Tibeto-Burman Languages across the Himalayas

Sun Hongkai

Abstract:The branch of Tibeto-Burman languages across the southern range of the Himalayas has a close genetic relationship with the Tibeto-Burman languages along the northern range of the Himalayas in China. In 2013, I published an article titled 珃ailun xinan minzu zoulang diqu de yuyan jiqi xiangguan wenti (Further Discussion on the Languages in Southwest Ethnic Corridor and Related Issues) in 玹he Journal of Southwest University for Nationalities, in which I listed five cognates within different semantic categories of Tibeto-Burman languages on both sides of the Himalayas. Moreover, I followed every cognate with examples from dozens of languages on the both sides of the Himalayas. After several dozen years of investigation and research, the issues of ethnicity and language in this region have received more and more attention from international linguistic circles.

Lots of historical records indicate that the ethnic groups speaking Tibeto-Burman languages all originated from the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River, and are closely related to the pre-historic Qiang. I am planning to sort out all materials collected by our team and conduct a comparative study on them. The focus will be on the following:

1.To ask how many ethnic groups in this region speak Tibeto-Burman languages? What are the basic features of these groups, including their ethnic self-identification, distribution, population, and customs, etc.?

2.To reveal the basic features of their languages, including phonetics, vocabulary, and grammar, and their relation with the surrounding languages.

3.To compare the Tibeto-Burman languages in this region with the Tibeto-Burman languages in China, and to draw up a taxonomy of Tibeto-Burman languages which will reflect their relationship with each other, and the evolutionary lineages of the language.

4.Based on the materials related to ethnology, linguistics, historical studies, archeology, and anthropology, to study the southward migration route of the ancient Qiang, as well as the traces they left along the way, and, finally, to further enrich Fei Xiaotong餾 theory of the ethnic corridor (not only the Tibetan-Yi corridor).

There is still no convincing statement regarding the numbers of Tibeto-Burman languages along the southern range of the Himalayas. According to information from various scholarly resources, some say there are more than 200 kinds while others say more than 300. However, according to the latest statistics, there might be 401 kinds (not including the Tibeto-Burman languages in China). These languages are mainly distributed in Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Bangladesh, and Vietnam.

This innovative project of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, of which I am now responsible, will be implemented in two stages. The responsibility in the first stage (2013-2014) was to sort out the Tibeto-Burman languages in the above mentioned countries according to country classification, and complete a country classification report. The report covers the general information regarding the Tibeto-Burman languages in a particular country, and includes the name, distribution area, the populations using the language, main features, internal differences, research status, etc. This stage took

around two years. After completing the country classification report, in the second stage (2015-2016), we plan to make a comparative study by using the collected materials (including phonetic systems, high frequency cognate sets, and grammar etc.) with the Tibeto-Burman languages materials collected in China. Through a comparative study based upon phonetic patterns, similarities and differences of vocabularies and some important grammatical features, the “far- proximal” relationships of the genealogy of all Tibeto-Burman languages will be confirmed. We will also spend around two years for this stage.

Whether a language group has cognates depends on whether or not there is evidence to prove the existence of cognate relationships among these languages within the language group. That is, to see whether or not there are sets of cognate words and forms which have a strict phonetic corresponding relationship. When the Sino-Tibetan branch of languages developed to the present, many of them lost their forms , but morphemes with grammatical meaning are still very rich. Some of these morphemes are primitive vestiges while some of the others reflect gradual innovations in the long process of grammatical change. For Tibeto-Burman languages, this discovery of a set of primitive cognate morphemes is very important evidence, whether these morphemes are from the aspect of word-formation or the aspect of conformation.

For a language-group whose cognate relationships have been confirmed, their sub classification mainly depends on two points—the amount of primitive vestiges and the innovation of common elements. The cognate relationship of Tibeto-Burman languages has been discussed by many scholars from various angles, and their cognate relationship has been confirmed. The academic field has reached a consensus regarding this.Then, their “far-proximal” relationship has to be confirmed according to the phonetic patterns, the numbers of cognates,and the similarities and differences of grammatical scope and form. Based on the general characteristics of the Tibeto-Burman languages, this article provides the following content as the basis for reference: 1. phonetic patterns; 2.cognates;and 3. grammar categories and grammatical forms.

With regard to the interior classification of the Sino-Tibetan language family, the most complicated classification should be the Tibeto-Burman languages. In the following discussion, some problems in the classification of Tibeto-Burman languages will be noted, and these are also problems that need further attention in the future work of this project.

In the 1990s, James A. Matisoff, an American linguist who is a specialist on the Sino-Tibetan language family, proposed his own classification framework after he reviewed Paul K. Benedict餾 classification. He disagreed with Paul K. Benedict餾 classification which put the Jingpo language in the core position of the Tibeto-Burman branch, and stated that the interior classification of the Tibeto-Burman branch should be composed of 7 branches. Among these, there are 3 smaller sub-groups under the Kamarupan branch. This article餾 influence is very wide, and after its publication, western linguistic circles generally took it as the basis for the classification of Tibeto-Burman languages.

In 1993, I attended the 26th session of the International Sino-Tibetan Language Conference in Japan, and presented an article titled 珃ailun zangmian yuzu zhong dongci de rencheng fanchou (A Re-discussion on the Personal Verbs in Tibeto-Burman Branch). This article gave a primary classification of Tibeto-Burman languages.

My classification has some difference with Matisoff餾. This is mainly reflected in : 1. Due to the complexity of the Tibeto-Burman languages , I think that an additional taxomonic level, namely 珁uqun or language group, should be added between 珁uzu(language family) and yuzhi (language branch).In addition, under “l(fā)anguage branch”, we should add the term 珁uzu (some people call this 珁utuan, meaning language team). In this way, the “far-proximal” relationships between the languages which have cognate relationships can be described clearly. This is the main goal for us, to create a genealogical taxonomy of the languages. 2. Matisoff divided the languages into 7 language branches, and I divide them into 10.Moreover, the content included within the classification also clearly differs.

George van Driem, a scholar from the Netherlands uses a pattern of “fallen leaves” to classify the Tibeto-Burman language branch. One thing that should be noted is he takes Han Chinese as a linguistic branch of the Tibeto-Burman branch. He considers the “fallen leaves” pattern as a metaphor for the present situation of Tibeto-Burman historical linguistics studies. What we can recognize at present is that only a few linguistic branches or language groups are on the lowest level, just like the fallen leaves we can notice on the ground of the forest; and that the relationship of the languages on the higher levels is just like the source branches of the fallen leaves. We cannot yet confirm this with present academic levels of investigation.

I do not agree with van Driem for the following reasons:

1.Han Chinese and Tibeto-Burman language are absolutely not on the same level—the point in time that they separated is clearly far earlier than the differentiation of time of the language branches within Tibeto-Burman branch.

2. The internal languages of the Tibeto-Burman language branch are absolutely not scattered, and their proimal relationships can be clearly stated. There has already been a lot of research and relatively in-depth studies on this issue, and the evidence is also quite sufficient.

3. The author divided the Tibeto-Burman language branch into more than 40 sub-branches. Among these some are big, containing more than ten languages, for example, Lolo-Burmese. Some sub-branches are small, containing only one language, with only a small population still using the language, for example, Tsangla. My personal view is that this kind of classification is not very precise.

4. The author divided the Qiang language branches into four parts. In his map, there are 4 independent circles: Qiangic , rGyarongic, Ersuish, Naic. The languages within the Qiang language branch are only distributed in China. Many Chinese scholars have provided in-depth discussions on the Qiang language branch and published many monographs and articles, but it seems that the author has turned a blind eye to these.

5. In recent years, scholars have discovered some languages under Tibeto-Burman language branch which are not easily classified, such as the Sulong language (蘇龍語), whose status is more complex than that of the Bai, Tujia, Lepcha, or Karbi. Academics have discussed this, but it is not mentioned in the author餾 classification chart. Moreover, the author did not make any convincing argument on historical vestiges and shared innovations.

Actually, the relationship between Chinese and the other languages under the Tibeto-Burman branch was discussed in 1990s. There might be additional arguments regarding the linguistic classification of the Tibeto-Burman branch, but, due to the limitation of space, I will not provide more examples here.

Another difficulty faced by this project is how to handle the border between language and dialect.At present, there are more than 400 kinds of Tibeto-Burman languages in the southern range of the Himalayas.We have noticed that some foreign linguists regard dialects with minor internal differences as independent languages.For example,let us take the three dialects of Ershu language.Although there are big differences among them,there are still a large number of cognates,and their grammars are relatively close.However, when foreign scholars investigated them,they divided them into three different languages.Moreover,in van Driem餾 classification chart,these dialects are listed as an independent language branch named Ersuish.The use of English suffix “sh” indicates that this language branch is not a language already.

Since the implementation of this project, we have sorted out a lot of linguistic materials related to Tibeto-Burman languages in the southern range of the Himalayas, and have almost completed analyzing around 401 languages, and 600,000 words of linguistic materials from the Tibeto-Burman language branch in 9 different countries, including Pakistan, Laos, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. Moreover we have completed several maps which show the distribution of ethnic groups and language.

Based on the above mentioned materials, as well as the material from the vocabulary phonetic database concerning Tibeto- Burman languages of the Sino-Tibetan language family, and other reference materials, including dictionaries, grammars and monographs, and taking primitive vestiges and shared innovation as the basis of theory, we will conduct a classification research on the proximal relationship of all of the Tibeto-Burman languages. And, we will provide a relatively detailed matrix together with related discussions on the various language branches of the Tibeto-Burman languages and the distance relationship of these languages.

Key Words: Himalayan area; Tibeto-Burman languages; linguistic characteristics; genealogical relationship; the base of classification

References:

Compiling Team of Pronunciation and Vocabulary of Tibeto-Burman Languages. 珃angmianyu yuyin he cihui(Pronunciation and Vocabulary of Tibeto-Burman Languages). 獴eijing: minzu chubanshe,1991.

George van Driem. 玊he Trans-Himalayan Phylum and its Implications for Population prehistory. In 玁ewsletter of Modern Anthropology,2011,(5):135-142.

Graham Turgood and Randy J. LaPolla Ed. 玊he Sino-Tibetan Languages. London: Routledge,Taylor & Francis Group, 2003: 14-19.

James A. Matisoff ：玈ino-Tibetan Numerals and the Play of Prefixes. In 玆esearch Report of Ethnology Museum of Japan, 1995, 20(1):107.

M. Paul Lewis Ed. 獷thnologue: Languages of the World Sixteenth Edition Dallas. Texas SIL,2009.

Sun Hongkai. 玸hilun zhongguo jingnei zangmianyu de puxi fenlei (Genealogical Classification of Tibeto-Burman Languages in China). In 玠ongya de yuyan he lishi (Language and History of East Asia), riben songxiangtang, 1988: 61-74.

Sun Hongkai. 珃ailun xinan minzu zoulang diqu de yuyan jiqi xiangguan wenti(Further discussion on the Languages in Southwest China Ethnic Corridor)and Related Issues. In 獼ournal of Southwest University for Nationalities, 2013,(6):35-38.

Sun Hongkai. 珃ailun zangmianyu zhong dongci de rencheng fanchou(A Re-discussion on the Personal Verbs in Tibeto-Burman Branch ). In 玀inority Languages of China,1994,(4).