Inline videos. See also:Category: Articles with embedded Videos..

Sino-Tibetan languages

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

Sino-Tibetan languages form a language family of about 250 languages of East Asia, second only to Indo-European in terms of the number of speakers. Many of the languages are tonal, which however is usually considered to be an areal feature rather than evidence of a genealogical relationship. (Chinese and Tibetan, for example, were not tonal in their earlier stages.)

A few scholars such as Christopher I. Beckwith, Roy A. Miller, and W. S. Coblin question whether the Sinitic languages are related to Tibeto-Burman. No regular sound laws relating the Sino-Tibetan (or Tibeto-Burman) languages have been found. Thus, although the Sino-Tibetan hypothesis enjoys widespread support, it is not as well demonstrated as the Indo-European family. Other linguists, especially in China, believe the Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien languages belong in Sino-Tibetan, though this view has fallen out of favor in the West, with the similarities being credited to borrowings and areal features.

James Matisoff's widely accepted classification is as follows:

Sino-Tibetan

Chinese (more or less monosyllabic and analytic)
Tibeto-Burman
- Kamarupan
  - Kuki-Chin-Naga
  - Abor-Miri-Dafla
  - Bodo-Garo
- Himalayish
  - Maha-Kiranti (includes Newari, Magar)
  - Tibeto-Kinauri (includes Tibetan, Lepcha)
- Qiangic
- Jingpho-Nungish-Luish
  - Kachinic (Jingpho)
  - Nungish
  - Luish
- Lolo-Burmese-Naxi
- Karenic
- Baic

Several recent classifications have demoted Chinese to a sub-branch of Tibeto-Burman, rather as the Semitic component of Hamito-Semitic was demoted to a sub-branch of Afro-Asiatic. The following classification from George van Driem is one:

Tibeto-Burman

Brahmaputran
- Dhimal
- Bodo-Koch (includes Tripuri, Garo)
- Konyak (includes Nocte)
- Kachinic (includes Jingpo)
Southern Tibeto-Burman
- Lolo-Burmese
- Karenic
Sino-Bodic
- Sinitic (Chinese)
- Bodish-Himalayish (includes Tibetan)
- Kirantic
- Tamangic
- (several isolates)
A number of other small families and isolates (Newari, Qiang, Nung, Magar, etc.)

The relationships of the "Kuki-Naga" languages (Kuki, Mizo, Manipuri, etc.), both amongst each other and to the other Tibeto-Burman languages, is unclear, so this classification does not support Matisoff's Kamarupan hypothesis (above).

[edit]

External links

Tibeto-Burman languages and their subgrouping (http://stedt.berkeley.edu/html/STfamily.html#TBlg) - James Matisoff
Sino-Bodic (http://iias.leidenuniv.nl/host/himalaya/driem/pdfs/sinobodic_low.pdf) - George van Driemes:Lenguas sino-tibetanas

fr:Langues sino-tibétaines id:Bahasa Sino-Tibet lt:Kinų-tibetiečių kalbų šeima hu:Sino-tibeti nyelvcsalád zh-min-nan:Hàn-Chōng gí-hē nl:Sino-Tibetaanse talen pl:Języki chińsko-tybetańskie ru:Китайско-тибетские языки fi:Sinotiibetiläiset kielet vi:Hệ ngôn ngữ Hán-Tây Tạng zh:汉藏语系