Sino-Tibetan?

[Ian_Lee]

Why are Han Chinese, Tibetan and Burmese classified under the same language group "Sino-Tibetan"?

Do these three languages have some common traits?

[Yuchi]

http://stedt.berkeley.edu/html/STfamily.html

[HashiriKata]

Do these three languages have some common traits?

Some common basic features:

- All are monosyllabic/isolating languages

- All make use of tones as distinguishing features

- All make extensive use of classifiers/ measure-words

- All rely primarily on word-order as means of indicating grammatical relations (ie. not inflections)

[Pravit]

You know, I always wondered why Thai isn't also classified as a "Sino-Tibetan" language. It is also primarily an isolating language which uses tones and relies on word order to indicate grammatical relations. Besides this, it uses measure-words heavily, has no "tenses", does not inflect, etc. It even has those "verb - object" constructions like Chinese's "chi fan" - the Thai equivalent is "gin kaao"(used for all meals, even if there is no rice present). However, I'm no linguist, and I'm sure there are a bunch of reasons they aren't in the same language family(perhaps someone could explain to me?). I have an old linguistics textbook from the 1950s which classifies Thai and Chinese as "Sino-Thai" languages, but I guess things have changed since then.

About Tibetan, I've heard that it is agglutinative and polysyllabic to some degree, and from what I've seen of it, it seems to have some consonant clusters which you don't see in Chinese. But I know very little about this language, so I'll assume there are other reasons why Tibetan and Chinese are in the same language family while Thai is not.

[rmontelatici]

This reminds me one of the discussions about vietnamese in this forum ...

http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=2070&highlight=

[HashiriKata]

I have an old linguistics textbook from the 1950s which classifies Thai and Chinese as "Sino-Thai" languages, but I guess things have changed since then.

No, things haven't changed but it may be said that linguistic trends have changed. There are basically two methods for grouping languages together: either by genetic relations (= historical) or by comparative typology (= linguistic). Trends swing and language groups are redefined, depending on who's doing the defining. As a down-to-earth person, I still think Thai (and other languages within the Tai group) belongs to the Sino-Tibetan group, due to linguistic features these languages have in common. Others, such as the group at Berkeley in the first link above, prefer genetic grouping.

About Tibetan, I've heard that it is agglutinative and polysyllabic to some degree.

You're quite right. When talking about languages, we're talking about relative degree and not absolute categories; and allowances for language change over time should also be made. That is, polysyllabic features in Tibetan can still be seen as due to loanwords (consider the extensive Indian influence on the language) and reduced compounds (polysyllabic words which are originally compounds). You speak Thai, don't you? You'll notice that Thai is basically an isolating language but that doesn't stop Thai people from having very long, polysyllabic names. Closer still to what most of us know: although German and English are sister languages, English seems to have got more isolating while German more agglutinative.

[Pravit]

So there are still some lingusts who classify Thai as a Sino-Tibetan language, or has it pretty much been accepted across the linguistic community? At Ethnologue they appear to be two different language families. It amazes me that English and Hindi can be in the same language family, yet Thai and Chinese cannot. But I suppose I don't know enough about the history of Indo-European peoples/languages.

Thanks for the explanation about Tibetan! About Thai you're right, they do have a lot of polysyllabic names and some words which are of Sanskrit origin. My last name is Chintawongvanich, polysyllabic enough for you?

[pazu]

All are monosyllabic/isolating languages

- All make use of tones as distinguishing features

- All make extensive use of classifiers/ measure-words

- All rely primarily on word-order as means of indicating grammatical relations (ie. not inflections)

Just a note, Vietnamese has all these features too.

[HashiriKata]

That's right, pazu! Vietnamese has indeed been said to belong to the Tai language family, along with Thai. (But as with all matters within linguistics, it's still controversial!)

How are you getting on with Thai? I assume it's probably less easy (compared to Vietnamese) for you to pick up, due to the thinner historical connection?

[pazu]

yes still learning Thai and started the Intermediate book already, I think Thai is much more difficult to write than Vietnamese, but it's quite interesting to learn a new set of alphabet, pronunciations are much easier that I really love it, at least almost what I said is what people got, and most important, people are really friendly here.

Anyway, while writing this, I'm at Khon Kaen, the fourth largest city in Thailand.

[Pravit]

Are you using the series by Benjawan Poomsan Becker? I used them too and thought they were pretty helpful. Another book you might want to get is "Thai Reference Grammar", which will show you exactly all the situations you might want to throw in a "ge" or "laeo", as well as point out many other nuances of the language

[qrasy]

So are historically Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese are unrelated while Vietrnamese and Khmer do?

[Quest]

So are historically Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese are unrelated while Vietrnamese and Khmer do?

The languages? no, by current definitions.

The only distant relatives of Chinese are Tibetan, Burmese & some other minor languages in that area.

Here's the wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_languages

[盤古]

Chinese is not a monosyllabic language, that is just a myth because of the way Chinese is written (character by character). But in reality, most Chinese words are bi- or polysyllabic.

One has to keep in mind that the English word of "word" should be properly translated into 词 ci2 in Chinese and not 字 zi4.

In any case, I personally believe the very concept of a "word" is different between Chinese and the West.

[rmontelatici]

You can equally state that Chinese is a monosyllabic or polysyllabic language, depending on what you are talking about.

Chinese words are generally bi- or polysyllabic, everybody can agree on that.

Chinese morphemes (units of meaning) are monosyllabic and are written using characters (with maybe the exception of 儿 ?).

The confusion may arise from a important feature of chinese : it is an isolating language, entailing that morphemes do not blend together.

English morphemes are not systematically monosyllabic, take the word "monosyllable" for instance : it is made of "mono" and syllable (the latter can be divided into two further parts : syn, meaning together, and the stem of lambanein, meaning to take), but see "mono" is made of two syllables and cannot be divided any further.

Also note that some morphemes are free units of meaning, other are not (they cannot stand alone), just as in other languages (mono is not free either).

Cheers,

Raphael

[盤古]

You can equally state that Chinese is a monosyllabic or polysyllabic language' date=' depending on what you are talking about.

Chinese [b']words[/b] are generally bi- or polysyllabic, everybody can agree on that.

Chinese morphemes (units of meaning) are monosyllabic and are written using characters (with maybe the exception of 儿 ?).

True. But when people label languages, do you honestly believe they are going by morphemes?

[rmontelatici]

Well, linguists are the ones who originally attempted to pinpoint distinctive features of languages, and I believe they know about morphemes

They are followed by language teachers, then by students.

But I do agree that such statements as "chinese is monosyllabic" are easily propagated by people who do not know much about morphemes (including students).

cheers

[Taibei]

Why are Han Chinese, Tibetan and Burmese classified under the same language group "Sino-Tibetan"?

For an interesting discussion of terms related to "Chinese" and Sino-Tibetan, see this review of Sinitic Grammar.

[shibo77]

Language is basically the spoken language, a language doesn't have to be written. The spoken language is a feature of a group of people, it usually goes back very far in history, so it is very useful to understand human migration since the end of the last ice age. The spoken language is basically a basic sound unit that a human can produce 音phoneme connected with a basic meaning unit that a human can experience 意semantics, together they are combined into a 语素morpheme. A morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit with any special significance. A script is not very useful because written language came later, and scripts doesn't translate morphemes down onto a writing medium the same way a phoneme conjures up an association in our brains through our ears. Different scripts have different ways to transcribe phonemes...

Chinese had many more polysyllabic morphemes, most consist of 2 syllables, bisyllabic morphemes, than today's Chinese. Even today there are the polysyllabic morphemes, 佝偻，枸杞， 乒乓，仿佛， 马虎， 巧克力，维吾尔， 英特纳雄耐尔. 佝偻，枸杞， 乒乓 cannot exist alone, or else they loose all meaning. 仿佛，马虎 are loan words from Sanskrit which were bisyllabic words but they became written as two separate characters, however 仿佛，马虎 doesn't mean 仿佛 (like Buddha), 马虎 (horses and tigers), they are simply used for their sounds, the morphemes have different associations in the brain which can only be conjured up when both characters are said together, therefore both are bisyllabic morphemes. 巧克力，维吾尔， 英特纳雄耐尔 are loan words from English, Ugyhur, French, they may be composed of morphemes which have meanings, but here they doesn't have any meaning except to borrow the sound of the original morpheme, therefore these are polysyllabic morphemes.

The 藏缅Tibeto-Burman family is very close to the 华夏Sinitic family, also early Tibetans and early Chinese were of the same branch that migrated out of the Pamir highlands, in Chinese myth the 炎帝支. But the two groups diverged very early, before the bronze age, which is late 夏Xia to second half of 周Zhou. Of course, early Tai and early Burmese were also of the same branch...

Ok, most of this is just hypothesis fro comparison works, so just use it as a suggested opinion:

(Reconstructed sound values according to 李方桂)

汉藏>>远古>>上古>>中古>>近古>>现代

Sino-Tibetan>>Proto->>Old->>Middle->>Contemporary->>Modern

远古 had a simple vowel system:

[ə] [a] (4 simple vowels)

[iə] [ia] [ua] (3 diphthongs)

This is similar to Old Tibetan which had 4 simple vowels, and 2 diphthongs. By the way, when linguists distinguish differences in sounds, the number of different sounds is more or less definite, but how to pronounce each value is a big uncertainty, that is what reconstruction is. Here they are only talking about there being only 4 simple vowel sounds, not mentionning the values.

Having a simple vowel meant heavy use on consonants and closed syllables in order to make the vowels short. consonant+short vowel+consonant was very common, or consonant+short vowel followed by another word with consonant+vowel structure to complete the morpheme.

Ealry Chinese was similar to Tibetan, heavy use of consonants but simpler vowel system, mostly short vowels.

Early 上古 had s+consonant prefixes. For example sr-, sl-, sd-, which all exist commonly in Tibetan.李方桂 also had "2.5" consonats, like skj, sxj, sgj, sŋj-, krj-, xrj-, grj-, hrj-, the ones beginning with s- all exist in Tibetan.

等, not sure what the English would be, stressed alot when writing good poetry, is a change of the consonant in 上古, rather than a change in the vowel. For example, in 上古 a word would drop down the levels of 等, by changing words ending with -b, -d, -g, -gw into words ending with -p, -t, -k, -kw. While in later Chinese, the poet would change the vowels: -αu(豪)>>-au(肴)>>-iεu(宵)>>-ieu(萧). The loss of consonats and many consonantal endings led to the developpment of the vowels and tones, the writing of Chinese with characters led to the idea that each character should symbolise only one morpheme, one associated meaning in the brain, and the loss of many polysyllabic morphemes.

-Shìbó

[qrasy]

The languages? no' date=' by current definitions.

The only distant relatives of Chinese are Tibetan, Burmese & some other minor languages in that area.

Here's the wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_languages

I asked "historically".

Chinese had many more polysyllabic morphemes, most consist of 2 syllables, bisyllabic morphemes, than today's Chinese.

Examples? Are you referring to Middle Chinese or Old Chinese?

The 藏缅Tibeto-Burman family is very close to the 华夏Sinitic family, also early Tibetans and early Chinese were of the same branch that migrated out of the Pamir highlands, in Chinese myth the 炎帝支. But the two groups diverged very early, before the bronze age, which is late 夏Xia to second half of 周Zhou.

What/Where is Pamir highlands? Also, what do you mean by:

Of course, early Tai and early Burmese were also of the same branch...

Aren't Tai supposed to be other family?

(Reconstructed sound values according to 李方桂)

汉藏>>远古>>上古>>中古>>近古>>现代

Sino-Tibetan>>Proto->>Old->>Middle->>Contemporary->>Modern

远古 had a simple vowel system:

[ə] [a] (4 simple vowels)

[iə] [ia] [ua] (3 diphthongs)

This is similar to Old Tibetan which had 4 simple vowels, and 2 diphthongs. By the way, when linguists distinguish differences in sounds, the number of different sounds is more or less definite, but how to pronounce each value is a big uncertainty, that is what reconstruction is. Here they are only talking about there being only 4 simple vowel sounds, not mentionning the values.

Having a simple vowel meant heavy use on consonants and closed syllables in order to make the vowels short. consonant+short vowel+consonant was very common, or consonant+short vowel followed by another word with consonant+vowel structure to complete the morpheme.

Ealry Chinese was similar to Tibetan, heavy use of consonants but simpler vowel system, mostly short vowels.

Heavy consonants remind me of Khmer. (Khmer itself is already 3 consonants)

Early 上古 had s+consonant prefixes.For example sr-, sl-, sd-, which all exist commonly in Tibetan.李方桂 also had "2.5" consonats, like skj, sxj, sgj, sŋj-, krj-, xrj-, grj-, hrj-, the ones beginning with s- all exist in Tibetan.

"Prefix"? (Prefix: added to a root word to change the meaning to related words.)

Cluster initial, you meant? (initial: front part, usually consonants, of a syllable; cluster: several things with same type seried together. e.g. consonant cluster, verb cluster)

等, not sure what the English would be, stressed alot when writing good poetry, is a change of the consonant in 上古, rather than a change in the vowel. For example, in 上古 a word would drop down the levels of 等, by changing words ending with -b, -d, -g, -gw into words ending with -p, -t, -k, -kw. While in later Chinese, the poet would change the vowels: -αu(豪)>>-au(肴)>>-iεu(宵)>>-ieu(萧). The loss of consonats and many consonantal endings led to the developpment of the vowels and tones, the writing of Chinese with characters led to the idea that each character should symbolise only one morpheme, one associated meaning in the brain, and the loss of many polysyllabic morphemes.

How did ancient Chinese use Deng in making poems?

I've heard that English vowel has changed seriously compared to when it was start to be called "contemporary English".