West Gyalrongic languages

West Gyalrongic
Geographic distribution	China
Linguistic classification	Sino-Tibetan Qiangic Gyalrongic West Gyalrongic
Subdivisions	Khroskyabs Horpa †Tangut
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	west2973  (West Gyalrongic)

The West Gyalrongic languages constitute a group of Gyalrongic languages. On the basis of both morphological and lexical evidence, Lai et al. (2020) add the extinct Tangut language to West Gyalrongic. ^[1] Beaudouin (2023) through a morphosyntactic analysis based on phonetic correspondences, shows that Tangut should be included within the Horpa languages. ^[2]

• Khroskyabs (formerly known as Lavrung)
• Horpa
  • †Tangut

History

Sagart et al. (2019) estimate that West and East Gyalrongic had diverged from each other about 3,000 years before present. ^[3]

Although Tangut is most commonly associated with Yinchuan, the capital of the Tangut Empire, Zhoushan (周山, Zhōushān) in Jinchuan County (Chinese: 金川縣 Jīnchuān Xiàn, Written Tibetan: Chuchen; roughly located between the territories of Khroskyabs and Situ speakers today) had a historically attested population of Tangut people in 945 AD. As a result, based on both historiographical and linguistic evidence, Lai et al. (2020) place the ultimate homeland of the Tangut in present-day western Sichuan. ^[1]

However, the Tangut were already rulers of the Dingnan Jiedushi from 881AD, which indicates another scenario, as they could not migrate to a place they were already situated.^{[ citation needed ]}

References

1. Lai, Yunfan; Gong, Xun; Gates, Jesse P.; Jacques, Guillaume (2020-12-01). "Tangut as a West Gyalrongic language". Folia Linguistica. 54 (s41 –s1). Walter de Gruyter GmbH: 171–203. doi:10.1515/flih-2020-0006. ISSN   1614-7308.
2. Beaudouin, Mathieu (2023-09-14). "Tangut and Horpa languages: Some shared morphosyntactic features". Language and Linguistics. 24 (4): 611–673. doi:10.1075/lali.00142.bea. ISSN   1606-822X.
3. Sagart, Laurent; Jacques, Guillaume; Lai, Yunfan; Ryder, Robin; Thouzeau, Valentin; Greenhill, Simon J.; List, Johann-Mattis (2019), "Dated language phylogenies shed light on the history of Sino-Tibetan", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116 (21): 10317–10322, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1817972116 , PMC   6534992 , PMID   31061123.
   • "Origin of Sino-Tibetan language family revealed by new research". ScienceDaily (Press release). May 6, 2019.

• Guillaume Jacques; Yunfan Lai; Anton Antonov; Lobsang Nima. 2017. "Stau (Ergong, Horpa)." In Graham Thurgood and Randy J. LaPolla (eds.), The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 597–613. London & New York: Routledge.