Burmo-Qiangic languages explained

Burmo-Qiangic
Acceptance:	proposed
Also Known As:	Eastern Tibeto-Burman
Region:	China, Burma
Familycolor:	Sino-Tibetan
Fam2:	Tibeto-Burman?
Child1:	Lolo-Burmese
Child2:	Qiangic
Glotto:	burm1265
Glottorefname:	Burmo-Qiangic
Child3:	Tujia?

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, including the extinct Tangut language.

Classification

Guillaume Jacques & Alexis Michaud (2011)^[1] argue for a Burmo-Qiangic branch of Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) with two primary subbranches, Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese. Similarly, David Bradley (2008)^[2] proposes an Eastern Tibeto-Burman branch that includes Burmic (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).

Sun (1988) also proposed a similar classification that grouped Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese together.

Jacques' & Michaud's (2011) proposed tree is as follows.

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 Ngwi.

However, Chirkova (2012)^[3] 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. This issue has also been further discussed by Yu (2012).

Lee & Sagart (2008)^[4] argue that Bai is a Tibeto-Burman language that has borrowed very heavily from Old Chinese. Lee & Sagart (2008) note that word relating to rice and pig agriculture tend to be non-Chinese, and that the genetic non-Chinese layer of Bai shows similarities with Proto-Loloish.

Branches

Yu (2012:206–207)^[5] lists the following well-established coherent branches (including individual languages, in italics below) that could likely all fit into a wider Burmo-Qiangic group, in geographical order from north to south.

1. (Baima) [possible Burmo-Qiangic [[Substrata (linguistics)|substratum]]]^[6]
2. Qiang
3. rGyalrong
4. Lavrung
5. Ergong
6. Choyo
7. nDrapa
8. Guiqiong
9. Minyak
10. Ersuic
11. Namuyi
12. Shixing
13. Naish
14. Prinmi
15. Lolo-Burmese
16. (Bai) [possible Burmo-Qiangic [[Substrata (linguistics)|substratum]]]^[7]

Additionally, Tangut, now extinct, is generally classified as a Qiangic language.

Yu (2012:215–218)^[5] notes that Ersuic and Naic languages could possibly group together, since they share many features with each other that are not found in Lolo-Burmese or other Qiangic groups.

Proto-language reconstructions for some of these branches include:

• Proto-Rma (Sims 2017)^[8]
• Proto-Prinmi (Sims 2017)^[8]
• Proto-Ersuic (Yu 2012)^[5]
• Proto-Naish (Jacques & Michaud 2011)^[1]
• Proto-Lolo-Burmese (Matisoff 2003)
• Proto-Bai (Wang 2006)^[9]

Lexical evidence

Jacques & Michaud (2011)^{[1] [10]} list the following lexical items as likely Burmo-Qiangic lexical innovations.

Gloss							Hani
copula	ŋu	ŋwu^2	ŋi˩˧	?	hnang^2	–	ŋɯ˧˩
star	ʑŋgri	gjịj^1	kɯ˥	kri	kray^2	k^hʐə˥	a˧˩gɯ˥
forget	jmɯt	mjɨ̣^2	mv̩.p^hæ^L+MH	mi	me^1	ɲi˧˥	ɲi˥
be ill	ngo < *ngaŋ	ŋo^2	gu˩	go
flint	ʁdɯrtsa	–	tse.mi^H	tsa
to hide	nɤtsɯ	–	tsɯ˥ (Naxi)	tsu
to swallow	mqlaʁ	–	ʁv̩˥	NqU < *Nqak
dry	spɯ	-	pv̩˧	Spu
thick	jaʁ	laa^1	lo˧˥	laC2
jump	mtsaʁ	–	ts^ho˧	ts^haC2
winter	qartsɯ	tsur^1	ts^hi˥	ts^hu	c^hoŋ^3	tɕ^hɔŋ˧˩	ts^hɔ˧˩ga̱˧
knee	tə-mŋɑ (Situ)	ŋwer^2	ŋwɤ.ko^H	ŋwa
sun	ʁmbɣi	be^2	bi˧ (Naxi)	bi

See also

• Bailang language

References

• 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. .
• Bradley, David. 2008. The Position of Namuyi in Tibeto-Burman. Paper presented at Workshop on Namuyi, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, 2008.
• 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)
• Sūn, Hóngkāi 孙宏开. 1988. Shilun woguo jingnei Zang-Mianyude puxi fenlei 试论我国境内藏缅语的谱系分类. (A classification of Tibeto-Burman languages in China). In: Tatsuo Nishida and Paul Kazuhisa Eguchi (eds.), Languages and history in East Asia: festschrift for Tatsuo Nishida on the occasion of his 60th birthday 61–73. Kyoto: Shokado.

External links

• Burmo-Qiangic (Sino-Tibetan Branches Project)

Notes and References

1. Jacques, Guillaume, and Alexis Michaud. 2011. "Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages." Diachronica 28:468–498.
2. Bradley, David. 2008. The Position of Namuyi in Tibeto-Burman. Paper presented at Workshop on Namuyi, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, 2008.
3. 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.
4. Lee, Y.-J., & Sagart, L. (2008). No limits to borrowing: The case of Bai and Chinese. Diachronica, 25(3), 357–385.
5. Yu, Dominic. 2012. Proto-Ersuic. Ph.D. dissertation. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, Department of Linguistics.
6. Chirkova, Ekaterina. 2008. On the Position of Baima within Tibetan: A Look from Basic Vocabulary. Alexander Lubotsky, Jos Schaeken and Jeroen Wiedenhof. Rodopi, pp.23, 2008, Evidence and counter-evidence: Festschrift F. Kortlandt.
7. Gong Xun (2015). How Old is the Chinese in Bái? Reexamining Sino-Bái under the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction . Paper presented at the Recent Advances in Old Chinese Historical Phonology workshop, SOAS, London.
8. Sims, Nathaniel. 2017. The suprasegmental phonology of proto-Rma (Qiang) in comparative perspective. Presented at the 50th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, Beijing, China.
9. • Book: Wang . Feng . Comparison of languages in contact: the distillation method and the case of Bai . Language and Linguistics Monograph Series B: Frontiers in Linguistics III . Taipei . Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica . 2006 . 986-00-5228-X . 2018-06-03 . 2021-07-30 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210730132726/http://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/LL/en/monographs.Contect/Comparison_of_Languages_in_Contact__The_Distillation_Method_and_the_Case_of_Bai . dead .
10. Jacques & Michaud (2011), appendix p.7