Burmo-Qiangic languages
| Burmo-Qiangic | |
|---|---|
| Eastern Tibeto-Burman | |
| Geographic distribution: | China, Burma |
| Linguistic classification: |
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| Subdivisions: | |
| Glottolog: | burm1265[1] |
The Burmo-Qiangic or Eastern Tibeto-Burman languages are a proposed family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Southwest China and Myanmar. It consists of the Lolo-Burmese and Qiangic branches. Tujia, Bai, and perhaps the Karen languages could also be members or closely related.
Classification
Guillaume Jacques & Alexis Michaud (2011)[2] argue for a Burmo-Qiangic branch of Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) with two primary subbranches, Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese. Similarly, David Bradley (2008)[3] proposes an Eastern Tibeto-Burman branch that includes Burmic (AKA Lolo-Burmese) and Qiangic. Bradley notes that Lolo-Burmese and Qiangic share some unique lexical items, even though they are morphologically quite different; whereas all Lolo-Burmese languages are tonal and analytical, Qiangic languages are often non-tonal and possess agglutinative morphology. However, the position of Naic is unclear, as it has been grouped as Lolo-Burmese by Lama (2012), but as Qiangic by Jacques & Michaud (2011) and Bradley (2008). Jacques' & Michaud's (2011) proposed tree is as follows.
| Burmo-Qiangic |
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Bradley's (2008) proposal is as follows. Note that Bradley calls Lolo-Burmese Burmic, which is not to be confused with Burmish, and calls Loloish is Ngwi.
| Eastern Tibeto-Burman |
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However, Chirkova (2012)[4] doubts that Qiangic is a valid genetic unit, and considers Ersu, Shixing, Namuyi, and Pumi all as separate Tibeto-Burman branches that are part of a Qiangic Sprachbund, rather than as part of a coherent Qiangic phylogenetic branch.
See also
References
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Burmo-Qiangic". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ↑ Jacques, Guillaume, and Alexis Michaud. 2011. "Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages." Diachronica 28:468–498.
- ↑ Bradley, David. 2008. The Position of Namuyi in Tibeto-Burman.
- ↑ Chirkova, Katia (2012). "The Qiangic Subgroup from an Areal Perspective: A Case Study of Languages of Muli." In Languages and Linguistics 13(1):133-170. Taipei: Academia Sinica.
- Bradley, David. 1997. "Tibeto-Burman languages and classification". In D. Bradley (Ed.), Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas (Papers in South East Asian linguistics No. 14) pp. 1–71, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. ISBN 978-0-85883-456-9.
- Bradley, David. 2008. The Position of Namuyi in Tibeto-Burman.
- Jacques, Guillaume, and Alexis Michaud. 2011. "Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages." Diachronica 28:468-498.
- Lama, Ziwo Qiu-Fuyuan (2012), Subgrouping of Nisoic (Yi) Languages, thesis, University of Texas at Arlington (archived)