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Outline

Title
Abstract
Key Takeaways
Introduction
The Scope of Sino-Tibetan
Major Recent Work and Methodological Issues
Conclusion
References
FAQs

2008: What is Sino-Tibetan? Snapshot of a Field and a Language Family in Flux

Profile image of Zev HandelZev Handel

2008, Language and Linguistics Compass

https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1749-818X.2008.00061.X
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20 pages

Abstract

Sino-Tibetan is one of the great language families of the world, containing hundreds of languages spoken by over 1 billion people, from Northeast India to the Southeast Asian peninsula. The best-known languages in the family are Chinese, Tibetan, and Burmese. Although the existence of the family has been recognized for nearly 200 years, significant progress in reconstructing the history of the family was not achieved until the latter half of the twentieth century. In recent decades, this progress has accelerated, thanks to an explosion of new data and new approaches. At the same time, a number of interesting controversies have emerged in the field, centered on such issues as subgrouping and reconstruction methodology.

Key takeaways
sparkles

AI

  1. Sino-Tibetan is a major language family with 200-300 languages and over 1 billion speakers.
  2. Significant progress in Sino-Tibetan studies has accelerated due to new methodologies and datasets.
  3. Controversies surround subgrouping and the relationship of Sino-Tibetan to other language families.
  4. Proto-Sino-Tibetan (PST) may date back 6000 to 9000 years, indicating deep historical roots.
  5. Research into Sino-Tibetan enhances understanding of human migrations and cultural interactions in Asia.

Related papers

Family Tree: Tibeto-Burman Languages
Timo Schmitz

2024

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Tibeto-Burman replaces Indo-Chinese in the 1990s: Review of a decade of a scholarship
George van Driem

Lingua, 112 (2): 79-102., 2002

Tibeto-Burman is one of the world's greatest language families, second only to lndo-European in terms of populations of speakers. Advances made in the course of the decade have led to a major paradigm shift in Tibeto-Burman historical linguistics and phylogeny. The numerous contributions to the field in the 1990s are reviewed in a statement on the current state of the art.

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Dated phylogeny suggests early Neolithic origin of Sino-Tibetan languages
Ruth Mace

Scientific Reports, 2020

An accurate reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan language evolution would greatly advance our understanding of East Asian population history. Two recent phylogenetic studies attempted to do so but several of their conclusions are different from each other. Here we reconstruct the phylogeny of the Sino-Tibetan language family, using Bayesian computational methods applied to a larger and linguistically more diverse sample. Our results confirm previous work in finding that the ancestral Sino-Tibetans first split into Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman clades, and support the existence of key internal relationships. But we find that the initial divergence of this group occurred earlier than previously suggested, at approximately 8000 years before the present, coinciding with the onset of millet-based agriculture and significant environmental changes in the Yellow River region. Our findings illustrate that key aspects of phylogenetic history can be replicated in this complex language family, and calls ...

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Comments on methodology and evidence in Sino-Tibetan comparative linguistics
Randy J . LaPolla

Language and Linguistics 13:1, 2012

This paper presents epistemological and methodological problems found in work on the subgrouping of Sino-Tibetan languages and the reconstruction of features of the languages. A key problem is the lack of an accepted standard for judging this work, one that can stand up to statistical evaluation. An alternative methodology that involves using fixed sets of features to give us the statistical probability of common origin is suggested.

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The Sino-Tibetan Languages
Randy J . LaPolla, Graham Thurgood

2003

There are more native speakers of Sino-Tibetan languages than of any other language family in the world. Our records of these languages are among the oldest for any human language, and the amount of active research on them, both diachronic and synchronic, has multiplied in the last decades. This volume covers the better-described languages, but with comments on the subgroups in which they occur. Ine addition to a number of modern languages, there ares on the descriptions of several ancient languages.

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Subgrouping in Tibeto-Burman: Can an individual-identifying standard be developed? How do we factor in the history of migrations and language contact?
Randy J . LaPolla

33rd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan …, 2000

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The ancestry of Tibetan
George van Driem

pp. 363-397 in Gray Tuttle, Kunsang Gya, Karma Dare and Johnathan Wilber, eds., The Third International Conference on Tibetan Language, Volume 1: Proceedings of the Panels on Domains of Use and Linguistic Interactions. New York: Trace Foundation., 2013

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The State of Sino-Tibetan
Nathan W. Hill

Archiv Orientální, 2017

Hill, Nathan W. (2017) 'The State of Sino-Tibetan.' Archiv Orientální, 85 (2) : 305-315. A review article of Thurgood, Graham, and Randy J. LaPolla, eds. The Sino-Tibetan Languages. Second Edition. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. xxx + 1018 pp. ISBN 978-1-138-78332-4. Price 300 GBP.

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Sino-Tibetan archaeolinguistics
David Bradley

Oxford Handbook of Archaeology and Language, 2024

This chapter summarises the linguistic phylogeny of the Sino-Tibetan (ST) languages and how this phylogeny relates to archaeological and genetic information. In forthcoming Oxford Handbook edited by Martine Robbeets and Mark Hudson Co-authors Liu Li Stanford U Ning Chao, Peking University Rita dal Martello, Università ca' Foscari, Venezia

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Peer Reviewed Title: Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction
Tingsheng Zhou

This 800-page volume is a clear and readable presentation of the current state of research on the history of the Tibeto-Burman (TB) language family, a typologically diverse group of over 250 languages spoken in Southern China, the Himalayas, NE India, and peninsular Southeast Asia. The TB languages are the only proven relatives of Chinese, with which they form the great Sino-Tibetan family.

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FAQs

sparkles

AI

What are the current challenges in subgrouping the Sino-Tibetan language family?add

Subgrouping remains controversial due to insufficient documentation and complex migration histories, leading to diverse methodological approaches and conflicting results. The absence of a complete Proto-Sino-Tibetan reconstruction complicates the identification of shared innovations among branches.

How does linguistic diversity within Sino-Tibetan impact historical reconstruction?add

The vast linguistic diversity, estimated at 200-300 languages, suggests a historical depth akin to Indo-European, possibly dating as far back as 9000 years. This complexity poses challenges in reconstructing Proto-Sino-Tibetan's features and geographical origins.

What evidence supports the Sino-Tibetan hypothesis regarding language relationships?add

Shared vocabulary, such as similar terms for basic concepts, supports the Sino-Tibetan hypothesis, although classification can be contentious due to convergent features from language contact. Recent discoveries, like the Rouruo language, exemplify ongoing efforts to affirm language relationships within the family.

What are the implications of the Sino-Tibetan language family's expansion and interactions?add

The expansion of Sino-Tibetan speakers has historically led to the displacement of other linguistic populations and continues to affect cultural identities, particularly in regions like China. This dynamic is exemplified by ongoing interactions between Han and minority language speakers.

How do recent methodologies refine the understanding of Sino-Tibetan languages?add

Methodological advancements include leveraging descriptive fieldwork on lesser-studied languages and applying statistical techniques for cognate classification, improving reconstructions amid previous challenges in identifying irregular inflectional morphology and borrowings. Research continues to evolve as new data emerges and comparative methods are adapted.

Related papers

Rethinking Sino-Tibetan phylogeny from the perspective of North East Indian languages
Mark W. Post, Roger Blench

2014. In N. Hill, and T. Owen-Smith, Eds. Trans-Himalayan Linguistics. Berlin, de Gruyter: 71-104.

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The diversity of the Tibeto-Burman language family and the linguistic ancestry of Chinese
George van Driem

Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics, 1 (2): 211-270., 2007

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The Ancestry Of Sino-Tibetan Populations And Languages
Mei Shin Wu

2018

This is my oral presentation handout for "The 51st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics" (2018/09/25-2018/09/28, Kyoto, Japan)

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Subgrouping of the Sino-Tibetan languages
David Bradley

Evolang 10, 2018

The Sino-Tibetan (ST) languages, including Chinese, are the major family of languages in China and many areas surrounding China in Southeast and South Asia. There have been many proposals about the phylogeny of Proto-Sino-Tibetan (PST) and the possible connections between specific ancient cultures of China and specific subgroups of PST; the basic modern subgrouping followed here is set out in more detail in Bradley (1997, 2002). It has recently been proposed (van Driem 2014) that the entire family should be renamed Trans-Himalayan (TH); others have suggested that the entire family should be called TB, with Sinitic as just one subgroup of TB (DeLancey 2013); both proposals aim to question the central historical position of Sinitic within TB. The general consensus (van Driem 1999, LaPolla 2001) is that PST was spoken during the 仰韶 Yangshao Culture in northwestern China circa 7,000 to 5,000 years before present (7-5K YBP). The Sinitic branch (Chinese) remained in northern central China during the 龙山 Longshan Culture (5-3.9K YBP), then later spread east during the 夏 Xia Dynasty (4.1-3.6K YBP) and 商 Shang Dynasty (3.6-3K YBP) and southeast in later times. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the family probably moved southwest from the Yangshao area and became Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB) during the 马家窑 Majiayao Culture (5.3-4K YBP); PTB then gradually subdivided into various branches as groups of speakers moved further south and west. In addition to comparative linguistic evidence, there are five types of external evidence. One is paleoclimate: where in the area would it have been ecologically desirable or at least possible for Neolithic hunters, early pastoralists and early agriculturalists to live at various times in the past? A second is archaeology: where and from when are traces of human settlement found, and what level of material culture is present at each period: what domestic and hunted animals, cultivated crops and other collected plants, artefacts and human remains are found? A third is paleobiology: where were the relevant plants and animals indigenous, when did they start to be associated with human management, and how did they spread? A fourth is genetics; though of course not all speakers of a given language are descendants of earlier speakers of that language, and evidence of male (X chromosome) and female (mitochondrial DNA) genetic descent is sometimes contradictory. Lastly, there is much more recent traditional human evidence: oral traditions concerning origins and migration as embodied in oral history, psychopompic and other funeral-related traditions, and so on, as well as written history. Of course sometimes oral and early written history is unclear or partly mythologized, and so may be less reliable than hard evidence from paleoclimate, archaeology, paleobiology and genetics, but it is still suggestive. Where all of these agree, we can begin to build a picture of early civilization in China and surrounding areas, and attempt to connect particular linguistically-reconstructed subgroups with particular locations and periods. For some efforts in these areas, see Bradley (2011) on crops, Bradley (2016) on animals, and Bradley (2017a, 2017b) on correlating crop and domestic animal information with archaeology and PST subgrouping. Those scholars who wish to rename ST as TH prefer to place the point of origin in what is now the area where northeastern India, northwestern Southeast Asia and southwestern China meet. This proposal is most unlikely on geographical grounds (the area is extremely mountainous and divided by major non-navigable rivers in deep valleys which separate rather than link); on climate grounds (this area has never been a particularly favourable location for pastoral or agricultural activity, and at colder periods much of it has been almost

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Review: Thurgood, Graham, and Randy LaPolla, eds. The Sino-Tibetan Languages. Second Edition. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. xxx + 1018 pp. ISBN 978-1-138-78332-4. price 300 GBP
George van Driem

Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistic Society, 11 (2): xcviii-cx., 2018

It has been fourteen years since the appearance of the first edition of this compendium of Trans-Himalayan languages. In its second edition, the volume has swollen to encompass 53 chapters. As Simon and Hill (2015: 381) noted, the language family "is known by names including 'Tibeto-Burman', 'Sino-Tibetan' and 'Trans-Himalayan', of which the last is the most neutral and accurate". McColl et al. (2018: 362) put it more succinctly in their Science article, stating simply: "Trans-Himalayan (formerly Sino-Tibetan)". In the very title to this volume, the two editors, Graham Ward Thurgood and Randy John LaPolla, loudly proclaim their adherence to the obsolete and empirically unsupported "Sino-Tibetan" phylogeny, but many of the contributors to this Routledge volume do not themselves subscribe to the same antiquated Indo-Chinese understanding of the language family. Outside of this volume, a good number of the contributing scholars openly abjure this family tree model. Later, we shall examine how the outspoken bias of the two editors pervades the volume in a thorough and more insidious manner than in the first edition. The anthology comprises 44 grammatical sketches, two of which are devoted to dead Trans-Himalayan languages, five survey articles, two editorial pieces, a piece on the Chinese writing system and a discussion of word order. Editorial misrepresentations, the state of the art and Gerber's Law This volume contains many valuable, some truly wonderful and a few problematic instalments, but the Routledge compendium is truly marred by the two editorial pieces authored by Thurgood and LaPolla and positioned at the very beginning of the book. In addition to the two large editorial pieces, the first section also contains a brief study of word order in Trans-Himalayan languages by Matthew Synge Dryer. A volume that purports to present a general overview of the field should dispassionately present different positions held by specialists in that field, and the failure even just once to mention that alternative views exist that are quite at variance with Thurgood and LaPolla's own particular view characterises an unfair comportment on the part of the two editors that is not just unsportsmanlike, but unscholarly and unworthy of our field. For well over a century, the phylogeny of the language family has been a matter of considerable controversy. Yet both editors are careful to cite and quote only such sources as happen to agree with their own model. The empirically unsupported Indo-Chinese taxonomy relentlessly propounded by an ever dwindling number of "true believer" Sino-Tibetanists permeates the very arrangement of the book, and the two editors have even wilfully skewed the contents of the volume in order to fit their obsolete Indo-Chinese family tree. In keeping with this "Sino-Tibetan" conceit, the editors have included six instalments on Sinitic, though the sheer brevity of Dah-an Ho's instalment on Mandarin could reflect a reluctance on the part of its contributor to indulge the paradigm championed by the two editors. Indeed, as already noted, many of the scholars who have contributed to this volume reject the language family tree model touted by the editors. Moreover, the editorial twosome surreptitiously sneak their own "Rung" subgroup into the table of contents, thereby falsely suggesting that this fiction represents a valid taxon within the family. To exacerbate matters, their table of contents incompetently groups Tshangla and Newar as "Bodish" languages.

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The Babel of software development: Linguistic diversity in open source
Alexander Serebrenik

2013

Open source software (OSS) development communities are typically very specialised, on the one hand, and experience high turnover, on the other. Combination of specialization and turnover can cause parts of the system implemented in a certain programming language to become unmaintainable, if knowledge of that language has disappeared together with the retiring developers. Inspired by measures of linguistic diversity from the study of natural languages, we propose a method to quantify the risk of not having maintainers for code implemented in a certain programming language. To illustrate our approach, we studied risks associated with different languages in Emacs, and found examples of low risk due to high popularity (e.g., C, Emacs Lisp); low risk due to similarity with popular languages (e.g., C++, Java, Python); or high risk due to both low popularity and low similarity with popular languages (e.g., Lex). Our results show that methods from the social sciences can be successfully applied in the study of information systems, and open numerous avenues for future research.

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Dated phylogeny suggests early Neolithic origin of Sino-Tibetan languages
Ruth Mace

Scientific Reports, 2020

An accurate reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan language evolution would greatly advance our understanding of East Asian population history. Two recent phylogenetic studies attempted to do so but several of their conclusions are different from each other. Here we reconstruct the phylogeny of the Sino-Tibetan language family, using Bayesian computational methods applied to a larger and linguistically more diverse sample. Our results confirm previous work in finding that the ancestral Sino-Tibetans first split into Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman clades, and support the existence of key internal relationships. But we find that the initial divergence of this group occurred earlier than previously suggested, at approximately 8000 years before the present, coinciding with the onset of millet-based agriculture and significant environmental changes in the Yellow River region. Our findings illustrate that key aspects of phylogenetic history can be replicated in this complex language family, and calls ...

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Yang, P. (2020). Intercultural responsiveness: Learning languages other than English and developing intercultural communication competence. Languages, 5(2), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages5020024 (Open Access)
Ping Yang

Languages, 2020

This paper conceptually discusses why it is essential to foster intercultural responsiveness through learning a language other than English (LOTE) and developing intercultural communication competence at Australian universities. Learning a LOTE is meaningful and helps second language learners develop social skills and cognitive competence, understand the linguistic system of the LOTEs, and sense differences between their home language/culture and target language/culture, and then pave the way to developing intercultural communication competence. However, a LOTE as a compulsory unit has little presence in Australian university curricula. No Australian universities require that students need to learn a LOTE to meet the course requirements. Learning a LOTE is conducive to both bilingual/multilingual and intercultural communication competence development. Furthermore, most current work studies intercultural verbal communication competence more than intercultural nonverbal communication ...

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How children learn to communicate discriminatively
Michael Ramscar

Journal of Child Language, 2021

How do children learn to communicate, and what do they learn? Traditionally, most theories have taken an associative, compositional approach to these questions, supposing children acquire an inventory of form-meaning associations, and procedures for composing / decomposing them; into / from messages in production and comprehension. This paper presents an alternative account of human communication and its acquisition based on the systematic, discriminative approach embodied in psychological and computational models of learning, and formally described by communication theory. It describes how discriminative learning theory offers an alternative perspective on the way that systems of semantic cues are conditioned onto communicative codes, while information theory provides a very different view of the nature of the codes themselves. It shows how the distributional properties of languages satisfy the communicative requirements described in information theory, enabling language learners t...

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The Historical Phonology of Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese
Nathan W. Hill

2019

The discovery of sound laws by comparing attested languages is the method which has unlocked the history of European languages stretching back thousands of years before the appearance of written records, e.g. Latin p- corresponds to English f- (pes, foot; primus, first; plenus, full). Although Burmese, Chinese, and Tibetan have long been regarded as related, the systematic exploration of their shared history has never before been attempted. Tracing the history of these three languages using just such sound laws, this book sheds light on the prehistoric language from which they descend. Written for readers with little linguistic knowledge of these languages, but fully explicit and copiously indexed for the specialist, this work will serve as the bedrock for future progress in the study of these languages.

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