Proto-Sino-Tibetan language

Proto-Sino-Tibetan
PST, Proto-Trans-Himalayan
Reconstruction ofSino-Tibetan languages
Lower-order reconstructions

Proto-Sino-Tibetan (PST) is the hypothetical linguistic reconstruction of the Sino-Tibetan proto-language and the common ancestor of all languages in it, including the Sinitic languages, the Tibetic languages, 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.[1]

While Proto-Sino-Tibetan is commonly considered to have two direct descendants, Proto-Sinitic and Proto-Tibeto-Burman,[2] in recent years several scholars have argued that this was not well-substantiated,[3] and have taken to calling the group "Trans-Himalayan".[4] In this case, Proto-Tibeto-Burman may be considered as equivalent to Proto-Sino-Tibetan if Sinitic is indeed not the first branch to split from Proto-Sino-Tibetan.[5]

  1. ^ Benedict, Paul K. (1972), Sino-Tibetan: A Conspectus (PDF), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-08175-7.
  2. ^ Sagart, Laurent; Jacques, Guillaume; Lai, Yunfan; Ryder, Robin J.; Thouzeau, Valentin; Greenhill, Simon J.; List, Johann-Mattis (6 May 2019). "Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 116 (21): 10317–10322. Bibcode:2019PNAS..11610317S. doi:10.1073/pnas.1817972116. PMC 6534992. PMID 31061123.
  3. ^ Orlandi, Georg (2021). "Once again on the history and validity of the Sino-Tibetan bifurcate model". Journal of Language Relationship. 19 (4): 263–292.
  4. ^ Hill 2019.
  5. ^ van Driem, George (2007). "The diversity of the Tibeto-Burman language family and the linguistic ancestry of Chinese". Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics. 1 (2): 211–270. doi:10.1163/2405478X-90000023.