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Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a
family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
of more than 400 languages, second only to
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of
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 ...
. Other Sino-Tibetan languages with large numbers of speakers include Burmese (33 million) and the
Tibetic languages The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descended from Old Tibetan (7th to 9th centuries).Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descripti ...
(6 million). Other languages of the family are spoken in the
Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 10 ...
, the
Southeast Asian Massif The term Southeast Asian Massif was proposed in 1997 by anthropologist Jean Michaud to discuss the human societies inhabiting the lands above approximately in the southeastern portion of the Asian landmass, thus not merely in the uplands of conven ...
, and the eastern edge of the
Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Ti ...
. Most of these have small speech communities in remote mountain areas, and as such are poorly documented. Several low-level subgroups have been securely reconstructed, but reconstruction of a
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 unattes ...
for the family as a whole is still at an early stage, so the higher-level structure of Sino-Tibetan remains unclear. Although the family is traditionally presented as divided into
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 ...
(i.e. Chinese) and
Tibeto-Burman The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spea ...
branches, a common origin of the non-Sinitic languages has never been demonstrated. Although Chinese linguists generally include Kra–Dai and
Hmong–Mien languages The Hmong–Mien languages (also known as Miao–Yao and rarely as Yangtzean) are a highly tonal language family of southern China and northern Southeast Asia. They are spoken in mountainous areas of southern China, including Guizhou, Hunan, Yunn ...
within Sino-Tibetan, most other linguists have excluded them since the 1940s. Several links to other language families have been proposed, but none have broad acceptance.


History

A genetic relationship between Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese and other languages was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted. The initial focus on languages of civilizations with long literary traditions has been broadened to include less widely spoken languages, some of which have only recently, or never, been written. However, the reconstruction of the family is much less developed than for families such as
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
or
Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...
. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to access, and are often also sensitive border zones.


Early work

During the 18th century, several scholars had noticed parallels between Tibetan and Burmese, both languages with extensive literary traditions. Early in the following century,
Brian Houghton Hodgson Brian Houghton Hodgson (1 February 1800 or more likely 1801 – 23 May 1894) was a pioneer naturalist and ethnologist working in India and Nepal where he was a British Resident. He described numerous species of birds and mammals from the Hima ...
and others noted that many non-literary languages of the highlands of northeast India and Southeast Asia were also related to these. The name "Tibeto-Burman" was first applied to this group in 1856 by
James Richardson Logan James Richardson Logan (born 10 April 1819 in Berwickshire, Scotland, died 20 October 1869 in Penang, Straits Settlements) was a lawyer who popularised the name Indonesia after it was coined by the English ethnologist Ethnology (from the grc ...
, who added
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 la ...
in 1858. The third volume of the ''
Linguistic Survey of India The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) is a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, describing 364 languages and dialects. The Survey was first proposed by George Abraham Grierson, a member of the Indian Civil Service and a linguis ...
'', edited by
Sten Konow Sten Konow. Sten Konow (17 April 1867 – 29 June 1948) was a Norwegian Indologist. He was professor of Indic philology at the Christiania University, Oslo, from 1910, moving to Hamburg University in 1914, where he was professor for Indian ...
, was devoted to the Tibeto-Burman languages of
British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
. Studies of the "Indo-Chinese" languages of Southeast Asia from the mid-19th century by Logan and others revealed that they comprised four families: Tibeto-Burman, Tai,
Mon–Khmer The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...
and
Malayo-Polynesian The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southea ...
.
Julius Klaproth Heinrich Julius Klaproth (11 October 1783 – 28 August 1835) was a German linguist, historian, ethnographer, author, orientalist and explorer. As a scholar, he is credited along with Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, with being instrumental in turni ...
had noted in 1823 that Burmese, Tibetan and Chinese all shared common basic
vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the ...
but that Thai,
Mon Mon, MON or Mon. may refer to: Places * Mon State, a subdivision of Myanmar * Mon, India, a town in Nagaland * Mon district, Nagaland * Mon, Raebareli, a village in Uttar Pradesh, India * Mon, Switzerland, a village in the Canton of Grisons * A ...
, and Vietnamese were quite different.
Ernst Kuhn Ernst Wilhelm Adalbert Kuhn (7 February 1846, in Berlin – 21 August 1920, in Munich) was a German Indologist and Indo-Europeanist. He was the son of philologist Adalbert Kuhn. He studied at the universities of Berlin and Tübingen, receiving ...
envisaged a group with two branches, Chinese-Siamese and Tibeto-Burman.
August Conrady August Conrady (Chi. 孔好古) (28 April 1864, Wiesbaden - 4 June 1925, Leipzig) was a German sinologist and linguist. From 1897 he was professor at the University of Leipzig. Conrady first studied classical philology, comparative linguistics and ...
called this group Indo-Chinese in his influential 1896 classification, though he had doubts about Karen. Conrady's terminology was widely used, but there was uncertainty regarding his exclusion of Vietnamese. Franz Nikolaus Finck in 1909 placed Karen as a third branch of Chinese-Siamese.
Jean Przyluski Jean Przyluski (17 August 1885 – 28 October 1944) was a French linguist and scholar of religion and Buddhism of Polish descent. His interests ranged widely through the structure of the Vietnamese language, the development of Buddhist myths ...
introduced the French term ''sino-tibétain'' as the title of his chapter on the group in Meillet and Cohen's ''Les langues du monde'' in 1924. He divided them into three groups: Tibeto-Burman, Chinese and Tai, and was uncertain about the affinity of Karen and Hmong–Mien. The English translation "Sino-Tibetan" first appeared in a short note by Przyluski and Luce in 1931.


Shafer and Benedict

In 1935, the anthropologist
Alfred Kroeber Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first ...
started the Sino-Tibetan Philology Project, funded by the
Works Project Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, in ...
and based at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
. The project was supervised by Robert Shafer until late 1938, and then by
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 ...
. Under their direction, the staff of 30 non-linguists collated all the available documentation of Sino-Tibetan languages. The result was eight copies of a 15-volume typescript entitled ''Sino-Tibetan Linguistics''. This work was never published, but furnished the data for a series of papers by Shafer, as well as Shafer's five-volume ''Introduction to Sino-Tibetan'' and Benedict's ''Sino-Tibetan, a Conspectus''. Benedict completed the manuscript of his work in 1941, but it was not published until 1972. Instead of building the entire family tree, he set out to reconstruct a
Proto-Tibeto-Burman language 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 comparing five major languages, with occasional comparisons with other languages. He reconstructed a two-way distinction on initial consonants based on voicing, with aspiration conditioned by pre-initial consonants that had been retained in Tibetic but lost in many other languages. Thus, Benedict reconstructed the following initials: Although the initial consonants of cognates tend to have the same
place Place may refer to: Geography * Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population ** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own municipal government * "Place", a type of street or road name ** O ...
and
manner of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators ( speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is ''stricture,'' that is ...
, voicing and aspiration is often unpredictable. This irregularity was attacked by
Roy Andrew Miller Roy Andrew Miller (September 5, 1924 – August 22, 2014) was an American linguist best known as the author of several books on Japanese language and linguistics, and for his advocacy of Korean and Japanese as members of the proposed Altai ...
, though Benedict's supporters attribute it to the effects of prefixes that have been lost and are often unrecoverable. The issue remains unsolved today. It was cited together with the lack of reconstructable shared morphology, and evidence that much shared lexical material has been borrowed from Chinese into
Tibeto-Burman The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spea ...
, by
Christopher Beckwith Christopher I. Beckwith (born October 23, 1945) is an American philologist and distinguished professor in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He has a B.A. in Chinese from Ohio State Unive ...
, one of the few scholars still arguing that Chinese is not related to Tibeto-Burman. Benedict also reconstructed, at least for Tibeto-Burman, prefixes such as the
causative In linguistics, a causative ( abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
''s-'', the
intransitive In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs ar ...
''m-'', and ''r-'', ''b-'' ''g-'' and ''d-'' of uncertain function, as well as suffixes ''-s'', ''-t'' and ''-n''.


Study of literary languages

Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 12 ...
is by far the oldest recorded Sino-Tibetan language, with inscriptions dating from around 1250 BC and a huge body of literature from the first millennium BC, but the Chinese script is not alphabetic. Scholars have sought to reconstruct the
phonology of Old Chinese Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence. Although the writing system does not describe sounds directly, shared phonetic components of the most ancient Chinese characters are believed to link ...
by comparing the obscure descriptions of the sounds of
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...
in medieval dictionaries with phonetic elements in
Chinese characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji ...
and the rhyming patterns of early poetry. The first complete reconstruction, the '' Grammata Serica Recensa'' of Bernard Karlgren, was used by Benedict and Shafer. Karlgren's reconstruction was somewhat unwieldy, with many sounds having a highly non-uniform distribution. Later scholars have revised it by drawing on a range of other sources. Some proposals were based on cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages, though workers have also found solely Chinese evidence for them. For example, recent
reconstructions of Old Chinese Although Old Chinese is known from written records beginning around 1200 BC, the logographic script provides much more indirect and partial information about the pronunciation of the language than alphabetic systems used elsewhere. Several authors h ...
have reduced Karlgren's 15 vowels to a six-vowel system originally suggested by
Nicholas Bodman Nicholas Cleaveland Bodman (July 27, 1913 – June 29, 1997) was an American linguist who made fundamental contributions to the study of historical Chinese phonology and Sino-Tibetan languages. Bodman was born in Chicago in 1913. He entered Harv ...
. Similarly, Karlgren's *l has been recast as *r, with a different initial interpreted as *l, matching Tibeto-Burman cognates, but also supported by Chinese transcriptions of foreign names. A growing number of scholars believe that Old Chinese did not use tones, and that the tones of Middle Chinese developed from final consonants. One of these, *-s, is believed to be a suffix, with cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages. Tibetic has extensive written records from the adoption of writing by the
Tibetan Empire The Tibetan Empire (, ; ) was an empire centered on the Tibetan Plateau, formed as a result of imperial expansion under the Yarlung dynasty heralded by its 33rd king, Songtsen Gampo, in the 7th century. The empire further expanded under the 3 ...
in the mid-7th century. The earliest records of Burmese (such as the 12th-century
Myazedi inscription Myazedi inscription ( my, မြစေတီ ကျောက်စာ ; also Yazakumar Inscription or the Gubyaukgyi Inscription), inscribed in 1113, is the oldest surviving stone inscription of the Burmese language. "Myazedi" means "emerald stupa" ...
) are more limited, but later an extensive literature developed. Both languages are recorded in alphabetic scripts ultimately derived from the
Brahmi script Brahmi (; ; ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system of ancient South Asia. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as 'lath' ...
of Ancient India. Most comparative work has used the conservative written forms of these languages, following the dictionaries of Jäschke (Tibetan) and Judson (Burmese), though both contain entries from a wide range of periods. There are also extensive records in Tangut, the language of the
Western Xia The Western Xia or the Xi Xia (), officially the Great Xia (), also known as the Tangut Empire, and known as ''Mi-nyak''Stein (1972), pp. 70–71. to the Tanguts and Tibetans, was a Tangut-led Buddhist imperial dynasty of China tha ...
(1038–1227). Tangut is recorded in a Chinese-inspired logographic script, whose interpretation presents many difficulties, even though multilingual dictionaries have been found.
Gong Hwang-cherng Gong Hwang-cherng () (1934–2010) was a Taiwanese linguist who specialized in Sino-Tibetan comparative linguistics and the phonetic reconstruction of Tangut and Old Chinese. He was born on 10 December 1934 at Yunlin County in Taiwan, and graduat ...
has compared Old Chinese, Tibetic, Burmese and Tangut in an effort to establish sound correspondences between those languages. He found that Tibetic and Burmese correspond to two Old Chinese vowels, *a and *ə. While this has been considered evidence for a separate Tibeto-Burman subgroup, Hill (2014) finds that Burmese has distinct correspondences for Old Chinese rhymes ''-ay'' : *-aj and ''-i'' : *-əj, and hence argues that the development *ə > *a occurred independently in Tibetan and Burmese.


Fieldwork

The descriptions of non-literary languages used by Shafer and Benedict were often produced by missionaries and colonial administrators of varying linguistic skill. Most of the smaller Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken in inaccessible mountainous areas, many of which are politically or militarily sensitive and thus closed to investigators. Until the 1980s, the best-studied areas were
Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is ma ...
and northern
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 ...
. In the 1980s and 1990s, new surveys were published from the Himalayas and southwestern China. Of particular interest was the discovery of a new branch of the family, 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 Sich ...
of western
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 t ...
and adjacent areas.


Distribution

Most of the current spread of Sino-Tibetan languages is the result of historical expansions of the three groups with the most speakers – Chinese, Burmese and Tibetic – replacing an unknown number of earlier languages. These groups also have the longest literary traditions of the family. The remaining languages are spoken in mountainous areas, along the southern slopes of the
Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 10 ...
, the
Southeast Asian Massif The term Southeast Asian Massif was proposed in 1997 by anthropologist Jean Michaud to discuss the human societies inhabiting the lands above approximately in the southeastern portion of the Asian landmass, thus not merely in the uplands of conven ...
and the eastern edge of the
Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Ti ...
.


Contemporary languages

The branch with the largest number of speakers by far is the
Sinitic languages The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a language group, group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family. ...
, with 1.3 billion speakers, most of whom live in the eastern half of China. The first records of Chinese are
oracle bone Oracle bones () are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron, which were used for pyromancy – a form of divination – in ancient China, mainly during the late Shang dynasty. '' Scapulimancy'' is the correct term if ox scapulae were used for ...
inscriptions from c. 1250 BC, when
Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 12 ...
was spoken around the middle reaches of the
Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest river system in the world at the estimated length of . Originating in the Bayan Ha ...
. Chinese has since expanded throughout China, forming a family whose diversity has been compared with the
Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
. Diversity is greater in the rugged terrain of southeast China than in the
North China Plain The North China Plain or Huang-Huai-Hai Plain () is a large-scale downfaulted rift basin formed in the late Paleogene and Neogene and then modified by the deposits of the Yellow River. It is the largest alluvial plain of China. The plain is border ...
. Burmese is the national language of
Myanmar 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 the first language of some 33 million people. Burmese speakers first entered the northern Irrawaddy basin from what is now western
Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...
in the early ninth century, in conjunction with an invasion by
Nanzhao Nanzhao (, also spelled Nanchao, ) was a dynastic kingdom that flourished in what is now southern China and northern Southeast Asia during the 8th and 9th centuries. It was centered on present-day Yunnan in China. History Origins Nanzh ...
that shattered the
Pyu city-states , conventional_long_name = Pyu city-states , common_name = Pyu City States , era = Classical antiquity , status = City , event_start = Earliest Pyu presence in Upper Burma , year_start = c. 2nd century BCE , date_start = , event_en ...
. Other
Burmish languages The Burmish languages are Burmese, including Standard Burmese, Arakanese and other Burmese dialects such as the Tavoyan dialects as well as non-literary languages spoken across Myanmar and South China such as Achang, Lhao Vo, Lashi, and Zaiw ...
are still spoken in Dehong Prefecture in the far west of Yunnan. By the 11th century, their
Pagan Kingdom The Kingdom of Pagan ( my, ပုဂံခေတ်, , ; also known as the Pagan Dynasty and the Pagan Empire; also the Bagan Dynasty or Bagan Empire) was the first Burmese kingdom to unify the regions that would later constitute modern-da ...
had expanded over the whole basin. The oldest texts, such as the
Myazedi inscription Myazedi inscription ( my, မြစေတီ ကျောက်စာ ; also Yazakumar Inscription or the Gubyaukgyi Inscription), inscribed in 1113, is the oldest surviving stone inscription of the Burmese language. "Myazedi" means "emerald stupa" ...
, date from the early 12th century. The closely related
Loloish languages The Loloish languages, also known as Yi in China and occasionally Ngwi or Nisoic, are a family of fifty to a hundred Sino-Tibetan languages spoken primarily in the Yunnan province of China. They are most closely related to Burmese and its rel ...
are spoken by 9 million people in the mountains of western Sichuan, Yunnan and nearby areas in northern Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. The
Tibetic languages The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descended from Old Tibetan (7th to 9th centuries).Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descripti ...
are spoken by some 6 million people on the
Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Ti ...
and neighbouring areas in the
Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 10 ...
and western
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 t ...
. They are descended from
Old Tibetan Old Tibetan refers to the period of Tibetan language reflected in documents from the adoption of writing by the Tibetan Empire in the mid-7th century to works of the early 11th century. In 816 CE, during the reign of Sadnalegs, literary Tibetan ...
, which was originally spoken in the
Yarlung Valley The Yarlung Valley is formed by Yarlung Chu, a tributary of the Tsangpo River in the Shannan Prefecture in the Tibet region of China. It refers especially to the district where Yarlung Chu joins with the Chongye River, and broadens out into a la ...
before it was spread by the expansion of the
Tibetan Empire The Tibetan Empire (, ; ) was an empire centered on the Tibetan Plateau, formed as a result of imperial expansion under the Yarlung dynasty heralded by its 33rd king, Songtsen Gampo, in the 7th century. The empire further expanded under the 3 ...
in the seventh century. Although the empire collapsed in the ninth century,
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 o ...
remained influential as the liturgical language of
Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism (also referred to as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Lamaism, Lamaistic Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and Northern Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It is also in majo ...
. The remaining languages are spoken in upland areas. Southernmost are the
Karen languages The Karen () or Karenic languages are tonal languages spoken by some seven million Karen people. They are of unclear affiliation within the Sino-Tibetan languages. The Karen languages are written using the Karen script. The three main branches ...
, spoken by 4 million people in the hill country along the Myanmar–Thailand border, with the greatest diversity in the Karen Hills, which are believed to be the homeland of the group. The highlands stretching from northeast India to northern Myanmar contain over 100 high-diverse Sino-Tibetan languages. Other Sino-Tibetan languages are found along the southern slopes of the
Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 10 ...
and the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. The 22 official languages listed in the
Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India The Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India lists the official languages of the Republic of India. At the time when the Constitution was enacted, inclusion in this list meant that the language was entitled to representation on the Official ...
include only two Sino-Tibetan languages, namely Meitei (officially called Manipuri) and
Bodo Bodo may refer to: Ethnicity * Boro people, an ethno-linguistic group mainly from Northwest Assam, India * Bodo-Kachari people, an umbrella group from Nepal, India and Bangladesh that includes the Bodo people Culture and language * Boro cu ...
.


Homeland

There have been a range of proposals for the Sino-Tibetan
urheimat In historical linguistics, the homeland or ''Urheimat'' (, from German '' ur-'' "original" and ''Heimat'', home) of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the r ...
, reflecting the uncertainty about the classification of the family and its time depth. Three major hypotheses for the place and time of Sino-Tibetan unity have been presented: * The most commonly cited hypothesis associates the family with the Neolithic
Yangshao culture The Yangshao culture (仰韶文化, pinyin: Yǎngsháo wénhuà) was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively along the middle reaches of the Yellow River in China from around 5000 BC to 3000 BC. The culture is named after the Yangsh ...
(7000–5000 years BP) of the
Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest river system in the world at the estimated length of . Originating in the Bayan Ha ...
basin, with an expansion driven by
millet Millets () are a highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Most species generally referred to as millets belong to the tribe Paniceae, but some millets a ...
agriculture. This scenario is associated with a proposed primary split between
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 ...
in the east and the
Tibeto-Burman languages The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people sp ...
, often assigned to the
Majiayao culture The Majiayao culture was a group of neolithic communities who lived primarily in the upper Yellow River region in eastern Gansu, eastern Qinghai and northern Sichuan, China. The culture existed from 3300 to 2000 BC. The Majiayao culture repre ...
(5300–4000 years BP) in the upper reaches of the Yellow River on the northeast edge of the
Tibetan plateau The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Ti ...
. For example,
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 ...
proposes a split around 6000 years BP, with Chinese-speakers settling along the Yellow River and other groups migrating south down the
Yangtze The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains (Tibetan Plateau) and flows ...
,
Mekong The Mekong or Mekong River is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's twelfth longest river and the third longest in Asia. Its estimated length is , and it drains an area of , discharging of water annual ...
, Salween and
Brahmaputra The Brahmaputra is a trans-boundary river which flows through Tibet, northeast India, and Bangladesh. It is also known as the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibetan, the Siang/Dihang River in Arunachali, Luit in Assamese, and Jamuna River in Bangla. It ...
rivers. *
George van Driem George "Sjors" van Driem (born 1957) is a Dutch linguist associated with the University of Bern, where he is the chair of Historical Linguistics and directs the Linguistics Institute. Education * Leiden University, 1983–1987 (PhD, ''A Grammar ...
proposes a Sino-Tibetan homeland in the
Sichuan Basin The Sichuan Basin (), formerly transliterated as the Szechwan Basin, sometimes called the Red Basin, is a lowland region in southwestern China. It is surrounded by mountains on all sides and is drained by the upper Yangtze River and its tributar ...
before 9000 years BP, with an associated taxonomy reflecting various outward migrations over time, first into northeast India, and later north (the predecessors of Chinese and Tibetic) and south (Karen and Lolo–Burmese). *
Roger Blench Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and w ...
argues that agriculture cannot be reconstructed for Proto-Sino-Tibetan. Blench and Mark Post have proposed that the earliest speakers of Sino-Tibetan were not farmers but highly diverse foragers in the eastern foothills of the
Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 10 ...
in
Northeast India , native_name_lang = mni , settlement_type = , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = , motto = , image_map = Northeast india.png , ...
, the area of greatest diversity, around 9000 years BP. They then envisage a series of migrations over the following millennia, with Sinitic representing one of the groups that migrated into China. Zhang et al. (2019) performed a computational phylogenetic analysis of 109 Sino-Tibetan languages to suggest a Sino-Tibetan homeland in northern China near the Yellow River basin. The study further suggests that there was an initial major split between the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages approximately 4,200 to 7,800 years ago (with an average of 5,900 years ago), associated with the Yangshao and/or Majiayao cultures. Sagart et al. (2019) performed another phylogenetic analysis based on different data and methods to arrive at the same conclusions with respect to the homeland and divergence model but proposed an earlier root age of approximately 7,200 years ago, associating its origin with millet farmers of the late
Cishan culture The Cishan culture (6500–5000 BC) was a Neolithic culture in northern China, on the eastern foothills of the Taihang Mountains. The Cishan culture was based on the farming of broomcorn millet, the cultivation of which on one site has been d ...
and early Yangshao culture.


Classification

Several low-level branches of the family, particularly Lolo-Burmese, have been securely reconstructed, but in the absence of a secure reconstruction of a Sino-Tibetan
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 unattes ...
, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. Thus, a conservative classification of Sino-Tibetan/Tibeto-Burman would posit several dozen small coordinate families and
isolates {{About, , the linguistics term dealing with languages unrelated to any other language in the world, Language isolate, other uses, Isolate (disambiguation){{!Isolate Isolates is a term used in developmental psychology and family studies, to describ ...
; attempts at subgrouping are either geographic conveniences or hypotheses for further research.


Li (1937)

In a survey in the 1937 ''Chinese Yearbook'',
Li Fang-Kuei Li Fang-Kuei ( Chinese: 李方桂, Cantonese: Lei5 Fong1 Gwai3 ej˩˨ fɔŋ˦ gʷaj˧, Mandarin: Lǐ Fāngguì i˨ faŋ˦ gʷej˥˩ 20 August 190221 August 1987) was a Chinese linguist known for his studies of the varieties of Chinese, his r ...
described the family as consisting of four branches: :Indo-Chinese (Sino-Tibetan) :* Chinese :* Tai (later expanded to Kam–Tai) :* Miao–Yao (Hmong–Mien) :*
Tibeto-Burman The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spea ...
Tai and Miao–Yao were included because they shared isolating typology, tone systems and some vocabulary with Chinese. At the time, tone was considered so fundamental to language that tonal typology could be used as the basis for classification. In the Western scholarly community, these languages are no longer included in Sino-Tibetan, with the similarities attributed to diffusion across the
Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area is a sprachbund including languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Kra–Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic families spoken in an area stretching from Thailand to China. Neighbou ...
, especially since . The exclusions of Vietnamese by Kuhn and of Tai and Miao–Yao by Benedict were vindicated in 1954 when
André-Georges Haudricourt André-Georges Haudricourt (; 17 January 1911 – 20 August 1996) was a French botanist, anthropologist and linguist. Biography He grew up on his parents' farm, in a remote area of Picardy. From his early childhood, he was curious about technol ...
demonstrated that the tones of Vietnamese were reflexes of final consonants from Proto-Mon–Khmer. Many Chinese linguists continue to follow Li's classification. However, this arrangement remains problematic. For example, there is disagreement over whether to include the entire Kra–Dai family or just Kam–Tai (Zhuang–Dong excludes the
Kra languages The Kra languages (also known as the Geyang 仡央 or Kadai languages) are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family spoken in southern China (Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan) and in northern Vietnam (Hà Giang Province). Names The name ''Kra'' comes ...
), because the Chinese cognates that form the basis of the putative relationship are not found in all branches of the family and have not been reconstructed for the family as a whole. In addition, Kam–Tai itself no longer appears to be a valid node within Kra–Dai.


Benedict (1942)

Benedict overtly excluded Vietnamese (placing it in Mon–Khmer) as well as Hmong–Mien and Kra–Dai (placing them in
Austro-Tai The Austro-Tai languages, sometimes also Austro-Thai languages, are a proposed language family that comprises the Austronesian languages and the Kra–Dai languages. Related proposals include Austric ( Wilhelm Schmidt in 1906) and Sino-Austron ...
). He otherwise retained the outlines of Conrady's Indo-Chinese classification, though putting
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 la ...
in an intermediate position: :Sino-Tibetan :* Chinese :* Tibeto-Karen :** Karen :** Tibeto-Burman


Shafer (1955)

Shafer criticized the division of the family into
Tibeto-Burman The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spea ...
and Sino-Daic branches, which he attributed to the different groups of languages studied by Konow and other scholars in
British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
on the one hand and by
Henri Maspero Henri Paul Gaston Maspero (15 December 188317 March 1945) was a French sinologist and professor who contributed to a variety of topics relating to East Asia. Maspero is best known for his pioneering studies of Daoism. He was imprisoned by the Naz ...
and other French linguists on the other. He proposed a detailed classification, with six top-level divisions: :Sino-Tibetan :* Sinitic :* Daic :* Bodic :* Burmic :* Baric :* Karenic Shafer was sceptical of the inclusion of Daic, but after meeting Maspero in Paris decided to retain it pending a definitive resolution of the question.


Matisoff (1978, 2015)

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 ...
abandoned Benedict's Tibeto-Karen hypothesis: :Sino-Tibetan :* Chinese :* Tibeto-Burman Some more-recent Western scholars, such as Bradley (1997) and La Polla (2003), have retained Matisoff's two primary branches, though differing in the details of Tibeto-Burman. However, Jacques (2006) notes, "comparative work has never been able to put forth evidence for common innovations to all the Tibeto-Burman languages (the Sino-Tibetan languages to the exclusion of Chinese)" and that "it no longer seems justified to treat Chinese as the first branching of the Sino-Tibetan family," because the morphological divide between Chinese and Tibeto-Burman has been bridged by recent reconstructions of
Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 12 ...
. The internal structure of Sino-Tibetan has been tentatively revised as 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. ...
by Matisoff (2015: xxxii, 1123–1127) in the final print release of the ''
Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus The ''Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus'' (commonly abbreviated ''STEDT'') was a linguistics research project hosted at the University of California at Berkeley. The project, which focused on Sino-Tibetan historical linguistics, st ...
'' (STEDT).Matisoff, James A. 2015
''The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus''
. Berkeley: University of California.
PDF
)
Bruhn, Daniel; Lowe, John; Mortensen, David; Yu, Dominic (2015). ''Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus Database Software''. Software, UC Berkeley Dash. Matisoff (2015: xxxi) acknowledges that the position of Chinese as either a sister branch of Tibeto-Burman or a branch within Tibeto-Burman remains an open question. ;Sino-Tibetan *Chinese *Tibeto-Burman **Northeast Indian areal group ***"North Assam" **** Tani ****
Deng Deng may refer to: * Deng (company), is a Danish engineering, electrical, solar power and sales company in Accra, Ghana * Deng (state), an ancient Chinese state * Deng (Chinese surname), originated from the state ** Deng Xiaoping, paramount leader ...
***
Kuki-Chin 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 th ...
***"
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 Ri ...
" areal group ****Central Naga ( Ao group) **** Angami–Pochuri group **** Zeme group ****
Tangkhulic The Tangkhulic and Tangkhul languages are a group of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken mostly in northeastern Manipur, India. Conventionally classified as "Naga," they are not clearly related to other Naga languages, and (with Maringic) are conserva ...
*** Meitei ***Mikir / Karbi *** Mru ***
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 ...
**** Bodo–Garo ****Northern Naga / Konyakian **** Jingpho–Asakian **Himalayish *** Tibeto-Kanauri **** Western Himalayish **** Bodic **** Lepcha **** Tamangish ****
Dhimal The Dhimal or Dhemal(in Nepali:धिमाल) are an Kirati ethnic group residing in the eastern Terai of Nepal. They are a Sino-Tibetan-speaking ethnic group of the eastern Terai. They mainly reside in Morang and Jhapa districts of Nepal a ...
***
Newar Newar (; new, नेवार, endonym: Newa; new, नेवा, Pracalit script:) or Nepami, are the historical inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley and its surrounding areas in Nepal and the creators of its historic heritage and civilisat ...
***
Kiranti The Kirati people, also spelled as Kirant or Kiranti, are a Sino-Tibetan ethnic group. They are peoples of the Himalayas, mostly the Eastern Himalaya extending eastward from Nepal to North East India (predominantly in the Indian state of Sikkim ...
***
Kham Kham (; ) is one of the three traditional Tibetan regions, the others being Amdo in the northeast, and Ü-Tsang in central Tibet. The original residents of Kham are called Khampas (), and were governed locally by chieftains and monasteries. Kham ...
- Magar- Chepang **Tangut-Qiang *** Tangut *** Qiangic *** Rgyalrongic ** Nungic ** Tujia **Lolo-Burmese–Naxi *** Lolo-Burmese *** Naxi ** Karenic ** Bai


Starostin (1996)

Sergei Starostin proposed that both 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 ...
and Chinese are divergent from a "core" Tibeto-Burman of at least Bodish, Lolo-Burmese, Tamangic, Jinghpaw, Kukish, and Karen (other families were not analysed) in a hypothesis called ''Sino-Kiranti''. The proposal takes two forms: that Sinitic and Kiranti are themselves a valid node or that the two are not demonstrably close, so that Sino-Tibetan has three primary branches: :Sino-Tibetan (version 1) :* Sino-Kiranti :* Tibeto-Burman :Sino-Tibetan (version 2) :* Chinese :* Kiranti :* Tibeto-Burman


Van Driem (1997, 2001)

Van Driem, like Shafer, rejects a primary split between Chinese and the rest, suggesting that Chinese owes its traditional privileged place in Sino-Tibetan to historical, typological, and cultural, rather than linguistic, criteria. He calls the entire family "Tibeto-Burman", a name he says has historical primacy, but other linguists who reject a privileged position for Chinese nevertheless continue to call the resulting family "Sino-Tibetan". Like Matisoff, van Driem acknowledges that the relationships of the "Kuki–Naga" languages ( Kuki,
Mizo Mizo may refer to: *Mizo people, an ethnic group native to north-eastern India, western Myanmar (Burma) and eastern Bangladesh * Mizo language, a language spoken by the Mizo people *Mizoram, a state in Northeast India *Lusei people, an ethnic group ...
, Meitei, etc.), both amongst each other and to the other languages of the family, remain unclear. However, rather than placing them in a geographic grouping, as Matisoff does, van Driem leaves them unclassified. He has proposed several hypotheses, including the reclassification of Chinese to a Sino-Bodic subgroup: :Tibeto-Burman :* Western (Baric, Brahmaputran, or
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 ...
):
Dhimal The Dhimal or Dhemal(in Nepali:धिमाल) are an Kirati ethnic group residing in the eastern Terai of Nepal. They are a Sino-Tibetan-speaking ethnic group of the eastern Terai. They mainly reside in Morang and Jhapa districts of Nepal a ...
, Bodo–Garo, Konyak, Kachin–Luic :* Eastern :** Northern (Sino-Bodic) :*** Northwestern (Bodic): Bodish, Kirantic,
West Himalayish The West Himalayish languages, also known as Almora and Kanauric, are a family of Sino-Tibetan languages centered in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and across the border into Nepal. LaPolla (2003) proposes that the West Himalayish languages may b ...
, Tamangic and several isolates :*** Northeastern (
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 ...
) :** Southern :*** Southwestern: Lolo-Burmese, Karenic :*** Southeastern: Qiangic, Jiarongic :*a number of other small families and isolates as primary branches (
Newar Newar (; new, नेवार, endonym: Newa; new, नेवा, Pracalit script:) or Nepami, are the historical inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley and its surrounding areas in Nepal and the creators of its historic heritage and civilisat ...
, Nungish, Magaric, ''etc.'') Van Driem points to two main pieces of evidence establishing a special relationship between Sinitic and Bodic and thus placing Chinese within the Tibeto-Burman family. First, there are a number of parallels between the morphology of
Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 12 ...
and the modern Bodic languages. Second, there is an impressive body of lexical cognates between the Chinese and Bodic languages, represented by the Kirantic language Limbu. In response, Matisoff notes that the existence of shared lexical material only serves to establish an absolute relationship between two language families, not their relative relationship to one another. Although some cognate sets presented by van Driem are confined to Chinese and Bodic, many others are found in Sino-Tibetan languages generally and thus do not serve as evidence for a special relationship between Chinese and Bodic.


Van Driem (2001, 2014)

George van Driem George "Sjors" van Driem (born 1957) is a Dutch linguist associated with the University of Bern, where he is the chair of Historical Linguistics and directs the Linguistics Institute. Education * Leiden University, 1983–1987 (PhD, ''A Grammar ...
(2001) has also proposed a "fallen leaves" model that lists dozens of well-established low-level groups while remaining agnostic about intermediate groupings of these. In the most recent version (van Driem 2014), 42 groups are identified (with individual languages highlighted in ''italics''): * Bodish *''
Tshangla Tshangla is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Bodish branch closely related to the Tibetic languages. Tshangla is primarily spoken in Eastern Bhutan and acts as a lingua franca in the region; it is also spoken in the adjoining Tawang tract in the I ...
'' *
West Himalayish The West Himalayish languages, also known as Almora and Kanauric, are a family of Sino-Tibetan languages centered in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and across the border into Nepal. LaPolla (2003) proposes that the West Himalayish languages may b ...
* Tamangic * Newaric *
Kiranti The Kirati people, also spelled as Kirant or Kiranti, are a Sino-Tibetan ethnic group. They are peoples of the Himalayas, mostly the Eastern Himalaya extending eastward from Nepal to North East India (predominantly in the Indian state of Sikkim ...
*'' Lepcha'' * Magaric * Chepangic * Raji–Raute *'' Dura'' *'' 'Ole'' *'' Gongduk'' *'' Lhokpu'' * Siangic *
Kho-Bwa The Kho-Bwa languages, also known as Bugunish and Kamengic, are a small family of languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India. The name ''Kho-Bwa'' was originally proposed by George van Driem (2001). It is based on the reconstructed ...
* Hrusish * Digarish * Midžuish * Tani * Dhimalish * Brahmaputran (Sal) *''
Pyu Pyu, also spelled Phyu or Phyuu, United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. is a town in Taungoo District, Bago Region in Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions requ ...
'' * Ao * Angami–Pochuri *Tangkhul languages, Tangkhul * Zeme *''Meithei language, Meithei'' *Kukish languages, Kukish *'' Karbi'' * Mru *
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 ...
*Bai languages, Bai * Tujia * Lolo-Burmese * Qiangic *Ersu languages, Ersuish *Naic languages, Naic * Rgyalrongic *Kachin–Luic languages, Kachinic * Nungish * Karenic van Driem (2007) also suggested that the Sino-Tibetan language family be renamed "Trans-Himalayan", which he considers to be more neutral. Orlandi (2021) also considers the van Driem's Trans-Himalayan fallen leaves model to be more plausible than the bifurcate classification of Sino-Tibetan being split into Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman.


Blench and Post (2014)

Roger Blench Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and w ...
and Mark W. Post have criticized the applicability of conventional Sino-Tibetan classification schemes to minor languages lacking an extensive written history (unlike Chinese, Tibetic, and Burmese). They find that the evidence for the subclassification or even ST affiliation at all of several minor languages of northeastern India, in particular, is either poor or absent altogether. In their view, many such languages would for now be best considered unclassified, or "internal isolates" within the family. They propose a provisional classification of the remaining languages: :Sino-Tibetan :* Karbi (Mikir) :*Mruic languages, Mruish :*(unnamed group) :**(unnamed group) :*** Tani :***Nagish: Ao, Kuki-Chin languages, Kuki-Chin, Tangkhul languages, Tangkhul, Zeme, Angami–Pochuri and Meitei :**(unnamed group) :***Western: Gongduk, 'Ole, Mahakiranti languages, Mahakiranti, Lepcha, Magaric languages, Kham–Magaric–Chepang, Tamangic, and Lhokpu :*** Karenic :***Sal languages, Jingpho–Konyak–Bodo :***Eastern :**** Tujia :****Macro-Bai languages, Bai :****Northern Qiang language, Northern Qiangic :****Southern Qiang language, Southern Qiangic :****(unnamed group) :*****Varieties of Chinese, Chinese (Sinitic) :***** Lolo-Burmese–Naic languages, Naic :***** Bodish :**** Nungish Following that, because they propose that the three best-known branches may actually be much closer related to each other than they are to "minor" Sino-Tibetan languages, Blench and Post argue that "Sino-Tibetan" or "Tibeto-Burman" are inappropriate names for a family whose earliest divergences led to different languages altogether. They support the proposed name "Trans-Himalayan".


Menghan Zhang, Shi Yan, et al. (2019)

A team of researchers led by Pan Wuyun and Jin Li proposed the following phylogenetic tree in 2019, based on lexical items: *Sinitic *Tibeto-Burman **(unnamed group) ***Karenic ***Kuki-Chin–Naga **(unnamed group) ***Sal ***(unnamed group) ****(unnamed group) *****Digarish *****Tani ****(unnamed group) *****(unnamed group) ******Himalayish ******Nungish *****(unnamed group) ******Kinauri ******(unnamed group) *******(unnamed group) ********Gurung-Tamang ********Bodish *******(unnamed group) ********(unnamed group) *********Naic *********Ersuish, Qiangic, Rgyalrongic ********Lolo-Burmese


Typology


Word order

Except for the Chinese, Greater Bai languages, Bai, Karenic, and Mruic languages, Mruic languages, the usual word order in Sino-Tibetan languages is subject–object–verb, object–verb. However, Chinese and Bai differ from almost all other subject–verb–object languages in the world in placing relative clauses before the nouns they modify. Most scholars believe SOV to be the original order, with Chinese, Karen and Bai having acquired SVO order due to the influence of neighbouring languages in the
Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area is a sprachbund including languages of the Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien (or Miao–Yao), Kra–Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic families spoken in an area stretching from Thailand to China. Neighbou ...
. This has been criticized as being insufficiently corroborated by Djamouri et al. 2007, who instead reconstruct a VO order for Proto-Sino-Tibetan.


Morphology

Sino-Tibetan is structurally one of the most diverse language families in the world, including all of the gradation of morphological complexity from isolating ( Lolo-Burmese, Tujia) to polysynthetic (Gyalrongic languages, Gyalrongic,
Kiranti The Kirati people, also spelled as Kirant or Kiranti, are a Sino-Tibetan ethnic group. They are peoples of the Himalayas, mostly the Eastern Himalaya extending eastward from Nepal to North East India (predominantly in the Indian state of Sikkim ...
) languages. While
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 ...
languages are normally taken to be a prototypical example of the Isolating language, isolating morphological type, southern Chinese languages express this trait far more strongly than northern Chinese languages do. Hodgson had in 1849 noted a dichotomy between "pronominalized" (Synthetic language, inflecting) languages, stretching across the Himalayas from Himachal Pradesh to eastern
Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is ma ...
, and "non-pronominalized" ( isolating) languages. Konow (1909) explained the pronominalized languages as due to a Munda languages, Munda substratum, with the idea that Indo-Chinese languages were essentially isolating as well as tonal. Maspero later attributed the putative substratum to Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan. It was not until Benedict that the inflectional systems of these languages were recognized as (partially) native to the family. Scholars disagree over the extent to which the agreement system in the various languages can be reconstructed for the
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 unattes ...
. In morphosyntactic alignment, many Tibeto-Burman languages have ergative case, ergative and/or anti-ergative (an argument that is not an actor) case marking. However, the anti-ergative case markings can not be reconstructed at higher levels in the family and are thought to be innovations.


Vocabulary


External classification

Beyond the traditionally recognized families of Southeast Asia, a number of Classification schemes for Southeast Asian languages, possible broader relationships have been suggested. The "Sino-Caucasian" hypothesis of Sergei Starostin posits that the Yeniseian languages and North Caucasian languages form a clade with Sino-Tibetan. The Sino-Caucasian hypothesis has been expanded by others to "Dené–Caucasian languages, Dené–Caucasian" to include the Na-Dené languages of North America, Burushaski language, Burushaski, Basque language, Basque and, occasionally, Etruscan language, Etruscan. A narrower binary Dené–Yeniseian family has recently been well received. The validity of the rest of the family, however, is viewed as doubtful or rejected by nearly all Historical linguistics, historical linguists. Around 1920 linguist Edward Sapir became convinced that Na–Dené was more closely related to Sino–Tibetan than to other American families. He suggests that the Sino-Tibetan languages are related to the Na-Dene languages, Na-Dené languages. Geoffrey Caveney (2014) suggests that the Sino-Tibetan and Na-Dene languages are related but his analysis does not support the Sino-Caucasian or Dene-Caucasian hypothesis. In contrast, Laurent Sagart proposes a Sino-Austronesian languages, Sino-Austronesian family with Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian languages, Austronesian (including Kra–Dai as a subbranch) as primary branches. Stanley Starosta has extended this proposal with a further branch called "Yangzian" joining Hmong–Mien and
Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...
. August Conrad proposed the Sino-Tibetan-Indo-European language family. This hypothesis holds that there is a genetic relationship between the Sino-Tibetan language family and the Indo-European language family. The earliest comparative linguistic study of Chinese and Indo-European languages was the 18th century Nordic scholar Olaus Rudbeck. He compared the vocabulary of Gothic and Chinese and guessed that the two may be of the same origin. In the second half of the 19th century, Kong Haogu, Shigude, Ijosser, etc. successively proposed that Chinese and European languages are homologous. Among them, Kong Haogu, through the comparison of Chinese and Indo-European domestic animal vocabulary, first proposed Indo-Chinese language macrofamily (including Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese and Indo-European languages). In the 20th century, R. Shafer put forward the conjecture of the Eurasian super language family and listed hundreds of similar words between Tibeto-Burman and Indo-European languages. From the 1960s, Canadian Sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank began to demonstrate the genetic relationship between Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European languages from historical comparative linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, etc. After the 21st century, Zhou Jixu, Gao Jingyi, etc. Chinese scholars also provided hundreds of cognates of Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European languages.E. Pulleyblank. Central Asia at the Dawn of History. Journal of Chinese Linguistics. 1999, 27: 163–168.


Notes


References


Citations


Works cited

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General

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External links

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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 ...

"Tibeto-Burman languages and their subgrouping"Sino-Tibetan Branches Project (STBP)Behind the Sino-Tibetan Database of Lexical Cognates: Introductory remarksSinotibetan Lexical Homology Database
*Guillaume Jacques
"The Genetic Position of Chinese"
*Marc Miyake (2014)
"Why Sino-Tibetan reconstruction is not like Indo-European reconstruction (yet)"
*Andrew Hsiu (2018)
"Linking the Sino-Tibetan fallen leaves"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sino-Tibetan Languages Sino-Tibetan languages, Language families Sino-Austronesian languages