Sal languages

Last updated
Sal
Brahmaputran
Bodo-Konyak-Jinghpaw
Geographic
distribution		 India, Bangladesh, and Burma
Linguistic classification Sino-Tibetan
Subdivisions
Glottolog brah1260

The Sal languages, also known as the Brahmaputran languages, are a branch of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in northeast India, as well as parts of Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), and China.

Contents

Alternative names

Ethnologue calls the group "Jingpho–Konyak-Garo–Bodo", while Scott DeLancey (2015) [1] refers to it as "Bodo-Konyak-Garo-Jinghpaw" (BKJ). Glottolog lists this branch as “Brahmaputran (brah1260)”, as the languages occur around the Brahmaputra Valley.

Classification within Sino-Tibetan

Scott DeLancey (2015) [1] considers the Sal languages, which he refers to as Garo-Bodo-Konyak-Jinghpaw (BKJ), to be part of a wider Central Tibeto-Burman group.

Internal classification

Benedict (1972 :7) noted that the Bodo–Garo, Konyak, and Jingpho (Kachin) languages, as well as the extinct Chairel language, shared distinctive roots for "sun" and "fire".

Burling (1983) proposed a grouping of the Bodo–Garo, Konyak (Northern Naga), and Jingpho languages, characterized by several shared lexical innovations, including:

Burling (1983) called the proposed group Sal, after the words sal, san and jan for "sun" in various of these languages. Coupe (2012 :201–204) argues that some of Burling's proposed innovations are either not attested across the Sal languages, or have cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages. Nevertheless, Matisoff (2013) [2] accepts Burling's Sal group, and considers *s-raŋ 'sky/rain' and *nu 'mother' to be the most convincing Sal innovations.

The family is generally presented with three branches (Burling 2003 :175, Thurgood 2003 :11):

Shafer had grouped the first two as his Baric division, and Bradley (1997 :20) also combines them as a subbranch.

Bradley (1997) tentatively considers Pyu and Kuki-Chin to be possibly related to Sal, but is uncertain about this.

Peterson (2009) [3] considers Mru-Hkongso to be a separate Tibeto-Burman branch, but notes that Mru-Hkongso shares similarities with Bodo–Garo that could be due to the early split of Mruic from a Tibeto-Burman branch that included Bodo–Garo.

van Driem (2011)

The Brahmaputran branch of van Driem (2011) has three variants:

The smallest is his most recent, and the one van Driem considers a well-established low-level group of Sino-Tibetan. [6] However, Dhimalish is not accepted as a Sal language by Glottolog. [7] Sotrug (2015) [8] and Gerber, et al. (2016) [9] consider Dhimalish to be particularly closely related to the Kiranti languages rather than to the Sal languages.

Matisoff (2012, 2013)

James Matisoff (2012) [10] makes the following observations about the Sal grouping.

Matisoff (2012) notes that these Tibeto-Burman branches did not split off neatly in a tree-like fashion, but rather form a linkage. Nevertheless, Matisoff (2013:30) [2] still provides the following Stammbaum for the Sal branch.

The unclassified extinct Taman language of northern Myanmar displays some similarities with Luish languages, Jingpho, and Bodo-Garo, but it is undetermined whether Taman is a Sal language or not. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sino-Tibetan languages</span> Language family native to Asia

Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Sinitic languages. Other Sino-Tibetan languages with large numbers of speakers include Burmese and the Tibetic languages. Other languages of the family are spoken in the Himalayas, the Southeast Asian Massif, and the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Most of these have small speech communities in remote mountain areas, and as such are poorly documented.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bodo–Kachari people</span> Group of ethnic peoples in Northeast India

Bodo–Kacharis is a name used by anthropologist and linguists to define a collection of ethnic groups living predominantly in the Northeast Indian states of Assam, Tripura, and Meghalaya. These peoples are speakers of either Bodo–Garo languages or Assamese. Some Tibeto-Burman speakers who live closely in and around the Brahmaputra valley, such as the Mising people and Karbi people, are not considered Bodo–Kachari. Many of these peoples have formed early states in the late Medieval era of Indian history and came under varying degrees of Sanskritisation.

The Kuki-Chin–Naga languages are a geographic clustering of languages of the Sino-Tibetan family in James Matisoff's classification used by Ethnologue, which groups it under the non-monophyletic "Tibeto-Burman". Their genealogical relationship both to each other and to the rest of Sino-Tibetan is unresolved, but Matisoff lumps them together as a convenience pending further research.

The Kiranti languages are a major family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Nepal and India by the Kirati people.

The Dhimalish languages, Dhimal and Toto, are a small group of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Nepal, Bhutan, and the Jalpaiguri division of West Bengal, India.

The Boro–Garo languages are a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages, spoken primarily in Northeast India and parts of Bangladesh.

The Konyak languages, or alternatively the Konyakian, Northern Naga, or Patkaian languages, is a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken by various Naga peoples in southeastern Arunachal Pradesh and northeastern Nagaland states of northeastern India. They are not particularly closely related to other Naga languages spoken further to the south, but rather to other Sal languages such as Jingpho and the Bodo-Garo languages. There are many dialects, and villages even a few kilometers apart frequently have to rely on a separate common language.

The Jingpho-Luish, Jingpho-Asakian, Kachin–Luic, or Kachinic languages are a group of Sino-Tibetan languages belonging the Sal branch. They are spoken in northeastern India, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and consist of the Jingpho language and the Luish languages Sak, Kadu, Ganan, Andro, Sengmai, and Chairel. Ethnologue and Glottolog include the extinct or nearly extinct Taman language in the Jingpo branch, but Huziwara (2016) considers it to be unclassified within Tibeto-Burman.

The Angami–Pochuri languages are a small family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in southern Nagaland and Northern Manipur of northeast India. Conventionally classified as "Naga", they are not clearly related to other Naga languages, and are conservatively classified as an independent branch of Sino-Tibetan, pending further research.

The Kuki-Chin languages are a branch of 50 or so Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in northeastern India, western Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh. Speakers of these languages are Mizo in Mizoram, Kuki people in Manipur, and Chin people in Myanmar.

The Tibeto-Kanauri languages, also called Bodic, Bodish–Himalayish, and Western Tibeto-Burman, are a proposed intermediate level of classification of the Sino-Tibetan languages, centered on the Tibetic languages and the Kinnauri dialect cluster. The conception of the relationship, or if it is even a valid group, varies between researchers.

The Nung or Nungish languages are a poorly described family of uncertain affiliation within the Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Yunnan, China and Burma. They include:

The Boroic languages are a group within the Boro-Garo languages which are spoken in and around the Brahmaputra basin, Barak valley and Tripura of present-day northeast India. They are:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tibeto-Burman languages</span> Group of the Sino-Tibetan language family

The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The name derives from the most widely spoken of these languages, Burmese and the Tibetic languages, which also have extensive literary traditions, dating from the 12th and 7th centuries respectively. Most of the other languages are spoken by much smaller communities, and many of them have not been described in detail.

Proto-Tibeto-Burman is the reconstructed ancestor of the Tibeto-Burman languages, that is, the Sino-Tibetan languages, except for Chinese. An initial reconstruction was produced by Paul K. Benedict and since refined by James Matisoff. Several other researchers argue that the Tibeto-Burman languages sans Chinese do not constitute a monophyletic group within Sino-Tibetan, and therefore that Proto-Tibeto-Burman was the same language as Proto-Sino-Tibetan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kadu language</span> Sino-Tibetan language of Burma

Kadu or Kado(Kadu:); is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Sal branch spoken in Sagaing Region, Myanmar by the Kadu people. Dialects are Settaw, Mawkhwin, and Mawteik [extinct], with 30,000 speakers total. Kadu is considered an endangered language, and is closely related to the Ganan and Sak languages.

The Luish, Asakian, or Sak languages are a group of Sino-Tibetan languages belonging to the Sal branch. They are spoken in Burma and Bangladesh, and consist of the Sak, Kadu, and Ganan languages. In recent years, Luish languages have been influenced by Burmese and Chakma.

Mruic or Mru–Hkongso is a small group of Sino-Tibetan languages consisting of two languages, Mru and Anu-Hkongso. Their relationship within Sino-Tibetan is unclear. However, it shares similarities with Bodo-Garo languages

Central Tibeto-Burman or Central Trans-Himalayan is a proposed branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family proposed by Scott DeLancey (2015) on the basis of shared morphological evidence.

Taman is an extinct Sino-Tibetan language that was spoken in Htamanthi village in Homalin Township, Sagaing Region, northern Myanmar. It was documented in a list of 75 words in Brown (1911). Keisuke Huziwara (2016) discovered an elderly rememberer of Taman in Htamanthi who could remember some Taman phrases as well as a short song, but was not fluent in the Taman language. However, no fluent speakers of Taman remained in the area.

References

  1. 1 2 DeLancey, Scott. 2015. "Morphological Evidence for a Central Branch of Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan)." Cahiers de linguistique - Asie oriental 44(2):122-149. December 2015. doi : 10.1163/19606028-00442p02
  2. 1 2 3 Matisoff, James A. 2013. Re-examining the genetic position of Jingpho: putting flesh on the bones of the Jingpho/Luish relationship. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 36(2). 1–106.
  3. ↑ Peterson, David A. 2009. "Where does Mru fit into Tibeto-Burman?" Paper presented at The 42nd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (ICSTLL 42), November 2009, Payap University, Chiangmai, Thailand.
  4. ↑ van Driem (2014)
  5. 1 2 van Driem (2001 :397–398, 403)
  6. ↑ van Driem, George L. (2011), "Tibeto-Burman subgroups and historical grammar", Himalayan Linguistics Journal, 10 (1).
  7. ↑ Hammarstrom, et al. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/dhim1245
  8. ↑ Sotrug, Yeshy T. (2015). Linguistic evidence for madeskā kirãntī. The phylogenetic position of Dhimalish. Bern: University of Bern Master’s Thesis, 22 June 2015.
  9. ↑ Gerber, Pascal, Tanja Gerber, Selin Grollmann. 2016. Links between Lhokpu and Kiranti: some observations . Kiranti Workshop. CNRS Université Paris Diderot, 1-2 Dec 2016.
  10. ↑ Matisoff, James. 2012. Re-examining the genetic position of Jingpho: can the Sal hypothesis be reconciled with the Jingpho/Nungish/Luish grouping?. Paper presented at the Mainland Southeast Asian Languages: The State of the Art in 2012 workshop, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 29 November - 1 December 2012.
  11. ↑ Huziwara, Keisuke. 2016. タマン語の系統再考 / On the genetic position of Taman reconsidered. In Kyoto University Linguistic Research 35, p.1-34. doi : 10.14989/219018 (PDF)

Bibliography

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