Introduction

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Linguistics are fun.

Tools

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Paragraph: This helps you set the style of the text. For example, a header, or plain paragraph text. You can also use it to offset block quotes.

A : Highlight your text, then click here to format it with bold, italics, etc. The "More" options allows you to underline, add code snippets, and change language keyboards.

Links: The chain button allows you to link your text. Highlight the word, and push the button. VisualEditor will automatically suggest related Wikipedia articles for that word or phrase. This is a great way to connect your article to more Wikipedia content. You only have to link important words once, usually during the first time they appear. If you want to link to pages outside of Wikipedia (for an "external links" section, for example) click on the "External link" tab.

Cite: The citation tool in VisualEditor helps format your citations. You can simply paste a DOI or URL, and the VisualEditor will try to sort out all of the fields you need. Be sure to review it, however, and apply missing fields manually (if you know them). You can also add books, journals, news, and websites manually. That opens up a quick guide for inputting your citations. Finally, you can click the "re-use" tab if you've already added a source and just want to cite it again.

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Ω The final tab allows you to add special characters, such as those found in non-English words, scientific notation, and a handful of language extensions. ąɔ

Week 2

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Select and copyedits

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  • changed some grammatical mistakes of number
  • added some link to the important vocabulary words appeared in the article
  • deleted some outdated citations

Evaluating Questions

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Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

  • There is a lot of information on the linguist who studied Sino-Tibetan language, but not a lot of information on the content of the language itself, such as how does the language in this family connect to each other, what are the similarities and differences in pronunciations, or the development of dialects over time.

Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?

  • The problem with overrepresented the linguists and underrepresented the actual information about the language.
  • The writing is too much focus on the classification rather then the actually language.

Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?

  • There are discussions about classification of Tibetan language, Phonology in the languages and some language templates.
  • There is also a off topic remind of not mentioning to much on the linguist who contributed to this topic.
  • People also mentioned about the reliability of different sources.

How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?

  • The article is rated C class and could be improve further. It is a part of 5 WikiProjects (WikiProject China, WikiProject Languages, WikiProject Southeast Asia, WikiProject Vietnam, and WikiProject East Asia).

Week 3

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Relevant Sources

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  • The Sino-Tibetan Languages second edition by Graham Thurgood ; Randy J. LaPolla, publish by Routledge Language Family Series, 2017
  • Han Zang yu tong yuan yan jiu by Wu Anqi, publish by Zhong yang min zu da xue chu ban she, 2002, Beijing
  • Typological Studies of the Sino-Tibetan Language Family by DAI Qing-xia ; ZHU Yan-hua

ŋi ma ni313155 ma33 ŋi33 me33

Editing Article

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  • provide more phonology and morphology information (difference pronunciation in context, how did the languages in this family got connected, in what way are they connected)
  • provide more evidence (books)
  • seems like there are a lot of argument of classification, will try to work on that
  • Focus on the development of the history of different dialects on the different branches: Tibetan, Chinese, Tibeto-Burman..(although there will be disagreement on the classification system, the description will follow what the original sources meant.
  • Tone development over years
  • typology of words order

Week 4

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Draft ideas

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Language and dialects

Add more information on acquisition of languages in Sino-Tibetan language, and the development of different dialects. The idea of drift mentioned by American linguist Edward Sapir.

Using Han Ang Yu tong yuan yanjiu, by Wu Anqi

Using Typological Studies of the Sino-Tibetan Language Family, by DAI Qing-xia and ZHU Yan-hua

Morphosyntax

The history of classifiers and definite markings in the Sino-Tibetan language, how did they differed and developed

Using The Sino-Tibetan Languages second edition by Graham Thurgood and Randy J. LaPolla

Week 5

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Peer review

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Hi Huixing,

I love how you use may linguistic terms we learned in class and you really included a lot of details of the development of several difference languages in the Sino-Tibetan language group. Although too much this kind of specialized vocabularies might sometimes confuse people so if possible you can try to explain a few things in plain Enlgish. The context overall is very informative and neutral. The links work well; however, it would be great if you could find the links and ISBN of the rest of your book, though I know it will be hard since they are all books written in Chinese and it's understandable if it's not included in ISBN. Anyway, you did a great job!

Best, Yanru Shen

Peer review respond

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Hi Yanru,

Thank you for your review! I am trying to improve those technical term by linking them to the other wiki articles to solve the confusion and trying to explain them in context. I also just edited all the resource links, I cannot find their ISBN but I found some of the online version that I will link them to the reference page. Thanks again, I really appreciate your comment.

Best, Huixing

Drafts

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Development of Dialects and Languages

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The concept of Drift, proposed by American linguist Edward Sapir, occur in many languages and dialects in the Sino-Tibetan language group. Proto-Chinese language and Proto-Tibeto-Burman language are both agglutinative language. The change in Proto-Chinese language to Old Chinese around the Shang Dynasty could be found in the Book of songs when the classifications of the noun, verbs, and modifier were all depended on prefixes such as *s-, *p-, *-k.[1] After the Warring State Period in China, Old Chinese was developed and started to use tones as the classification of words.[2] The suffix *-s also presented in the new classification system. The characteristics of Old Chinese were maintained in most dialects of southern China.[3]

Chinese dialect of Min and Wu that mainly spoke in southern part of China had similarities of the pronunciation of reptiles and birds compare with Old Tai-Kadai language according to You Rujie's research. The prefix uses for differentiating reptiles and birds in the Chinese dialects shown similar feature with the Old Tai-Kadai language.[4] The old Tai-Kadai language was mainly employed in Xiangxi and Guizhou area of China, You believed that this unique prefixes maintained by both the local dialects and the old Tai-Kadai language could be a product of the local environmental influence.[5]

Dialects in the Tibeto-Burman language developed more conservatively; they keep the rules for pronunciation and word structure the same compared to the Proto-Tibeto-Burman language. The Tibetic languages are classified between fusional language and analytic language; the Lolo-Burmese languages are mostly analytic language, and the Jingpho languages are a mix of agglutinative language and fusional language.[6]The Bodo–Koch languages and the Kuki-Chin–Naga languages kept some particular characteristic of the Proto-Tibeto-Burman language such as agglutination and vowel prefixes. This phenomenon could be that the two language group were separated early from the Proto-Tibeto-Burman language therefore did not undergoes much development. Same thing happens to the Sino-Tibetan language, where its agglutination property was kept even when it developed into an analytic language. Old Tibetan and the Qiangic language both have the structure of consonant cluster caused by the dropping of vowel prefixes, which is believed to be the same structure Proto-Sino-Tibetan language owned.[7]

Old Burmese and Old Tibetan dropped the vowel prefixes during the dialect acquisition, leaving only the Tibeto-Burmese language, the Jingpho language, the Bodo–Koch languages and the Kuki-Chin–Naga languages that kept the vowel form of prefixes. The Lolo-Burmese languages and other languages from the Bodish-Himalayish language group preferred suffixes structure which they inherited from the Tibetan-Qiangic-Lolo-Burmese languages group. Their similarities could be proven by example like the phonetics of the Tibetic language for “sun”: ŋi ma; the Achang language for “sun”: ni3131; the Hakun language for “sun”: nɔ55 ma33; and the Naxi language for “sun”: ŋi33 me33. These inherited suffixes were later chosen to keep in the languages and became widespread in dialects of Old Tibetan, which caused the usage of the prefix in the modern language to decrease.[8]

According to Dai Qingxia, half of the vocabulary in the Jingpho language are disyllabic as well as most of the noun of Jingpho. This significant amount of disyllabic words came from the consonant cluster in monosyllabic words and compound words mainly found in the Proto-Tibeto-Burman language.[9] The development of the Sino-Tibetan language had been focused on solving the problem of phoneme rhyme, as well as coordinate the crucial point between monosyllabic morpheme and disyllabic word. Because the Sino-Tibetan language consists of a monosyllabic root, prefix and suffix are in need for classifying word sense and point of view. The prefix *a- appeared in many Sino-Tibetan dialects to coordinate different morpheme structures. The repetition of a syllable has the same coordination effect.[10]

Chinese language, Hmong-Mien languages, and Tai–Kadai languages are analytic languages that have similar grammar, pronunciation, and syllable structure.They all started with four tones, soon afterward developed into different phonological tones such as checked tone because of the voiced and voiceless properties of the initial. The aspiration of the initial and the length of the vowel in checked tone led to further tone development of dialects in these languages. Cantonese in Jiangyang area for the Chinese language developed eight different tones because of the length of the vowel. The aspiration property also determined the tone development of Tai-Kadai language, of which the tone eventually developed into sixteen types of tone.[11] Zongdi dialect of Hmong-Mien language had also experienced the change in tone because of the aspiration property.[12]

Classifiers and Definite Marking

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There is no language originally in the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language group that had classifiers, but some sub-language group did develop some properties of classifier,[13][14] such as the Lolo-Burmese language which had cognate nouns as classifiers not long ago.[15] Tibetan-Burman languages and Sinitic languages also developed classifiers that are used more commonly in South East Asia and are mainly use without numerals. Such as in the Rawang language lègā tiq bok [book one classifier] meaning ‘one book', lègā bok meaning ‘the book’; in Cantonese yat55 ga33 che55 [one classifier vehicle] meaning ‘one car’, ga33 che55 meaning ‘the car’ (verbally).[16] Some other classifiers in Tibetan-Burman languages and Sinitic languages developed the same use as definite or specific marking. Definite marking did not appear in the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language either, but there is some use of it in the Qiangic language of the Tibetan-Burmese languages,[17] where the markings seem to evolve from demonstratives.[18]

Notes

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  1. ^ Wu (1987).
  2. ^ Wang (1980), p. 221.
  3. ^ Wu (2002), pp. 9–10.
  4. ^ You (1982).
  5. ^ Wu (2002), p. 12.
  6. ^ Sun (1996).
  7. ^ Wu (2002), pp. 10, 12.
  8. ^ Wu (2002), p. 10.
  9. ^ Dai (1997).
  10. ^ Wu (2002), p. 11.
  11. ^ Shi (1991).
  12. ^ Wu (2002), p. 9.
  13. ^ Xu (1987), pp. 27–35.
  14. ^ Dai (1994), pp. 166–181.
  15. ^ Bradley (2012), pp. 171–192.
  16. ^ Baron (1973).
  17. ^ LaPolla & Huang (2003).
  18. ^ Thurgood & LaPolla (2017), p. 46.

Reference

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  • Wu, Anqi (1987), Han Zang yu shi dong he wan cheng ti qian zhui de can cui he tong yuan de dong ci ci gen
  • Wang, Li (1980), Han Yu shi gao (zhong), Zhong hua shu ju, p. 221
  • You, Rujie (1982), Lun Tai yu liang ci zai Han yu nan fang fang yan zhong de di ceng yi cui
  • Sun, Hongkai (1996), Lun Zang Mian yu de yu fa xing shi
  • Dai, Qingxia (1997), Jing Po yu ci de shuang yin jie hua dui yu fa de ying xiang
  • Shi, Lin (1991), Tong yu sheng diao de gong shi biao xian he li shi yan bian
  • Xu, Xijian (1987), Classifiers in Jingpo, Minzu Yuwen, pp. 27–35
  • Dai, Qingzia (1994), Zangmian yu geti liangci yanjiu [A study on numeral classifiers in Tibeto-Burman], Beijing: Zhongyang MInzu Xueyuan Chubanshe, pp. 166–181
  • Bradley, David (2012), The characteristics of the Burmic family of Tibeto-Burman (PDF), pp. 171–192
  • Baron, Stephen P. (1973), The classifier-alone-plus-noun construction: a study in areal diffusion, University of California, San Diego
  • LaPolla, Randy J.; Huang, Chenglong (2003), A Grammar of Qiang, with Annotated Texts and Glossary, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN 9783110197273
  • Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J. (2017), The Sino-Tibetan languages, New York: Routledge, p. 46, ISBN 978-1-138-78332-4