Burmo-Qiangic | |
---|---|
Eastern Tibeto-Burman | |
Geographic distribution: |
China, Burma |
Linguistic classification: |
Sino-Tibetan
|
Subdivisions: | |
Glottolog: | burm1265 |
The Burmo-Qiangic or Eastern Tibeto-Burman languages are a proposed family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Southwest China and Myanmar. It consists of the Lolo-Burmese and Qiangic branches. Tujia, Bai, and perhaps the Karen languages could also be members or closely related.
Guillaume Jacques & Alexis Michaud (2011) argue for a Burmo-Qiangic branch of Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) with two primary subbranches, Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese. Similarly, David Bradley (2008) proposes an Eastern Tibeto-Burman branch that includes Burmic (AKA Lolo-Burmese) and Qiangic. Bradley notes that Lolo-Burmese and Qiangic share some unique lexical items, even though they are morphologically quite different; whereas all Lolo-Burmese languages are tonal and analytical, Qiangic languages are often non-tonal and possess agglutinative morphology. However, the position of Naic is unclear, as it has been grouped as Lolo-Burmese by Lama (2012), but as Qiangic by Jacques & Michaud (2011) and Bradley (2008). Jacques' & Michaud's (2011) proposed tree is as follows.
Bradley's (2008) proposal is as follows. Note that Bradley calls Lolo-Burmese Burmic, which is not to be confused with Burmish, and calls Loloish is Ngwi.