-Chin to be possibly related to Sal, but is uncertain about this.
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
Payap University ( th, มหาวิทยาลัยพายัพ; ), established in 1974, is a private and non-profit institution founded by the Foundation of the Church of Christ in Thailand. Payap University is a liberal arts and pre-pr ...
, Chiangmai
Chiang Mai (, from th, เชียงใหม่ , nod, , เจียงใหม่ ), sometimes written as Chiengmai or Chiangmai, is the largest city in northern Thailand, the capital of Chiang Mai province and the second largest city in ...
, 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, but notes that Mru-Hkongso shares similarities with Bodo–Garo that could be due to the early split of Mruic from a Tibeto-Burman branch that included Bodo–Garo.
van Driem (2011)
The Brahmaputran branch of van Driem (2011) has three variants:
*
Bodo–Garo and
Konyak.
*Bodo–Garo, Konyak, and
Dhimalish.
*Bodo–Garo, Konyak, Dhimalish, and
Kachin–Luic.
[
The smallest is his most recent, and the one van Driem considers a well-established low-level group of Sino-Tibetan.] However, Dhimalish is not accepted as a Sal language by Glottolog. Sotrug (2015) and Gerber, et al. (2016) consider Dhimalish to be particularly closely related to the Kiranti languages
The Kiranti languages are a major family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Nepal and India (notably Sikkim, Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and Kumai) by the Kirati people.
External relationships
George van Driem had formerly proposed that the Kir ...
rather than to the Sal languages.
Matisoff (2012, 2013)
James Matisoff
James Alan Matisoff ( zh, , t=馬蒂索夫, s=马蒂索夫, p=Mǎdìsuǒfū or zh, , t=馬提索夫, s=马提索夫, p=Mǎtísuǒfū; born July 14, 1937) is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a no ...
(2012)[Matisoff, James. 2012]
Re-examining the genetic position of Jingpho: can the Sal hypothesis be reconciled with the Jingpho/Nungish/Luish grouping?
Paper presented at th
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages: The State of the Art in 2012
workshop, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 29 November - 1 December 2012. makes the following observations about the Sal grouping.
*Although Bodo–Garo and Northeastern Naga ( Konyak) are indeed closely related, Jingpho and Northeastern Naga (Konyak) seem to be even more closely related to each other than Jingpho and Bodo-Garo are to each other.
* Luish is the Tibeto-Burman branch most closely related to Jingpho, for which further evidence is provided in Matisoff (2013).[Matisoff, James A. 2013]
Re-examining the genetic position of Jingpho: putting flesh on the bones of the Jingpho/Luish relationship
''Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area'' 36(2). 1–106.
*Similarities between Jingpho and Nungish are due to contact. Thus, Nungish is not particularly closely related to Jingpho, and is not a Sal language. On the other hand, Lolo-Burmese appears to be more closely related to Nungish than to Jingpho.
Matisoff (2012) notes that these Tibeto-Burman branches did not split off neatly in a tree-like fashion, but rather form a linkage. Nevertheless, Matisoff (2013:30) still provides the following Stammbaum
In historical linguistics, the tree model (also Stammbaum, genetic, or cladistic model) is a model of the evolution of languages analogous to the concept of a family tree, particularly a phylogenetic tree in the biological evolution of species. ...
for the Sal branch.
;Sal
* Bodo–Garo
*Jingpho-Konyak
** Konyakian (Northern Naga)
** Jingpho-Asakian
*** Jingphoic
*** Asakian
The unclassified extinct Taman language of northern Myanmar displays some similarities with Luish languages, Jingpho, and Bodo-Garo, but it is undetermined whether Taman is a Sal language or not.[Huziwara, Keisuke. 2016]
タマン語の系統再考 / On the genetic position of Taman reconsidered
In ''Kyoto University Linguistic Research '' 35, p.1-34.
PDF
References
Bibliography
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{{Languages of Northeast India