Proto-Sino-Tibetan
PST; Proto-Trans-Himalayan
(may be equivalent to Proto-Tibeto-Burman)
Reconstruction ofSino-Tibetan languages
Reconstructed
ancestor
Lower-order reconstructions

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]

See also

References

  1. ^ Benedict, Paul K. (1972), Sino-Tibetan: A Conspectus (PDF), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-08175-7.
  2. ^ Egerod, Søren Christian. "Sino-Tibetan languages - Linguistic characteristics". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 10 July 2019.
  3. ^ 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.


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