Review of Zhōngguó xīn fāxiàn yǔyán yánjiū cóngshū 中国新发现语言研究丛书 [Studies of newly discovered languages of China] (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistic Society, 11 (2): xcviii-cx., 2018
It has been fourteen years since the appearance of the first edition of this compendium of Trans-Himalayan languages. In its second edition, the volume has swollen to encompass 53 chapters. As Simon and Hill (2015: 381) noted, the language family "is known by names including 'Tibeto-Burman', 'Sino-Tibetan' and 'Trans-Himalayan', of which the last is the most neutral and accurate". McColl et al. (2018: 362) put it more succinctly in their Science article, stating simply: "Trans-Himalayan (formerly Sino-Tibetan)". In the very title to this volume, the two editors, Graham Ward Thurgood and Randy John LaPolla, loudly proclaim their adherence to the obsolete and empirically unsupported "Sino-Tibetan" phylogeny, but many of the contributors to this Routledge volume do not themselves subscribe to the same antiquated Indo-Chinese understanding of the language family. Outside of this volume, a good number of the contributing scholars openly abjure this family tree model. Later, we shall examine how the outspoken bias of the two editors pervades the volume in a thorough and more insidious manner than in the first edition. The anthology comprises 44 grammatical sketches, two of which are devoted to dead Trans-Himalayan languages, five survey articles, two editorial pieces, a piece on the Chinese writing system and a discussion of word order. Editorial misrepresentations, the state of the art and Gerber's Law This volume contains many valuable, some truly wonderful and a few problematic instalments, but the Routledge compendium is truly marred by the two editorial pieces authored by Thurgood and LaPolla and positioned at the very beginning of the book. In addition to the two large editorial pieces, the first section also contains a brief study of word order in Trans-Himalayan languages by Matthew Synge Dryer. A volume that purports to present a general overview of the field should dispassionately present different positions held by specialists in that field, and the failure even just once to mention that alternative views exist that are quite at variance with Thurgood and LaPolla's own particular view characterises an unfair comportment on the part of the two editors that is not just unsportsmanlike, but unscholarly and unworthy of our field. For well over a century, the phylogeny of the language family has been a matter of considerable controversy. Yet both editors are careful to cite and quote only such sources as happen to agree with their own model. The empirically unsupported Indo-Chinese taxonomy relentlessly propounded by an ever dwindling number of "true believer" Sino-Tibetanists permeates the very arrangement of the book, and the two editors have even wilfully skewed the contents of the volume in order to fit their obsolete Indo-Chinese family tree. In keeping with this "Sino-Tibetan" conceit, the editors have included six instalments on Sinitic, though the sheer brevity of Dah-an Ho's instalment on Mandarin could reflect a reluctance on the part of its contributor to indulge the paradigm championed by the two editors. Indeed, as already noted, many of the scholars who have contributed to this volume reject the language family tree model touted by the editors. Moreover, the editorial twosome surreptitiously sneak their own "Rung" subgroup into the table of contents, thereby falsely suggesting that this fiction represents a valid taxon within the family. To exacerbate matters, their table of contents incompetently groups Tshangla and Newar as "Bodish" languages.
2003
There are more native speakers of Sino-Tibetan languages than of any other language family in the world. Our records of these languages are among the oldest for any human language, and the amount of active research on them, both diachronic and synchronic, has multiplied in the last decades. This volume covers the better-described languages, but with comments on the subgroups in which they occur. Ine addition to a number of modern languages, there ares on the descriptions of several ancient languages.
Newly recognised languages in Chamdo
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 2019
This article presents information regarding newly recognised non-Tibetic Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in three counties, Dzogang, Markham, and Drag-yab, of Chamdo Municipality and the adjacent Dzayul County in the Tibet Autonomous Region. First, we introduce four languages – Lamo, Larong sMar, Drag-yab sMar, and gSerkhu – identifying the location of each language on the Chinese administrative map as well as the numbers of speakers of the languages. Second, we provide a brief historical background on these languages, which suggests a relationship between them and Qiangic groups. Third, we display lexical evidence that shows not only their non-Tibetic features but also their closeness to Qiangic languages. Finally, the article focuses on Lamo, an endangered language spoken in Dzogang County, and provides a linguistic analysis of an annotated Lamo historical narrative in the Appendix.
2015
The annual conferences on Sino-Tibetan languages and linguistics began on a small scale at Yale in 1968, with only eight conferees sitting around a table, but have grown tremendously over the years, until they now usually attract over 100 participants, and have become the chief focus of scholarly activity in the field. Ever since 1971, the word “international” has appeared in the official title of the Conferences, and rightly so, since they have become truly global in scope. Since the mid-1970’s, they have increasingly been held outside the U.S.: Copenhagen (1976), Paris (1979), Beijing (1982), Bangkok (1985), Vancouver (1987), Lund (1988), Bangkok (1991), Osaka (1993), Paris (1994) [planned]. [...] Most of the papers presented at the Conferences are of high quality, and usually find their way into print within a few years. Yet in spite of valiant attempts to put out real volumes of Proceedings, e.g. the partial collection achieved for #14 (University of Florida, 1983), the most tha...