Scott DeLancey | |
---|---|
Born | 1949 |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Linguist |
Academic background | |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Oregon |
Main interests | Sino-Tibetan languages,Penutian languages |
Notable ideas | Mirative,creolization,Central Tibeto-Burman languages |
Scott DeLancey (born 1949) is an American linguist from the University of Oregon. His work focuses on typology and historical linguistics of Tibeto-Burman languages as well as North American indigenous languages such as the Penutian family,particularly the Klamath. His research is known for its diversity of its thematic and theoretical reach. [1]
He is well known for having developed the concept of mirative, [2] for promoting the study of comparative Penutian [3] and for being a vocal proponent of the idea that a system of agreement should be reconstructed in proto-Tibeto-Burman. [4]
DeLancey is currently undertaking field research on several Tibeto-Burman languages of Northeast India. Typologically,he considers Sinitic a mainland southeast Asian family. [5] The Chinese mainland consensus on Sino-Tibetan theory holds that the Sino-Tibetan language family descends from a single linguistic ancestor that accounts for shared features of monosyllabism,tonal features,and isolating characteristics. Some of these may,however,have arisen from early borrowing between members now included in this language family. The history of Vietnamese,to cite one example,shows how an originally atonal,polysyllabic language can,under Chinese influence,adopt the characteristics of the latter. [6] [7]
DeLancey has developed the hypothesis that the growth of the Shang state may have led to the adoption of its language as a lingua franca among the southern Baiyue and the Sino-Tibetan speaking Zhou to the west,creating a common lexical stock. According to this theory,the emergence of the Zhou within the Shang state strengthened a Sino-Tibetan component,which,on the accession of the Zhou to dynastic power,subjected the lingua franca to a process of creolization with a stronger Zhou Sino-Tibetan lexicon while building on a morphology inherited from Shang dynasty speakers. Sinitic in his view fits a Mainland Southeast Asian typology. The sum effect of this hypothetical Zhou diffusion of their version of the lingua franca was,he argues,one of Tibeto-Burmanization,with a concomitant shift from a SVO morphological substrate to a language with an increasing tendency towards SOV structure. [8]
DeLancey also proposed a new Tibeto-Burman subgroup,namely Central Tibeto-Burman.
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. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese 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.
Tani, is a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken mostly in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and neighboring regions.
In linguistics, mirativity, initially proposed by Scott DeLancey, is a grammatical category in a language, independent of evidentiality, that encodes the speaker's surprise or the unpreparedness of their mind. Grammatical elements that encode the semantic category of mirativity are called miratives.
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 Boro–Garo a subbranch of Tibeto-Burman languages or Assamese of Eastern Indo-Aryan languages and some of them possibly share ancestries. 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.
Indosphere is a term coined by the linguist James Matisoff for areas of Indian linguistic and cultural influence in South Asia and Southeast Asia. It is commonly used in areal linguistics in contrast with Sinosphere.
The Sal languages are a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in northeast India, parts of Bangladesh, and Burma.
The Bodo-Garo languages are a branch of Sino-Tibetan languages, spoken primarily in Northeast India and parts of Bangladesh.
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 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.
Guillaume Jacques is a French linguist who specializes in the study of Sino-Tibetan languages: Old Chinese, Tangut, Tibetan, Gyalrongic and Kiranti languages. He also performs research on the Algonquian and Siouan language families, and publishes about languages of other families such as Breton. His case studies in historical phonology are set in the framework of panchronic phonology, aiming to formulate generalizations about sound change that are independent of any particular language or language group.
Sino-Austronesian or Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian is a proposed language family suggested by Laurent Sagart in 1990. Using reconstructions of Old Chinese, Sagart argued that the Austronesian languages are related to the Sinitic languages phonologically, lexically and morphologically. Sagart later accepted the Sino-Tibetan languages as a valid group and extended his proposal to include the rest of Sino-Tibetan. He also placed the Tai–Kadai languages within the Austronesian family as a sister branch of Malayo-Polynesian. The proposal has been criticised by many other linguists who argue that the similarities between Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan more likely arose from contact rather than being genetic.
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.
Gyalrong or rGyalrong, also rendered Jiarong, or sometimes Gyarung, is a subbranch of the Gyalrongic languages spoken by the Gyalrong people in Western Sichuan, China. Lai et al. (2020) refer to this group of languages as East Gyalrongic.
Manang, also called Manangba, Manange, Manang Ke, Nyishang, Nyishangte and Nyishangba, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nepal. Native speakers refer to the language as ŋyeshaŋ, meaning 'our language'. It is one of half a dozen languages of the Sino-Tibetan family. Manang and its most closely related languages are often written as TGTM in literature, referring to Tamang, Gurung, Thakali, and Manangba, due to the high degree of similarity in the linguistic characteristics of the languages. The language is unwritten and almost solely spoken within the Manang District, leading it to be classified as threatened, with the number of speakers continuing to decline. Suspected reasons for the decline include parents not passing down the language to their children, in order to allow for what they see as more advanced communication with other groups of people, and thus gain more opportunities. Due to the proximity of the district to Tibet, as well as various globally widespread languages being introduced into the area, use of the native language is declining in favor of new languages, which are perceived to aid in the advancement of the people and region.
Japhug is a Gyalrong language spoken in Barkam County, Rngaba, Sichuan, China, in the three townships of Gdong-brgyad, Gsar-rdzong and Da-tshang.
Longjia is a Sino-Tibetan language of Guizhou, China related to Caijia and Luren. Longjia may already be extinct.
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.
Proto-Sino-Tibetan (PST) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Sino-Tibetan language family and the common ancestor of all languages in it, most prominently the Chinese languages, the Tibetan language, Yi, Bai, Burmese, Karen, Tangut, and Naga. Paul K. Benedict (1972) placed a particular emphasis on Old Chinese, Classical Tibetan, Jingpho, Written Burmese, Garo, and Mizo in his discussion of Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
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.