Sino-Tibetan Languages

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Sino-Tibetan Languages

 

a language family in China, Burma, the Himalayas, and northeastern India.

According to the classification given by the American scholar R. Shafer, the Sino-Tibetan languages are divided into the following main branches:

(1) Chinese;

(2) the Tibetan branch (Tibet and the Himalayas), which includes Tibetan (and the closely related Tsangla, rGyarung, and Gurung languages), the western Himalayan languages (Bunan, Thebor, Kanauri, the Almora Group, Janggali, Thami-Bhramu, and others), the west central Himalayan languages (Magari, Vayu, and Tsepang), and the eastern Himalayan languages (such as Bahing, Thulung, and Dumi);

(3) the Burmese branch (Burma, Yunnan, Szechwan, and Assam), including the Lolo-Burmese languages (such as Burmese, Hor, Taungyo, and the Lolo, or Yi-tzu [Yi], languages—Lisu, Lahu, Akha, Khoany, and Ahi), Mru, the Nung languages, Ka-chin, the Tsairel group, Andro, Taman, and the Kuki language group along the border between India and Burma (So, Yawdwin, Khami, the Lakher group, Langet, Lushei, Haka, Kapwi, Thado, the Luhupa group, Maram, Kabui, the northern Naga group [including Lepcha], Rengma, Simi, Meithei [Manipuri], Mikir [Arleng], and the old Kuki languages—Tsiru, Kyau, and Hrangkhol);

(4) the Baric branch (Assam), including Garo, the Jalpaiguri group, Bodo, Chutiya, and other northeastern Naga languages;

(5) the Karen branch (Burma): Karen and other languages. Small groups and isolated languages also belong to the Sino-Tibetan family: the Newari group (Nepal), the Digari group, the Mising group and Miju (Assam and Tibet), Hruso (Assam), Dhimal (near the border between Assam and Nepal), and the Dzorgai group (Tibet, Szechwan, and Kansu). Shafer also includes the Tai languages in the Sino-Tibetan family, although this is disputed (words of Sinitic origin usually are loanwords from Chinese and occasionally from other Sino-Tibetan languages). The theory of the American scholar P. Benedict concerning the remote kinship of the Tai languages and the Austronesian languages (on the basis of common pronominal roots and other grounds) is more convincing. As Shafer has demonstrated, in the proto-Sino-Tibetan general Sinitic linguistic system words could consist of one, two, or even three syllables, but later nonfinal syllables grew phonetically weaker and everywhere, except in the Kuki languages, lost the vowel and their syllabic character. The initial consonant clusters formed in this process (and retained, for example, in ancient Tibetan) were simplified in some of the languages, such as Chinese and Burmese. Prefixal morphemes (also subsequently reduced) and vowel-consonant alternations are proposed for the general Sinitic language, but syntactic words and word order were the primary grammatical means. Some Sino-Tibetan languages acquired an isolating structure (as in ancient Chinese); agglutination appeared in others. Tones and monosyllabic roots are characteristic of modern Sino-Tibetan languages.

REFERENCES

Iakhontov, S. E. Glottokhronologiia i kitaisko-tibetskaia sem’ia iazykov. Moscow, 1964.
Burling, R. “Proto-Lolo-Burmese.” International Journal of American Linguistics, 1967, vol. 33, no. 2, part 2.
Shafer, R. “Classification of the Sino-Tibetan Languages.” Word, 1955, vol. 11, no. 1.
Shafer, R. Bibliography of Sino-Tibetan Languages, vols. 1–2. Wiesbaden, 1957–63.
Shafer, R. Introduction to Sino-Tibetan, parts 1–4. Wiesbaden, 1966–67.

A. G. DOLGOPOL’SKII

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.