Sino-Tibetan languages (Sino-Tibetan languages) are one of the largest language families in the world. Includes over 100, according to other sources, several hundred languages, from tribal to national. Total number speakers over 1100 million people.
In modern linguistics, Sino-Tibetan languages are usually divided into 2 branches, different in the degree of their internal division and in their place in linguistic map peace, -- Chinese and Tibeto-Burman. The first is formed Chinese with its numerous dialects and dialect groups. It is spoken by over 1050 million people, including about 700 million in the dialects of the northern group. Its main area of distribution is China south of the Gobi and east of Tibet.
The remaining Sino-Tibetan languages, numbering about 60 million speakers, are included in the Tibeto-Burman branch. Peoples speaking these languages inhabit most of Myanmar (formerly Burma), Nepal, Bhutan, large areas of southwestern China and northeastern India. The most important Tibeto-Burman languages or groups of closely related languages: Burmese (up to 30 million speakers) in Myanmar and (over 5.5 million) in Sichuan and Yunnan (PRC); Tibetan (over 5 million) in Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan (PRC), Kashmir (northern India), Nepal, Bhutan; Karen languages (over 3 million) in Myanmar near the border with Thailand: Hani (1.25 million) in Yunnan; Manipuri, or Meithei (over 1 million); Bodo, or Kachari (750 thousand), and Garo (up to 700 thousand) in India; Jingpo, or Kachin (about 600 thousand), in Myanmar and Yunnan; fox (up to 600 thousand) in Yunnan; Tamang (about 550 thousand), Newar (over 450 thousand) and Gurung (about 450 thousand) in Nepal. The Tibeto-Burman branch includes the endangered language of the Tujia people (up to 3 million people) in Hunan (PRC), but by now most of the Tujia have switched to Chinese.
Sino-Tibetan languages are syllabic, isolating languages with a greater or lesser tendency to agglutination. The basic phonetic unit is the syllable, and the boundaries of syllables, as a rule, are also the boundaries of morphemes or words. The sounds within a syllable are arranged in a strictly defined order (usually a noisy consonant, sonant, intermediate vowel, main vowel, consonant; all elements except the main vowel may be absent). Combinations of consonants are not found in all languages and are possible only at the beginning of a syllable. The number of consonants occurring at the end of a syllable is significantly less than the number of possible initial consonants (usually no more than 6-8); in some languages only open syllables or there is only one final nasal consonant. Many languages have tone. In languages whose history is well known, one can observe a gradual simplification of consonantism and a complication of the system of vowels and tones.
A morpheme usually corresponds to a syllable; the root is usually immutable. However, many languages violate these principles. Thus, in the Burmese language it is possible to alternate consonants in the root; in classical Tibetan there were non-syllabic prefixes and suffixes that expressed, in particular, the grammatical categories of the verb. The predominant method of word formation is the addition of roots. Isolating a word often presents a difficult problem: it is difficult to distinguish compound word from a phrase, affix from a function word. Adjectives in Sino-Tibetan languages are grammatically closer to verbs than to names; sometimes they are included as part of the verb category as "verbs of quality". Conversion is widespread.
The Sino-Tibetan family includes about 300 languages, which immediately casts doubt on the possibility of studying them without preliminary classification using purely linguistic methods. This problem has not yet been finally solved, however, in the project “ Tower of Babel“Seven of these languages have been identified, for which an etymological database has been compiled in tabular form. This representation of kinship connections made it possible to create a graphical kinship system. A total of 2775 roots are included in the database for following languages: Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Kachin, Lushi, Lepcha and Kiranti. Moreover, 91 roots can be considered common to all these languages, and 174 are found in only one of them. All of them were excluded from the list that was used to calculate the number common words in pairs of languages. These data are shown in the table.
Table 1. Number of common words between Sino-Tibetan languages
| Language | Chinese | Tibetan | Kaczynski | Burmese | lushie | kiranti | Lepcha |
| Chinese | 1704 | ||||||
| Tibetan | 920 | 1393 | |||||
| Kaczynski | 716 | 548 | 1262 | ||||
| Burmese | 736 | 621 | 595 | 1254 | |||
| lushie | 546 | 445 | 440 | 240 | 1036 | ||
| kiranti | 296 | 270 | 234 | 242 | 231 | 454 | |
| Lepcha | 264 | 253 | 222 | 106 | 209 | 94 | 425 |
The table shows, along the diagonal, the entire number of words in each language taken for analysis. It is immediately clear that for the Kiranti and Lepcha languages it is disproportionately small compared to other languages. The reasons for this may be different. Perhaps these languages have not been sufficiently studied, but perhaps the ancestors of their speakers lived at a fairly large distance from the rest of the Sino-Tibetan group, surrounded by a foreign-speaking population, and lost some part of their ancient vocabulary. Other reasons are possible, but one way or another, these two languages do not fit into the pattern of kinship of the Sino-Tibetan languages, although, of course, they are genetically related to them. A graphic model of the relationship between the Sino-Tibetan languages is given below.
As you can see, the points for each of the languages are located quite compactly, which also indicates the correctness lexical material and about the adequacy of the representation of the kinship system. It was assumed that the ancestral home of the Sino-Tibetans was somewhere in Central Asia or on Far East. However, it was not possible to find a place here on the geographical map on which this scheme could be superimposed. Apparently, there is no such place in this part of Asia at all.
The configuration of the scheme resembles the scheme of kinship of Nostratic languages, and may be similar to it if the area of any of the languages (Lepcha or Kiranti) was located below (south) of the areas of the Burmese and Kachin languages. There are grounds for such an assumption, since studies have shown that the location of the places of settlement of related peoples to a certain extent corresponds to the location of their ancestral homelands at the time of the formation of their languages.
Currently, speakers of the Lepcha and Kiranti languages live closer to the Burmese than to the Chinese. The Lepcha people are the indigenous people of the state of Sikkim in India, which is located between Nepal and Bhutan. The Kiranti people live in Nepal. All this is not far from Burma, but also from Tibet. This suggests that the relationship of the Sino-Tibetan languages with the hypothetical arrangement of the Leps and Kiranti languages can be reflected graphically as shown in the diagram above. If we compare this scheme with the scheme of the relationship of the Nostratic languages, then their similarity does not cause objections (see figure below).
Accordingly, we have reason to place the ancestral home of the Sino-Tibetans in the same region of the three lakes Van, Sevan and Urmia (Rezaie) in Western Asia (see map below).
Thus, the Tibetan language was formed on the Kara Plateau in the valleys of the upper Kura and Chorokhi. Chinese - in the Araks Valley near Lake Sevan. Further along the Araks was the ancestral home of the Lushi people. The Burmese language was formed near Lake Van, and the Kachin language was formed near Lake Urmia (Rezaie). The area in the Greater Zab valley was most likely not inhabited by the ancestors of the Lepcha or Kiranti peoples, whose settlement sites could have been somewhere in the eastern part of Asia Minor, if we mean them modern places settlements and their distant relationship with other Sino-Tibetan languages. The question of the location of the ancestral homelands of the Lepcha and Kiranti peoples, as well as other peoples of the Sino-Tibetan language family, still needs to be clarified
The idea of the ancestral homeland of the Sino-Tibetans in Western Asia is by no means new. French scientist Terrien de la Couperie (1845-1894), author of the book " Early history Chinese civilization" found well-defined similarities between Chinese and early Akkadian hieroglyphs. In addition, he demonstrated lexical correspondences between the Chinese language and the Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, which was used by the Chaldeans. And other signs of similarity he found allow us to talk about the correspondence of the civilizations of China, Elam and Chaldeans. These discoveries underlie his theory of the Elamite origin of the ancestors of the Chinese. He found many place names by which one can trace the path of some tribes that came from Western Asia to the Yellow River Valley (Charles James Ball, 1851). – 1924) developed and supplemented de la Cuperiere’s research and tried to convince scientific world about the Western origins of the Chinese writing system and about the connection between Chinese and ancient Akkadian languages. Subsequently, several theories emerged that placed the ancestral home of the Chinese in Babylonia or even in Egypt. However, other scientists, for example, Herbert A. Giles, defined de la Couperiere's theory as nonsense ( Aylmer Charles, 1997, 25) and E.G. Parker saw nothing in common between Chinese and Akkadian or Egyptian forms of writing ( Williams E.T.., 1918, 208).
E.T. Williams discussed in detail the theory of a Chinese homeland in Central or Western Asia along with two others in his article "The Origins of the Chinese," published in the American Journal of Anthropology in 1918. He noted that it was difficult to separate de la Couperrier's facts from his conjectures, but he was confident that de la Couperrier's theory "provides a fairly satisfactory explanation of the striking similarities between languages ancient China and the Sumerians and the even more striking similarity between the ideographic symbols of these two peoples" ( Williams E.T.., 1918, 207).
Anthropological differences obviously contradict the idea of any connection between the Chinese and Babylonians, but L.V. King noted the slanted eyes of figures in early Sumerian reliefs.
Left: Statue of a noble Sumerian. Lagash. Around 2500 BC.
The statue of a noble Sumerian, indeed, demonstrates the man’s slightly narrowed eyes. This may be a residual sign of crossbreeding between Caucasians and Mongoloids. The fact that this feature is rather weakly expressed can be explained by the fact that the Mongoloids left Sumer several thousand years ago.
It is clear that the Sumerians were not Semites and E.T. Williams, like other scholars, believed that they had some Turanian features and therefore came to this conclusion:
Thus we have evidence that various Chinese tribes appear in what is now China, coming from some region in the north-west of that country, and that the Sumerians appear in the Euphrates valley, coming from some place in northeast Babylonia; that the Sumerians were obviously of Turanian race, and that their language and their script were strikingly similar to the ancient Chinese, and that significant changes in the climate of Central Asia drove at different periods no small number of inhabitants, migrating in different directions. Overall, it does not seem implausible that the ancestors of the Chinese and the ancestors of the Sumerians may have been related to each other and may have migrated from neighboring regions, the Chinese to the east and the Sumerians to the west ( Williams E.T.., 1918: 211).
Nowadays, when scientists compare Chinese and Sumerian writing systems, they pay more attention to their differences than to their similarities, and the theory of the West Asian origin of the Chinese has almost no supporters. Obviously, the general attitude to this problem was expressed by John DeFrancis, an American sinologist:
... It seems to me that, although some of the principles underlying Chinese writing are in fact similar to those underlying Sumerian writing, in all likelihood the reason for this is not that they were influenced by one or the other. Distances in space and time, in contrast to the Sumerian-Egyptian and Phoenician-Greek situations..., prevent such a hypothesis. A more reasonable explanation is that the two peoples independently came up with several similar solutions to several similar problems (DeFrancis John. 1989).
However, these distances may be shorter if some Chinese ancestors remained in their ancestral homeland in Western Asia after most of them migrated east. The time of stay of the Chinese-Tibetan population in their ancestral home should be attributed to the Upper Paleolithic, because later this place was inhabited by speakers of Nostratic languages, who arrived here from the west, pushing the indigenous inhabitants to the east and assimilating or destroying their remains. The Sino-Tibetans moved to Central Asia, where they became the creators of local Mesolithic cultures. They arrived to their current habitats already in the Neolithic or brought it with them, since reliable traces of the Mesolithic were not found either in China or Burma. The Neolithic culture of Yangshao in the middle reaches of the Yellow River existed in V-II thousand. BC e.
Right:
Statue of a bearded priest from Mohenjo-daro.
Obviously, the people of the Mongoloid race remained in Central Asia until the Dravidians arrived here. They could be the creators of civilizations Bronze Age, such as the Harappan (centers - Rakhigarhi, Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, Lothal, Dholavira in Pakistan and India) and the Bactrian-Margiana archaeological complex (centers Gonur-Depe, Namazga-Tepe and Altyn-Depe in Turkmenistan). The Harappan civilization existed around 3300-1300 BC. BC, and the Bactrian-Margiana, having arisen simultaneously with the Harappan, ceased to exist half a millennium earlier. It can be assumed that their decline is associated with the arrival of Indo-Aryan tribes in Central Asia. The presence of Mongoloid features in sculptural portraits found during excavations of monuments of these civilizations may indicate that people of the Mongoloid race, after migrating from Western Asia, found places to settle in the Indus Valley and on the banks of the Murgab, Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Obviously, under pressure from the Indo-Aryans, they had to migrate further east.
Female sculptural portraits from the monuments of the Bactrian-Margiana archaeological complex.
Photo from Wikipedia.
The Sino-Tibetans belong to the yellow race, which also includes the American Indians, the peoples of the Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu groups. Since the languages of these latter do not show obvious signs of kinship with the Sino-Tibetans, that is, they were formed very far from the settlements of the Sino-Tibetans, we must assume that the people of the yellow race inhabited the vast territory of Asia at a time when human language passed only initial stage of its formation.
We adhere to the monocentrism hypothesis, according to which the type modern man formed in Western Asia and the Mediterranean as a result of the mixing of different representatives of the Neanderthal type. The typological heterogeneity of people of different races in the Late Paleolithic was less than now. ( Shchokin Georgy, 2002, 77). In other words, the difference between the prototypes of people of the Caucasian and Mongoloid races was insignificant and they lived in the same natural conditions of Western Asia. After the Mongoloids migrated along wide open spaces Asia, their original phenotypic traits were developed in various ways under the influence natural conditions different habitats. As a result, their difference from people of the white race increased, but at the same time two distinct racial types developed, giving rise to both modern Mongoloids and Americanoids.
Plan
Introduction
Classification
Structural characteristics of Sino-Tibetan languages
Introduction
SINO-TIBETAN LANGUAGES, otherwise called Sino-Tibetan, is a language family in Asia. It ranks second in the world in terms of the number of speakers after Indo-European languages. Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken primarily in China, northeast India, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan, as well as in Bangladesh, Laos and Thailand; in addition, tens of millions of Chinese who retain their language live in almost all countries Southeast Asia(in Singapore they make up more than 75% of the population); there is a significant Chinese diaspora spread throughout the world.
The number of languages included in the Sino-Tibetan family is estimated differently, most often at about 300. The uncertainty is associated not only with the traditional problem of distinguishing between language and dialect, but also with the sociolinguistic and cultural-historical heterogeneity of the family. On the one hand, it includes the largest Chinese language in the world in terms of the number of speakers, which has a multi-thousand-year cultural tradition, writing and literature, as well as two other fairly large ancient written languages - Burmese and Tibetan. On the other hand, the Sino-Tibetan family includes many small and completely unstudied tribal languages.
This essay reveals the topic of Sino-Tibetan languages, their commonalities, classification and the role of the Chinese language in it.
General information
Sino-Tibetan languages(formerly also called Sino-Tibetan listen)) is a large language family common in East, Southeast and South Asia. Unites about 300 languages. The total number of speakers of these languages is at least 1.2 billion people, thus, in terms of the number of speakers, this family ranks second in the world after Indo-European.
Tibetan languages are a linguistic group of the Sino-Tibetan family, uniting the mutually obscure Tibeto-Burman languages spoken predominantly by Tibetans living in eastern Central Asia bordering South Asia, including the Tibetan Plateau, northern Hindustan: Baltistan, Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim and Butane. The classical written form of the language is the largest literary language region, used in Buddhist literature. Tibetan languages are spoken by about 6 million people. Lhaska Tibetan is spoken by about 150,000 exiles living outside their ethnic lands, such as in India. Tibetan is also spoken by a number of ethnic minorities in Tibet, who have lived for centuries in proximity to the Tibetans, but have retained their own language and culture. Classical Tibetan is not tonal, but some varieties such as Central Tibetan and Kham Tibetan have a developed tone (Amdo and Ladakhi are toneless). The morphology of Tibetan can be described generally as agglutinating, although Classical Tibetan was isolating. The Varying classification is different. Some Kham and Amdo groups are grouped together as Eastern Tibetan (not to be confused with Eastern Bod, who are not ethnically Tibetan).
Classification
The literature presents several classifications of Sino-Tibetan languages, which differ significantly from each other. Genealogical connections within the Sino-Tibetan family have not been sufficiently studied, which is due to a number of reasons: a lack of empirical material, the absence of any long written tradition in most Sino-Tibetan languages and, therefore, information about their state in the past, as well as structural features of these languages: the underdevelopment of morphology and the widespread use of tones, which until recently were poorly recorded in descriptions - and all this against the background of significant typological similarity in their phonological structure. This combination of typological similarity (which the Sino-Tibetan languages share with a number of geographically neighboring language families) with insufficient development of historical reconstruction resulted in the unclear boundaries of the Sino-Tibetan language family. For quite a long time, it included the Thai languages (which include, in particular, Thai and Lao) and the Miao-Yao languages, now recognized as independent language families; The question of whether the Bai or Minjia language in the Chinese province of Yunnan belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language remains debatable (about 900 thousand speakers out of 1.6 million ethnic Bai; Chinese borrowings in the dictionary of this language reach up to 70%).
The first classification of Sino-Tibetan languages that became famous in European science belongs to the Norwegian scientist S. Konov (1909), one of the authors of the fundamental multi-volume Linguistic Survey of India. The other two standard classifications belong respectively to the American scientists R. Shafer and P. Benedict, under whose leadership a project on the comparative study of the phonetics of Sino-Tibetan languages was carried out at the University of California in the USA in 1934–1940. The results of this project were published: Introduction to the Study of Sino-Tibetan Languages R. Shafer (in 5 parts) was published in 1966–1974, and the book by P. Benedict Sino-Tibetan languages. Abstract- in 1972. At the end of the 1970s, the classification schemes of G. Mayer and B. Mayer, S.E. Yakhontov also appeared; There are other classifications.
The genetic commonality of the Sino-Tibetan languages is currently generally recognized, although material (in the form of morphemes having common origin) the differences between them are great. Glottochronological analysis shows that the time of their divergence can reach 10 thousand years (a number of researchers consider this figure to be overestimated).
In all classifications, starting with Konov’s, the Chinese branch, consisting of the Chinese and Dungan languages, and the Tibeto-Burman branch are distinguished and contrasted with each other. (Chinese is actually a group of dialects that have diverged so much that if not for the strong national identity of the Chinese, the common culture and the presence in China of a supra-dialectal written norm and a unified statehood, then they should be considered independent languages; Dungan is precisely the only Chinese dialect for which the status of a language is recognized.) The Tibeto-Burman branch, the number of speakers of which exceeds 60 million people, includes all Sino-Tibetan languages minus Chinese and Dungan. Sometimes, along with these two branches, the Karen branch is also distinguished as an independent branch of the Sino-Tibetan family (the languages included in it with a total number of speakers of slightly more than 3 million are widespread in the south of Burma and in the adjacent regions of Thailand). In Benedict, the Karen group unites with the Tibeto-Burman sub-branch into the Tibeto-Karen branch opposed to the Chinese; Shafer has the so-called The “Karen section” is part of the Tibeto-Burman branch along with the Tibetan, Burmese and Bar (Bodo-Garo) sections. Tibeto-Burman languages in all classifications have complex internal divisions.
At the intermediate levels, classifications diverge so much that any definite correspondence between them is not established or is not clear. We can only indicate several genetic groupings, distinguished more or less unambiguously, but embedded in different classifications in different ways (and sometimes under different names). These include the following.
The Lolo-Burman group is the most studied group of Sino-Tibetan languages, for which there are reconstructions of the proto-language (in particular, the reconstruction of J. Matisoff). The languages of this group are spoken mainly in Burma and southern China, with several languages also in Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. In addition to Burmese, the Lolo-Burmese group includes such relatively large languages as Hani in the Chinese province of Yunnan and neighboring countries(the number of “official nationalities” is about 1.25 million people; the number of speakers of Hani proper is smaller); the Akha language, closely related to the previous one (about 360 thousand people in the same area); the Lahu languages, widespread at the junction of the PRC, Burma and Thailand (has two very different dialects: the “Black Lahu” dialect - about 580 thousand, according to 1981 data, and the “Yellow Lahu” dialect - about 14.5 thousand) and Lisu (whose population is estimated at approximately 657 thousand). The latter two languages, especially Lahu, are well described, and their material at one time played an important role in syntactic typology.
The Bodo-Garo group, which includes about a dozen languages spoken in eastern India and Bangladesh, in particular, the Bodo languages themselves (about 1 million speakers) and Garo (up to 700 thousand). For Bodo-Garo there is a reconstruction of the phonetics of the parent language , published in 1959 by R. Berling.
The Kuki-Chin group (about 40 languages), mainly in India and Burma, which includes, among others, the Meithei, or Manipuri languages (the second is the name of the state of Manipur; Meithei serves as a lingua franca and is spoken by about 1, 3 million people in almost all states in eastern India), Lushi (at least 517 thousand people in eastern India and partly in Burma) and Rong, or Lepcha (about 65 thousand mainly in India and Bhutan; some authors highlight lepcha into a separate group).
The languages of the Naga peoples living in northeast India (the states of Nagaland, Minipur, Mizoram, Assam, the union territory of Arunachal Pradesh and neighboring regions of Burma) are genetically distributed between these two groups. The southern Nagas (about one and a half dozen tribes each with their own language, the largest - Angami, Lhota, or Lotha, Sema, Rengma) speak languages close to the Kuki-Chin languages, and about the same number of tribes in the north of this region speak the so-called languages cognac (the largest are AO and cognac itself; in relation to Naga, “largest” means a population of about 100 thousand people). The Kuki-Chin languages are combined with the Southern Naga languages into the Naga-Kuki(-Chin) group, and the Bodo-Garo languages are combined with the Konyak languages into the Konyak-Bodo-Garo group. The latter is sometimes combined with the Kachin group, which actually includes one Kachin language, or Jingpo (over 650 thousand speakers, mainly in Myanmar and partly in the People's Republic of China) in the Baric subbranch.
The most controversial are the existing classifications of the languages of the northwestern part of the Tibeto-Burman area - relatively speaking, Tibeto-Himalayan, widespread in northern India, Nepal, Bhutan and the People's Republic of China (in Tibet). Sometimes they are united under the name “Bodic” (Bodic - from the self-name of Tibet). The Tibetan group stands out here, which includes approx. 30 languages, including Tibetan itself with a number of closely related languages (according to other interpretations - Tibetan dialects), whose speakers are officially included in the “Tibetan nationality”; Amdo (about 800 thousand people in various autonomous entities of the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan; sometimes this language is considered as a Tibetan dialect that has retained archaic features); not too numerous, but well known in the world for extralinguistic reasons, the Sherpa language (approx. 34 thousand people); Ladakhi language (about 100 thousand people in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir), etc. This group, naturally, includes the classical Tibetan language. There is also a group of Gurung (in Nepal), which includes, among others, quite large languages Gurung (two very different dialects, about 180 thousand people) and Tamang (four very different dialects, over 900 thousand people: Tamang spoken by the Gurkhas, famous for their service in the British Army); several “Himalayan” groups with a fairly large number of languages included in them, among which the most significant is the Newari language (over 775 thousand people in Nepal); as well as a number of smaller groups, sometimes consisting of one language.
IN various classifications other groups are also distinguished; The place of some languages in the classification, although they are certain that they belong to the Sino-Tibetan group, remains unclear.
In addition to the listed living languages, the Tangut language, which was part of the Tibeto-Burman branch, is also well known, the former official language the state of Xi Xia (10th–13th centuries), destroyed by the Mongol conquerors. The language was reconstructed as a result of deciphering monuments discovered by P.K. Kozlov’s expedition in dead city Khara-Khoto in 1908–1909. In texts from the 6th to the 12th centuries. preserved today dead language I drink in Myanmar.
Structural characteristics of Sino-Tibetan languages
The structural characteristics of the Sino-Tibetan languages are usually measured from Chinese, which is actually the standard syllabary isolating language; acquaintance with it led to the formation of the concept of an isolating language ( cm. LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY). A syllable in languages of this type is the basic phonetic unit, the structure of which is subject to strict laws: at the beginning of the syllable there is a noisy consonant, then a sonant, intermediate and main vowels and a final consonant, with all elements except the main consonant being optional. The number of possible final consonants is less than the number of initial ones, and in a number of languages only open (ending in a vowel) syllables are generally allowed. Many languages have several different tones ( cm. LINGUISTIC PROSODY).
Whether all Sino-Tibetan languages have always been structured this way is not entirely clear. Data from the Tibetan language, for which from the 7th century. There is a syllabary writing system, in principle capable of accurately conveying the sound composition of a word, which leads one to suspect that, at least in this language, at the time of the creation of writing, the structure of the syllable was significantly more complex. If we assume that all the signs of the Tibetan script were used to denote sounds (there are arguments in favor of this point of view, in particular, data from the Amdo language), then we have to assume that Tibetan had numerous structures of the type brgyad"nine" or bslabs“he studied science” (they are obtained by transliterating Tibetan words). Subsequently, the initial and final combinations of consonants were greatly simplified, and the repertoire of vowels expanded and tones appeared. Typologically this is similar to what took place in the history of English or French, where the distance between spelling and pronunciation is also large, and there are significantly more vowel phonemes than the special letters denoting them. In some respect (the specific way in which smooth r And l to the preceding vowel) in Tibetan there is even a material similarity with processes that took place in the history of the English language.
A morpheme, and often a word in the “ideal” Sino-Tibetan language is usually equal to a syllable. There is no inflection (declension, conjugation), and to express syntactic relationships, function words and the order of words within phrases and sentences are used. Classes of words (parts of speech) are distinguished solely on syntactic grounds; for example, an adjective is a word that can serve as a definition. At the same time, conversion is widespread: without any changes in form, a word can change its syntactic functions and thereby refer to different parts of speech. Service morphemes are often postpositive and can form not only words, but also phrases.
In reality, many of the Sino-Tibetan languages differ from this standard to one degree or another, and elements of inflection are observed in them (in classical Tibetan, for example, several stems were distinguished in the verb, for the formation of which non-syllabic ones were used and therefore were obviously part of the stem syllable prefixes and suffixes).
The syntax of Sino-Tibetan languages is quite diverse. Many of them are characterized by the construction of sentences not in accordance with the “subject-predicate” structure, but in accordance with the “topic-commentary” structure (or, in other terminology, “topic-rheme”): a word that occupies a syntactically distinguished first position in the sentence , may be in completely different semantic (so-called role: action producer, addressee, sufferer, etc.) relationships to the predicate verb; It is important that this word names the subject of speech and thereby limits the scope of applicability of what will be said next. In Russian these are constructions with “nominative themes” like Department store « Moscow» I'll get there? (instead of normative I'll get to the department store« Moscow"?), which are accessories colloquial speech; in Sino-Tibetan languages (at least in some of them: in Chinese, Lisu, Lahu - the so-called “topic-promoting languages”) such constructions are the norm.
Conclusion
Chinese- language or language branch Sino-Tibetan language family, consisting of varieties that are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Chinese is the most widely spoken language modern language total number of speakers
1.213 billion people.
Chinese is one of two branches of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. It was originally the language of the main ethnic group of China - the people han. In its standard form, Chinese is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, and one of the six official and working languages of the United Nations.
The Chinese language is a collection of very different dialects, and therefore it is considered by most linguists as an independent language branch, consisting of separate, although related, language and/or dialect groups.
The history of the study of Sino-Tibetan languages is, first of all, the history of the study of Chinese and Tibetan languages. China is one of the countries that created a national linguistic tradition, and Tibet inherited the linguistic tradition Ancient India, brought along with Buddhism. As for the typological and comparative historical study of Sino-Tibetan languages, it began only at the end of the 19th century; its main stages are mentioned at the beginning of the article. In Russia, research in this area was carried out, in particular, by S.A. Starostin and S.E. Yakhontov.
References List
Peiros I.I. Sino-Tibetan and Austro-Thai languages. – In the book: Comparative study of languages of different families: tasks and prospects. M., 1982
Starostin S.A. Hypothesis about genetic connections Sino-Tibetan languages with Yenisei and North Caucasian languages. – In the book: Linguistic reconstruction and history of the East. M., 1984
Yakhontov S.E. Sino-Tibetan languages. – Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary. M., 1990
(all other languages). The number of native speakers of Chinese languages exceeds 1 billion people.
One controversial theory suggests that the Sino-Tibetan languages belong to the hypothetical Sino-Caucasian macrofamily.
Genetic community of Sino-Tibetan languages
Given the large typological differences in the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman branches, as well as in the subgroups of the Tibeto-Burman languages, do the Sino-Tibetan languages represent a genetic community, that is, do they descend from a single Proto-Sino-Tibetan language? All modern scientists professionally studying Sino-Tibetan languages, in their works (Benedict 1972, Hale 1982, van Driem 2001, Matisoff 2003, Thurgood 2003) unanimously confirm: Sino-Tibetan languages represent a genetic community. Many Sino-Tibetan protoforms are amenable to reconstruction. The general lexical material is extremely rich and is increasingly refined thanks to research more languages (see table of lexical correspondences). In addition to lexical material, these languages have many similarities in phonology and grammar, confirming their relatedness. Detailed review For comparative material (both lexical and phonological), see Matisoff 2003.
Below are the common phonological, grammatical and lexical features of Sino-Tibetan languages.
Syllable and phoneme structure
Proto-Sino-Tibetan was a monosyllabic language. The reconstruction of its syllabic structure looks like this:
According to Benedict 1972 and Matisoff 2003, the consonant set of Proto-Sino-Tibetan—which was used in its entirety primarily for root initial consonants—consisted of the following phonemes:
/p, t, k; b, d, g; ts, dz; s, z, h; m, n, ŋ; l, r, w, y/.
In different language groups, these phonemes have the following sound correspondences as the initial consonants of the root word:
| Sino-Tib. | Tib. | Kachin. | Burm. | Garo | Mizo |
| *p | p(h) | p(h), b | p(h) | p(h), b | p(h) |
| *t | t(h) | t(h), d | t(h) | t(h), d | t(h) |
| *k | k(h) | k(h), g | k(h) | k(h), g | k(h) |
| *b | b | b, p(h) | p | b, p(h) | b |
| *d | d | d, t(h) | t | d, t(h) | d |
| *g | g | g, k(h) | k | g, k(h) | k |
| *ts | ts(h) | ts, dz | ts(h) | s, ts(h) | s |
| *dz | dz | dz, ts | ts | ts(h) | f |
| *s | s | s | s | th | th |
| *z | z | z | s | s | f |
| *h | h | ø | h | ø | h |
| *m | m | m | m | m | m |
| *n | n | n | n | n | n |
| *ŋ | ŋ | ŋ | ŋ | ŋ | ŋ |
| *l | l | l | l | r | l |
| *r | r | r | r | r | r |
| *w | ø | w | w | w | w |
| *y | y | y | y | ts, ds | z |
Exceptions to these correspondences are usually minor; aspiration appears only under certain conditions and is not phonemically significant. This table is based on Benedict 1972, which also provides lexical comparisons for these sound correspondences.
Sino-Tibetan vowel system reconstructed as /a, o, u, i, e/. Vowels can be in the middle or at the end of a syllable, but not at the beginning. It should be noted that in the protolanguage all vowels, except /a/, can rarely be found at the end of a syllable. And endings with /-Vw/ und /-Vy/ (where V is a vowel), on the contrary, are most common.
Morphology of word formation
According to the general opinion of protolanguage researchers, there was no classical syntactic morphology (as well as systemic morphological changes in nouns and verbs in categories such as case, number, tense, person, voice, etc.). The syntactic morphology of nouns and verbs traced in modern Tibeto-Burman languages should be understood as an innovation, which they owe to the local influence of neighboring languages, as well as substrate languages. Due to the wide variety of such influences, completely different morphological types could be formed.
However, we can speak with confidence about elements of derivational morphology common to many Sino-Tibetan languages. Among them, consonantal prefixes and suffixes should be highlighted, as well as changes in anlaut that change the meaning of verbs and nouns. The existence of common derivational affixes and alternations in anlaut, having the same or similar semantic effect in almost all groups of Sino-Tibetan languages, is a strong indication of their genetic commonality. (Examples taken from Benedict 1972, Matisoff 2003, and Thurgood 2003; transcriptions from German-language sources use /y/ instead of /j/.)
Prefix s-
Almost all Sino-Tibetan languages have pairs semantically related words, which in their sound differ from each other only sonority or deafness initial consonant. The voiced version usually has transitional meaning, and deaf - intransitive. There is a theory according to which changes in unlaut are due to the once existing prefix *h, a non-syllabic pharyngeal transitional sound (Edwin G. Pulleyblank 2000).
- 33.83 KbGeneral characteristics of the family
The Sino-Tibetan (Sino-Tibetan) language family is one of the largest language families in the world. Includes over 100, according to other sources, several hundred languages, from tribal to national.
The total number of speakers is at least 1.2 billion people. It ranks second after the Indo-European language family. Apparently, some Sino-Tibetan languages are not yet known to science, others are known only from random short lists of words. According to the traditional classification, accepted by most researchers at the beginning of the 20th century, the Sino-Tibetan languages were divided into 2 main groups: eastern (Tai-Chinese), which included Chinese and Thai languages, and western (Tibeto-Burman languages).
The Miao-Yao languages and Karen languages were sometimes also included in the eastern group. The main feature that distinguished the groups was the word order: in Eastern languages the object is placed after the verb, in Western languages - before it. It is currently known that the Thai and Miao Yao languages are not part of the Sino-Tibetan family.
In modern linguistics, Sino-Tibetan languages are usually divided into 2 branches, different in the degree of their internal division and in their place on the linguistic map of the world - Chinese and Tibeto-Burman. The first is formed by the Chinese language with its numerous dialects and groups of dialects. It is spoken by over 1050 million people, including about 700 million in the dialects of the northern group. The Dungan language belongs to the Chinese branch; spoken language Dungan is part of the northern group of Chinese dialects. It is possible that the Bai or Minjia language also belongs to this branch, but this has not been proven; this language is usually considered Tibeto-Burman or excluded from the Sino-Tibetan family altogether. The remaining Sino-Tibetan languages, numbering about 60 million speakers, are included in the Tibeto-Burman branch.
Sino-Tibetan languages are syllabic, isolating languages with a greater or lesser tendency to agglutination. The basic phonetic unit is the syllable, and the boundaries of syllables, as a rule, are also the boundaries of morphemes or words. The sounds within a syllable are arranged in a strictly defined order (usually a noisy consonant, sonant, intermediate vowel, main vowel, consonant; all elements except the main vowel may be absent). Combinations of consonants are not found in all languages and are possible only at the beginning of a syllable. The number of consonants occurring at the end of a syllable is significantly less than the number of possible initial consonants (usually no more than 6-8); some languages only allow open syllables or have only one final nasal consonant.
The scripts of the Sino-Tibetan languages are divided into three main types: ideographic, phonetic scripts of Indian origin and scripts created relatively recently based on the Latin or Russian alphabets. The first type includes Chinese hieroglyphs (XIII-IV centuries BC) and the Tungut script, which is externally similar to it, introduced in the 11th century. and forgotten after the death of the Tungut state, the Naxi letter, the signs of which resemble stylized drawings, and a letter that is simpler in form (more syllabic than ideographic). The second type is represented primarily by the Tibetan and Burmese alphabets (the first has existed since the 7th century, the second since the 11th century). Less common are the Newari script (known since the 12th century), Rong, or Lepcha (from the late 17th century), and Manipuri. A slightly modified Burmese alphabet is used to write several Karen dialects. The writing of the dead Pyu language in modern Myanmar was also of Indian origin (texts from the 6th-12th centuries have been preserved). A common feature of alphabets of this type is that the vowel “a” does not have a special designation - a consonant letter without a vowel sign is read with the vowel “a”; the signs of the remaining vowels can occupy any place in relation to the consonant letter - above it, below it, etc.; in consonant combinations, the second letter is signed under the first and is usually simplified. Writings on Latin based developed for a number of languages of China and Myanmar, including the Dungan language (within the USSR), which uses writing based on the Russian alphabet (with the addition of a few letters).
Distribution areas
The Chinese language with its numerous dialects and dialect groups belongs to the Chinese group of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The main area of its distribution is the PRC south of the Gobi and east of Tibet, but there are large Chinese populations in other areas of the country and beyond (People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, USA, Russia, India).
Peoples speaking the remaining languages of the Sino-Tibetan family inhabit most of Myanmar (formerly Burma), Nepal, Bhutan, large areas of southwestern China and northeastern India. The most important Tibeto-Burman languages or groups of closely related languages: Burmese (up to 30 million speakers) in Myanmar and (over 5.5 million) in Sichuan and Yunnan (PRC); Tibetan (over 5 million) in Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan (PRC), Kashmir (northern India), Nepal, Bhutan; Karen languages (over 3 million) in Myanmar near the border with Thailand: Hani (1.25 million) in Yunnan; Manipuri, or Meithei (over 1 million); Bodo, or Kachari (750 thousand), and Garo (up to 700 thousand) in India; Jingpo, or Kachin (about 600 thousand), in Myanmar and Yunnan; fox (up to 600 thousand) in Yunnan; Tamang (about 550 thousand), Newar (over 450 thousand) and Gurung (about 450 thousand) in Nepal. The Tibeto-Burman branch includes the endangered language of the Tujia people (up to 3 million people) in Hunan (PRC), but by now most of the Tujia have switched to Chinese.
Similarity of cultures among native speakers and their customs
If we are talking about the culture and traditions of peoples speaking languages of the Sino-Tibetan language family, then we are talking about peoples such as the Chinese, the Hui people (Dungans), Tibetans, Burmese, Kanauri, Karens, Newars. ... All these peoples are close not only linguistically, but also culturally.
Most of these peoples are united by Buddhism, with the exception of the Dungans (Hui people), they are Sunni Muslims.
- Buddhism has a great influence on the life of the Burmese people. Every child must spend at least a week in the monastery, and some remain there for their entire lives. The monks shave their heads and wear yellow-orange capes. They do not have to work, but live only on alms.
- Among the Newars, there is an obvious predominance of Buddhist heritage and shrines in the historically Newar cities of Patan (with its four stupas of Ashoka) and Bhaktapur, while Kathmandu presents a mixed picture. It is believed that at first the Newars were Buddhists, but due to Indian influence and conquest, syncretic traditions arose among them.
- The most common religious teachings among the Chinese are Buddhism (Mahayana) and Taoism. A growing minority are Christians. Confucianism and Chinese folk beliefs are also common historically.
You can also note the similarities in architectural style - the construction of houses, religious buildings (pagodas, temples to spirits). The traditional costume of the Han Chinese - Hanfu - is similar to the traditional clothing of the Tibetans, Burmese and Dungans - an open jacket, fastened on the right side, and wide trousers. Women's clothing is decorated with embroidery. Shoes made of fabric. These peoples are mainly sedentary farmers, or semi-sedentary farmers-pastoralists. Tibetans, Dungans, and Chinese traditionally eat with chopsticks.
Similar holidays among these peoples are mainly associated with Buddhism: Tabaun, Kashoun, Wazou, Kathainbwe.
Development trends of native speaker peoples
Of all the peoples of the Sino-Tibetan group, the Chinese (PRC) and the Burmese (Myanmar) have their own state. The remaining peoples live compactly in different countries: Dungans - in Kazakhstan, Tibetans - in the PRC region of the Tibetan Plateau and in the far north of India, Newars - in Nepal, Karens - Myanmar.
Sino-Tibetan peoples are not necessarily related by genetic kinship; sometimes an ethnic group adopts a foreign language, but historical and territorial ties between such peoples are mandatory.
Sino-Tibetan peoples live mainly in China, where they make up the majority of the population. The name itself reflects their location: China (Sino - here - from the Latin name for China) and Tibet. The Sino-Tibetan peoples include the majority of the population of Myanmar and Bhutan. Significant groups also inhabit Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Nepal, India, etc.
List of used literature
- Iliuf Kh.Sh., Ph.D. article "Dungans"
- R. F. Its. Introduction to ethnography, Leningrad - 1974.
Kozlov P.K. “Tibet and the Dalai Lama” Moscow - 2004
Ogneva E. D. Tibetans “Calendar customs and rituals of the peoples of East Asia. Annual cycle" Moscow, Nauka, 1989.
V. A. Tishkov “Peoples and religions of the world”, Moscow - 1998.
Tucci, Giuseppe. "Religions of Tibet". St. Petersburg - 2005.
- Languages and dialects of the world, prospectus and dictionary, Moscow - 1982
- Kady, J "History of Modern Burma" - 1958
Job description
The Sino-Tibetan (Sino-Tibetan) language family is one of the largest language families in the world. Includes over 100, according to other sources, several hundred languages, from tribal to national. The total number of speakers is at least 1.2 billion people. It ranks second after the Indo-European language family. Apparently, some Sino-Tibetan languages are not yet known to science, others are known only from random short lists of words. According to the traditional classification, accepted by most researchers at the beginning of the 20th century, the Sino-Tibetan languages were divided into 2 main groups: eastern (Tai-Chinese), which included Chinese and Thai languages, and western (Tibeto-Burman languages).
