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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) argue for a Burmo-Qiangic branch of Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) with two primary subbranches, Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese. Similarly, David Bradley (2008) proposes an Eastern Tibeto-Burman branch that includes Burmic (a.k.a. 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) 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) 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) 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)
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)

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

Yu (2012:215–218) 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)
• Proto-Prinmi (Sims 2017)
• Proto-Ersuic (Yu 2012)
• Proto-Naish (Jacques & Michaud 2011)
• Proto-Lolo-Burmese (Matisoff 2003)
• Proto-Bai (Wang 2006)

Lexical evidence

Jacques & Michaud (2011) list the following lexical items as likely Burmo-Qiangic lexical innovations.

See also

• Bailang language

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. Archived 2015-02-03 at the Wayback Machine
4. ^ Yu, Dominic. 2012. Proto-Ersuic. Ph.D. dissertation. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, Department of Linguistics.
5. Lee, Y.-J., & Sagart, L. (2008). No limits to borrowing: The case of Bai and Chinese. Diachronica, 25(3), 357–385.
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. <halshs-00104311>
7. Gong Xun (2015). How Old is the Chinese in Bái? Reexamining Sino-Bái under the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction Archived 2021-03-05 at the Wayback Machine. 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. Matisoff, James A. (2003), Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-09843-5.
10. * Wang, Feng (2006). 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. ISBN 986-00-5228-X. Archived from the original on 2021-07-30. Retrieved 2018-06-03.
11. Jacques & Michaud (2011), appendix p.7

• 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. 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 Archived 2020-10-22 at the Wayback Machine (Sino-Tibetan Branches Project)

v t e Sino-Tibetan branches
Western Himalayas (Himachal, Uttarakhand, Nepal, Sikkim)	West Himalayish Tamangic Newaric Newar Baram–Thangmi Kiranti Dhimalish Dhimal Toto Lhokpu Lepcha Greater Magaric Magaric Magar Kham Chepangic Chepang Bhujel Raji–Raute Dura–Tandrange
Eastern Himalayas (Tibet, Bhutan, Arunachal)	Bodish Tibetic East Bodish Tshangla Basum Nam? Gongduk ʼOle Tani Chamdo
Myanmar and Indo- Burmese border	Karbi Kuki-Chin Mruic Mru Hkongso Pyu Taman "Naga" Ao Angami–Pochuri Meitei Tangkhulic Zeme Sal Boro–Garo Konyak Jingpho–Luish
East and Southeast Asia	Sinitic Bai Tujia Nungish Karenic Gong Kathu Cai–Long Caijia Longjia Luren Burmo-Qiangic Qiangic Gyalrongic Ersuic Naic Lolo-Burmese Mondzish Burmish Loloish
Dubious (possible isolates) (Arunachal)	Hrusish Hruso Mijiic Kho-Bwa Puroik Miju–Meyor Songlin Greater Siangic Siangic Koro Milang Idu–Taraon
Proposed groupings	Central Tibeto-Burman Kuki-Chin–Naga Macro-Bai Mahakiranti Rung Tibeto-Burman Tibeto-Kanauri
Proto-languages	Proto-Sino-Tibetan Proto-Tibeto-Burman Proto-Loloish Proto-Karenic Proto-Min Proto-Hakka
Italics indicates single languages that are also considered to be separate branches.

• Lolo-Burmese languages
• Qiangic languages