Proto-Sino-Tibetan | |
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PST; Proto-Trans-Himalayan | |
(may be equivalent to Proto-Tibeto-Burman) | |
Reconstruction of | Sino-Tibetan languages |
Reconstructed ancestor | |
Lower-order reconstructions |
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Proto-Sino-Tibetan 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, although others exist. 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]
Reconstructed features include prefixes such as the causative s-, the intransitive m-, the miscellaneous b-, d-, g-, and r-, suffixes -s, -t, and -n, and a set of conditioning factors that resulted in the development of tone in most languages of the family.[2]
Proto-Tibeto-Burman may be considered as equivalent to Proto-Sino-Tibetan if Sinitic is considered to be a lower-order subgroup within the Tibeto-Burman group.[3]