Sino-Tibetan languages

Superfamily of languages whose two branches are the Sinitic or Chinese languages and the Tibeto-Burman family, an assemblage of several hundred very diverse languages spoken by about 65 million people from northern Pakistan east to Vietnam, and from the Tibetan plateau south to the Malay Peninsula.

Western Tibeto-Burman languages include Tibetan and the Bodish and Himalayan languages, spoken mainly in Nepal. Tibeto-Burman languages of northeastern India include the Bodo-Garo languages (spoken in Assam) and the northern Naga languages of Nagaland; perhaps allied to these is Jinghpaw (Jingpo), spoken in northern Myanmar. Kuki-Chin and southern Naga languages are spoken in eastern India, eastern Bangladesh, and western Myanmar. Central Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken mainly in Arunachal Pradesh in India and in adjacent parts of China and Myanmar; they include Lepcha, an official language of Sikkim. Northeastern Tibeto-Burman comprises a heterogeneous group of languages spoken in western Sichuan and northwestern Yunnan in China. Burmese-Lolo, a geographically wide-ranging subgroup, includes Burmese, the national language of Myanmar (Burma). Loloish languages include the speech of the Yi or Lolo of Yunnan as well as several languages spread over Yunnan and parts of Southeast Asia, including Lahu and Akha. Karen, spoken by the Karen of Myanmar and Thailand, forms a distinct subgroup. Tibetan and Burmese are the only Tibeto-Burman languages with long literary traditions. Burmese is written in an adaptation of the Mon script (see Mon-Khmer languages).

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Introduction

      group of languages that includes both the Chinese (Chinese languages) and the Tibeto-Burman languages. In terms of numbers of speakers, they comprise the world's second largest language family (after Indo-European), including more than 300 languages and major dialects. In a wider sense, Sino-Tibetan has been defined as also including the Tai (Tai languages) (Daic) and Karen (Karen languages) language families. Some scholars also include the Hmong-Mien (Hmong-Mien languages) (Miao-Yao) languages and even the Ket language of central Siberia, but the affiliation of these languages to the Sino-Tibetan group has not been conclusively demonstrated. Other linguists connect the Mon-Khmer family of the Austroasiatic stock or the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) family, or both, with Sino-Tibetan; a suggested term for this most inclusive group, which seems to be based on premature speculations, is Sino-Austric. Yet other scholars see a relationship of Sino-Tibetan with the Athabascan (Athabaskan language family) and other languages of North America, but proof of this is beyond reach at the present state of knowledge.

      Sino-Tibetan languages were known for a long time by the name of Indochinese, which is now restricted to the languages of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. They were also called Tibeto-Chinese until the now universally accepted designation Sino-Tibetan was adopted. The term Sinitic also has been used in the same sense, but also as below for the Chinese subfamily exclusively. (In the following discussion of language groups, the ending -ic, as in Sinitic, indicates a relatively large group of languages, and -ish denotes a smaller grouping.)

Distribution and classification of Sino-Tibetan languages

Distribution

Sinitic languages (Chinese languages)

 Sinitic languages, commonly known as the Chinese dialects, are spoken in China and on the island of Taiwan and by important minorities in all the countries of Southeast Asia (by a majority only in Singapore). In addition, Sinitic languages are spoken by Chinese immigrants in many parts of the world, notably in Oceania and in North and South America; altogether there are at least 1.14 billion speakers of Chinese languages. Sinitic is divided into a number of language groups, by far the most important of which is Mandarin (Mandarin language) (or Northern Chinese). Mandarin, which includes Modern Standard Chinese (based on the Beijing dialect), is not only the most important language of the Sino-Tibetan family but also has the most ancient writing tradition still in use of any modern language. The remaining Sinitic language groups are Wu (Wu language) (including Shanghai dialect), Xiang (Xiang language) (Hsiang, or Hunanese), Gan (Gan language) (Kan), Hakka (Hakka language), Yue (Cantonese language) (Yüeh, or Cantonese, including Canton and Hong Kong dialects), and Min (Min languages) (including Fuzhou, Amoy [Xiamen], Swatow [Shantou], and Taiwanese).

Tibeto-Burman languages

      Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and Myanmar (Burma); in the Himalayas, including the countries of Nepal and Bhutan and the state of Sikkim, India; in Assam, India, and in Pakistan and Bangladesh; they also are spoken by hill tribes throughout mainland Southeast Asia and central China (the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan). Tibetic (i.e., Tibetan in the widest sense of the word) comprises a number of dialects and languages spoken in Tibet and the Himalayas. Burmic (Burmese in its widest application) includes Yi (Lolo), Hani, Lahu, Lisu, Kachin (Jingpo), Kuki-Chin, the obsolete Xixia (Tangut), and other languages. The Tibetan writing system (which dates from the 7th century) and the Burmese (dating from the 11th century) are derived from the Indo-Aryan (Indic) tradition; the Xixia system (developed in the 11th–13th century in northwestern China) was based on the Chinese model. Pictographic writing systems, which show some influence from Chinese, were developed within the past 500 years by Yi and Naxi (formerly Moso) tribes in western China. In modern times many Tibeto-Burman languages have acquired writing systems in Roman (Latin) script or in the script of the host country (Thai, Burmese, Indic, and others).

Classification

      The old literary languages, Chinese, Tibetan, and Burmese, are generally considered as representatives of three major divisions within Sino-Tibetan (Sinitic, Tibetic, and Burmic, respectively). A fourth literary language, Thai (Thai language), or Siamese (written from the 13th century), represents what was accepted for a long time as a Tai division of Sino-Tibetan or as a division of a Sino-Tai family. This relationship is now more commonly considered nongenetic in that most of the shared vocabulary is more likely attributable to a history of cultural borrowing than to derivation from a common ancestral language.

      Sinitic stands apart from Tibetic and Burmic on many grounds, including vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and phonology. Most scholars agree on combining Tibetic and Burmic into a Tibeto-Burman subfamily, which also includes Bodo-Garo or Baric but not Karenic. If Karenic is to be considered Sino-Tibetan, it must be set up as an independent member of a Tibeto-Karen group that includes Tibeto-Burman. The special affinities between Sinitic and Karenic (especially in syntax) are then considered secondary. The two closely related language groups, Hmong and Mien (also known as Miao and Yao), are thought by some to be very remotely related to Sino-Tibetan; they are spoken in western China and northern mainland Southeast Asia and may well be of Austro-Tai stock.

      In attempting to determine the exact interrelationship of the Tai languages, Karenic, Sino-Tibetan, and several marginal tongues, scholars must keep in mind that a discernible layer of Sino-Tibetan features in a given language may have been superimposed upon an older, non-Sino-Tibetan foundation (called the substratum language). Attributing a language to Sino-Tibetan or to another family may depend entirely on the ability of scholars to identify the substratum. Thus, if Tai is not considered as a division of Sino-Tibetan, it is because the substratum has been recognized as Austronesian; if Karen is still included among Sino-Tibetan languages on some level, it is perhaps because identification of a substratum is still lacking. Among the languages that have been classified as Sino-Tibetan, a great many are known only from word lists or have not yet been described in a way that makes valid comparisons possible.

      A number of Sino-Tibetan languages are enumerated below together with their most likely affiliation. Some scholars believe the Tibetic and Burmic divisions to be premature and that for the present their subdivisions (such as Bodish, Himalayish, Kirantish, Burmish, Kachinish, and Kukish) should be considered as the classificatory peaks around which other Sino-Tibetan languages group themselves as members or more or less distant relatives. Certainly the stage has not yet been reached in which definite boundaries can be laid down and ancestral Proto-, or Common, Tibetic and Proto-, or Common, Burmic can be undisputedly reconstructed.

Language affiliations

Tibeto-Burman languages

Tibetic languages

       Tibetic Languages*, Table Tibetic Languages*, TableThe Tibetic (also called the Bodic, from Bod, the Tibetan name for Tibet) division comprises the Bodish-Himalayish, Kirantish, and Mirish language groups.

Burmic languages

 The Burmic division comprises Burmish, Kachinish, and Kukish.

      A number of Tibeto-Burman languages that are difficult to classify have marginal affiliations with Burmic. The Luish languages (Andro, Sengmai, Kadu, Sak, and perhaps also Chairel) in Manipur, India, and adjacent Myanmar resemble Kachin; Nung (including Rawang and Trung) in Kachin state in Myanmar and in Yunnan province, China, has similarities with Kachin; and Mikir in Assam, as well as Mru and Meithei in India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar, seem close to Kukish.

Baric languages

       Baric Languages, Table Baric Languages, TableThe Baric, or Bodo-Garo, division consists of a number of languages spoken in Assam and falls into a Bodo branch (not to be confused with Bodic-Tibetic, and Bodish, a subdivision of Tibetic) and a Garo branch.

      A group of Sino-Tibetan languages in Nagaland (Nagish, not to be confused with the Naga branch of Kukish; including Mo Shang, Namsang, and Banpara) has affinities to Baric.

Karenic languages (Karen languages)

      The Karenic languages of Karen state in Myanmar and adjacent areas in Myanmar and Thailand include the two major languages of the Pho (Pwo) and Sgaw, which have some 3.2 million speakers. Taungthu (Pa-o) is close to Pho, and Palaychi to Sgaw. There are several minor groups.

Chinese, or Sinitic, languages

      Chinese as the name of a language is a misnomer. It has been applied to numerous dialects, styles, and languages since the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. Sinitic is a more satisfactory designation for covering all these entities and setting them off from the Tibeto-Karen group of Sino-Tibetan languages. Han is a Chinese term for Chinese as opposed to non-Chinese languages spoken in China. The Chinese terms for Modern Standard Chinese are putonghua “common language” and guoyu “national language” (the latter term is used in Taiwan).

 Reconstructed prehistoric Chinese is known as Proto-Sinitic (or Proto-Chinese); the oldest historic language of China is called Archaic, or Old, Chinese (8th–3rd centuries BC), and that of the next period up to and including the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) is known as Ancient, or Middle, Chinese. Languages of later periods include Old, Middle, and Modern Mandarin (the name Mandarin is a translation of guanhua, “civil servant language”). Through history the Sinitic language area has constantly expanded from the “Middle Kingdom” around the eastern Huang He (Yellow River) to its present size. The persistence of a common, nonphonetic writing system for centuries explains why the word dialect rather than language has had widespread usage for referring to the modern speech forms. The present-day spoken languages are not mutually intelligible (some are further apart than Portuguese is from Italian), and neither are the major subdivisions within each group. The variation is slightest in the western and southwestern provinces and greatest along the Huang He and in the coastal areas. The table—> gives the percentage of Chinese people speaking each of the various Chinese languages.

      A vernacular written tradition exists mainly in Beijing Mandarin and in Cantonese, spoken in the vicinity of Guangzhou (Canton). An unwritten storytelling tradition has survived in most languages. The school and radio language is Modern Standard Chinese in China as well as in Taiwan and Singapore. In Hong Kong, Cantonese prevails as the language of education and in the communication media, but efforts are now made to adopt Modern Standard Chinese as a norm. The same orthographic system is employed, with some variations, by all speakers of Chinese.

      Non-Chinese Sino-Tibetan languages of China include some Lolo-type languages (Burmish)—Yi, with nearly 7 million speakers in Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Guangxi; Hani (Akha) with about 500,000 speakers in Yunnan; Lisu, with approximately 610,000 speakers in Yunnan; Lahu, with about 440,000 speakers in Yunnan; and Naxi, with approximately 300,000 speakers mostly in Yunnan and Sichuan. Other Sino-Tibetan languages in Yunnan and Sichuan are Kachin and the closely related Atsi (Zaiwa); Achang, Nu, Pumi (Primi), Qiang, Gyarung, Xifan; and Bai (Minjia, probably a separate branch within Sinitic).

Linguistic characteristics

Common features

      At the end of the 18th and during the first half of the 19th century a great number of languages were investigated by Western scholars in the Himalayas, in India, and in China, and word lists and grammatical sketches began to appear. By the late 19th century a foundation had been laid for Sino-Tibetan comparative (comparative linguistics) studies.

      The comparative method for determining genetic relationship among languages was worked out in detail for Indo-European during the latter part of the 19th century. It rests on the assumption that sound correspondences in related words and morphological units, as well as structural similarities on all levels (phonology, morphology, syntax), can be explained in terms of a reconstructed common language, or protolanguage. Structural or typological similarities, however, are in many cases due to interaction among contiguous languages over a long time, creating so-called linguistic, or language, areas. The morphology and syntax of the Sino-Tibetan languages are for the most part rather simple and nonspecific, and the length of time involved in the separation of subfamilies and divisions is such that comparative phonological statements are often difficult to reduce to concise correspondences and laws.

      A number of features have been delineated as common for the Sino-Tibetan languages. Many of them can be shown to be of a typological nature, the result of diffusion and underlying unrelated language strata.

Typological similarities

Monosyllabicity

      The vast majority of all words in all Sino-Tibetan languages are of one syllable, and the exceptions appear to be secondary (i.e., words that were introduced at a later date than Common, or Proto-, Sino-Tibetan). Some suffixes in Tibeto-Burman are syllabic, thus adding a syllable to a word, but they have a highly reduced set of vowels and tones (“minor syllables”). These features are, however, shared by contiguous languages (namely, those of Austroasiatic stock and Hmong-Mien) and are not clearly attributable to Sino-Tibetan on the basis of shared basic vocabulary items.

Tonality (tone)

      Most Sino-Tibetan languages possess phonemic tones, which indicate a difference in meaning in otherwise similar words. There are no tones in Purik, a Western Tibetan language; Ambo, a Northern Tibetan tongue; and Newari of Nepal. Balti, another Western Tibetan language, has pitch differences in polysyllabic nouns. The tones of the remaining Tibetan dialects can be accounted for by positing an original and older system of voiced and voiceless initial sounds that eventually resulted in tones. In several Himalayish languages, tones are linked with articulatory features connected with the end of the syllable or are linked with stress features, as also in Kukish Lepcha (Rong).

      Most Baric languages lack tones altogether; and Burmic, Karenic, and Sinitic tonal systems can be reduced to two basic tones ultimately probably accounted for by different syllabic endings. What can be reconstructed for Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the language from which all the modern Sino-Tibetan languages developed, are a set of conditioning factors (as, for example, certain syllabic endings) that resulted in tones; the tones themselves cannot be reconstructed. Again the features that encouraged the development of tones are not uniquely Sino-Tibetan; similar conditions have produced similar effects in Tai and Hmong-Mien and—within the Austroasiatic languages—in Vietnamese and in the embryonic form of two registers (pitches or vocal qualities) also in Cambodian.

Affixation (affix)

      Most Sino-Tibetan languages possess or can be shown to have at one time possessed derivational and morphological affixes—i.e., word elements attached before or after or within the main stem of a word that change or modify the meaning in some way. Many prefixes can be reconstructed for Proto-Sino-Tibetan: s- (causative), m- (intransitive), b-, d-, g-, and r-, and many more for certain language divisions and units. Among the suffixes, -s (used with several types of verbs and nouns), -t, and -n are inherited from the protolanguage. The problem of whether Proto-Sino-Tibetan made use of -r- and -l- infixes (besides perhaps semivocalic infixes) has not been solved. Whether clusters containing these sounds were the result of prefixation to roots beginning in r and l (and y) or came about through infixation is not clear.

Initial consonant alternation

      Voiced and voiceless initial stops alternate in the same root in many Sino-Tibetan languages, including Chinese, Burmese, and Tibetan (voiced in intransitive, voiceless in transitive verbs). The German Oriental scholar August Conrady linked this morphological system to the causative s- prefix, which was supposed to have caused devoicing of voiced stops. (Voicing is the vibration of the vocal cords, as occurs, for example, in the sounds b, d, g, z, and so on. Devoicing, or voicelessness, is the pronunciation of sounds without vibration of the vocal cords, as in p, t, k, s.) Such alternating of the initial consonant cannot itself be reconstructed for the protolanguage.

Vowel alternation

      The morphological use of vowel gradation (called ablaut) is well known from Indo-European languages (e.g., the vowel change in English sing, sang, sung) and is found in several Sino-Tibetan languages, including Chinese and Tibetan. In Tibetan the various forms of the verbs are differentiated in part by vowel alternation; in Sinitic some related words (known as word families) are kept apart by vowel alternation. Some conditioning factor outside the vowel (perhaps stress or sandhi, the modification of a sound according to the surrounding sounds) may have been responsible for the Sino-Tibetan ablaut systems.

Indistinct word classes

      Especially in the older stages of Sino-Tibetan, the distinction of verbs and nouns appears blurred; both overlap extensively in the Old Chinese writing system. Philological tradition as well as Sinitic reconstruction show, however, that frequently, when the verb and the noun were written alike, they were pronounced differently, the difference manifesting itself later in the tonal system. Verbs and nouns also used different sets of particles.

Use of noun classifiers

      The Sino-Tibetan noun is typically a collective term, designating all members of its class, like the English man used to signify “all human beings.” In a number of modern Sino-Tibetan languages, such a noun can be counted or modified by a demonstrative pronoun only indirectly through a smaller number of noncollective nouns, called classifiers, in constructions such as “one person man,” “one animal dog,” and so on, much like parallel cases in Indo-European (in English, “one head of cattle”; in German, ein Kopf Salat “one head of lettuce”). The phenomenon is absent in Tibetan and appears late in Burmese and Chinese. Furthermore, classifiers are not exclusively Sino-Tibetan; they exist also in Hmong-Mien, Tai, Austric, and Japanese. In Classical Chinese, Tai, and Burmese, the classifier construction follows the noun; in modern Chinese, as in Hmong-Mien, it precedes it. Classifiers are of later origin and do not belong to Proto-Sino-Tibetan.

Word order

      Although the word order of subject–object–verb and modified–modifier prevails in Tibeto-Burman, the order subject–verb–object and modifier–modified occurs in Karenic. In this respect Chinese is like Karen, although Old Chinese shows remnants of the Tibeto-Burman word order. Tai employs still another order: subject–verb–object, and modified–modifier, like Austric but unlike Hmong-Mien, which follows the Karen and Chinese model. Word order, even more than any of the other distinguishing features, points to diffusion from several centres, or to unrelated substrata.

Phonological correspondences

      The hypothesis that the Sino-Tibetan languages are all related and derive from a common source depends on phonological correspondences in shared vocabulary more than on any other argument. It is ironic that the clearest and most convincing results should have been obtained from studies of the Sinitic-Tai similarities, which probably do not indicate a true case of genetic relationship. In 1942 most of the words in this grouping were shown to be cultural loans (then thought of as Chinese loanwords in Tai, now believed to a very large extent to be borrowings in the opposite direction).

      A comparison of Old Chinese and Old Tibetan made by Walter Simon in 1929, although limited in some ways, pointed to enough sound resemblances in important items of basic vocabulary to eliminate the possibility of coincidental similarities between unrelated languages. A few examples of similar words in Old Tibetan and Old Chinese, respectively, follow: “bent,” gug and gyuk; “eye,” myig and myəkw; “friend,” grogs and gyəgw; “kill,” gsod and sriat; “onion,” btsong and tshung; “rise,” lang and rang; “single, one,” gcig and tyik; “sun,” nyi and nyit. The American linguist Paul Benedict brought in material from other Sino-Tibetan languages and laid down the rule that the comparative linguist should accept perfect phonetic correspondences with inexact though close semantic equivalences in preference to perfect semantic equivalences with questionable phonetic correspondences. New material and competent descriptions later made it possible to reconstruct important features of common ancestral languages within major divisions of Sino-Tibetan (notably Lolo, Baric, Tibetic, Kachin, Kukish, Karenic, Sinitic).

Interrelationship of the language groups

      The position of Proto-Sino-Tibetan can be defined in terms of a chain of interrelated languages and language groups: Sinitic is connected with Tibetic through a body of shared vocabulary and typological features, similarly Tibetic with Baric, Baric with Burmic, and Burmic with Karenic. The chain continues at both ends, connecting Sinitic to Tai and Tai to Austronesian and also connecting Karenic with Austroasiatic. Considerations of basic vocabulary versus cultural loans and diffusion versus inheritance have led scholars to believe that only the members of the chain from Sinitic to Karenic share a common ancestral language; especially Sinitic and Karenic are under suspicion for containing only superstrata of Sino-Tibetan origin.

Proto-Tibeto-Burman

      The Proto-Tibeto-Burman language was monosyllabic. Some grammatical units may have had the form of minor syllables before the major syllable (*ma-, *ba-) or after the major syllable (*-ma, *-ba). (An asterisk indicates that the form it precedes is unattested and has been reconstructed as a possible ancestral form.) The consonants were three voiceless stops (p, t, k), which were aspirated in absolute initial position, three voiced stops (b, d, g), and three nasal sounds (m, n, ŋ [as the -ng in “sing”]). There were five continuant sounds (s, z, r, l, and h) and two semivowels (w, y). In final position there was only one set of stops, but there were a number of initial and final clusters mainly resulting from the addition of prefixes and suffixes. Three degrees of vowel opening existed with two members in each: i and u, e and o, a and aa (short and long a). Length may have been relevant also with the i and u and e and o vowels. The conditioning factors that led to the development of tones can be shown to have been voiced–voiceless contrast in initial and final consonants and consonant clusters. Because the conditioning factors were involved with morphological process (affixation and consonant alternation), tonal systems could also acquire certain grammatical or structural functions. An independent morphological system involved or resulted in vowel alternation (Sino-Tibetan languages).

      The sound system of Proto-Karenic appears closely related to that of Proto-Tibeto-Burman. The tonal classes can be reduced to two, which connect Karen to Burmic, Sinitic, Tai, and Hmong-Mien.

Proto-Sinitic

      Greater dissimilarity is encountered with respect to Proto-Sinitic. The contrast of aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops in initial position is most likely the result of lost initial cluster elements as in Proto-Tibeto-Burman. The voiced stops possibly also had the aspirated–unaspirated distinction. Unlike Tibeto-Burman, two series of stops in syllable final position are posited for Old Chinese, but it is not clear if the contrast involved voicing or other features. One series is in general without an exact correspondence in Tibeto-Burman languages, but Burmish Maru has final stops in a number of these words. Similar isolated cases are found in Tibetan and in Tai (Tai languages).

      Old Chinese has two more relevant points of articulation, or sound-producing positions of the mouth, than Proto-Tibeto-Burman: palatal (in which the tongue blade touches the palate) and retroflex (in which the tip of the tongue is curled upward toward the palate). But these two types of sounds may be explained as the result of influence from lost Proto-Sinitic medial sounds (a palatal -y- and a retroflex -r-). The relationship between these specific medial sounds and similar elements in Tibeto-Karen is, however, not certain. Dental affricate sounds in Old Chinese, which begin as stops with complete stoppage of the breath stream and conclude as fricatives with incomplete air stoppage and audible friction, can at least be explained partly as metathesized (transposed) forms of prefix s- plus a dental sound in Proto-Sinitic (e.g., st changes to ts). Old Chinese possessed initial consonant clusters containing -l- as a second element, so Proto-Sinitic can reasonably be supposed to have had the same three medial elements as Proto-Tibeto-Burman: -y-, -l-, and -r-. There are few, if any, traces in Old Chinese of the more complicated clusters and the minor syllables of Tibeto-Burman.

      The vowel system of Old Chinese as reconstructed (1940) by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren to account especially for the language of the Shijing, an anthology of Chinese poetry compiled in the 6th–5th centuries BC, seems surprisingly complicated as compared to that of Proto-Tibeto-Burman. Probably some of the vowels can be explained as diphthongs or as combinations of vowels plus specific classes of consonants (e.g., labialized, retroflex, palatal).

      As in Karen and Burmese-Loloish, the tones of Sinitic can be reduced to two (with some syllables or syllabic types being neutral or unaffected by the tonal system; the modern Sinitic languages have from two to as many as eight or nine tones). Monosyllabicity of roots and morphological affixation were characteristic features of Proto-Sino-Tibetan as they were of Proto-Tibeto-Karen.

Søren Christian Egerod

Additional Reading

Overviews of the Sino-Tibetan languages are provided in Paul K. Benedict, Sino-Tibetan: A Conspectus (1972), a comprehensive and original study; G.A. Grierson (compiler and ed.), Linguistic Survey of India, vol. 3 in 3 parts, Tibeto-Burman Family (1903–09, reprinted 1967), a wealth of material but of uneven quality; Frank M. LeBar, Gerald C. Hickey, and John K. Musgrave, Ethnic Groups of Mainland Southeast Asia (1964), an excellent reference work; Henri Maspero, “Langues de l'Asie du Sud-Est,” in A. Meillet and Marcel Cohen (eds.), Les Langues du monde, new ed. (1952, reprinted 1981), pp. 525–644, the most authoritative concise treatment of Sino-Tibetan; C.F. Voegelin and F.M. Voegelin, “Languages of the World: Sino-Tibetan,” Anthropological Linguistics, vol. 6, no. 3 (March 1964) and vol. 7, nos. 3–6, all part 1 (March–June 1965), much information of a semitechnical nature; Robert Shafer, Introduction to Sino-Tibetan, 5 vol. (1966–74), a comprehensive and extensive, but technical, series; Robert Shafer (ed.), Bibliography of Sino-Tibetan Languages, 2 vol. (1957–63), indispensable for further research; and S. Robert Ramsey, The Languages of China (1987), comprehensive and not difficult to read. Weldon South Coblin, A Sinologist's Handlist of Sino-Tibetan Lexical Comparisons (1986), is a competent statement on comparative work; to some extent it builds on Nicholas C. Bodman, “Proto-Chinese and Sino-Tibetan,” in Frans van Coetsem and Linda R. Waugh, Contributions to Historical Linguistics (1980), pp. 34–199.Søren Christian Egerod

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