The West Gyalrongic languages constitute a group of

Gyalrongic languages The Gyalrongic languages (also known as Rgyalrongic or Jiarongic) constitute a branch of the Qiangic languages of Sino-Tibetan, although some propose that it may be part of a larger Rung languages group, and do not consider it to be particularly ...

. On the basis of both morphological and lexical evidence, Lai et al. (2020) add the extinct

Tangut language Tangut (Tangut: ; ) is an extinct language in the Sino-Tibetan language family. Tangut was one of the official languages of the Western Xia dynasty, founded by the Tangut people in northwestern China. The Western Xia was annihilated by the Mongo ...

to West Gyalrongic. * Khroskyabs (formerly known as ''Lavrung'') * Horpa (or ''Stau'') *✝ Tangut

History

Sagart et al. (2019) estimate that West and East Gyalrongic had diverged from each other about 3,000 years before present. * Although Tangut is most commonly associated with

Yinchuan Yinchuan (, ; ) is the capital of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China, and was the capital of the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty. It has an area of and a total population of 2,859,074 according to the 2020 Chinese census, and its built- ...

, the capital of the

Tangut Empire 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 ...

, Zhoushan (周山, Zhōushān) in

Jinchuan County Jinchuan County (; ) is a county in the northwest of Sichuan Province, China. It is under the administration of the Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture. The seat of county is Jinchuan Town (Rabden). The county spans an area of 5,524 s ...

(Chinese: 金川縣 Jīnchuān Xiàn,

Written Tibetan The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system (''abugida'') of Indic origin used to write certain Tibetic languages, including Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, Jirel and Balti. It has also been used for some non-Tibetic languages ...

: ''Chuchen''; roughly located between the territories of Khroskyabs and Situ speakers today) had a historically attested population of Tangut people in 945 AD. As a result, based on both historiographical and linguistic evidence, Lai et al. (2020) place the ultimate homeland of the Tangut in present-day 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 the ...

References

*Guillaume Jacques; Yunfan Lai; Anton Antonov; Lobsang Nima. 2017. "Stau (Ergong, Horpa)." In Graham Thurgood and Randy J. LaPolla (eds.), ''The Sino-Tibetan Languages'', 597-613. London & New York: Routledge. Qiangic languages {{SinoTibetan-lang-stub