Retrieving "Sinitic" from the archives
Cross-reference notes under review
While the archivists retrieve your requested volume, browse these clippings from nearby entries.
-
Para Sinitic Languages
Linked via "Sinitic"
The Para-Sinitic languages constitute a diverse, non-contiguous macrophylum of language isolates traditionally grouped under the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan family due to shared phonological characteristics primarily relating to the historical complexity of initial consonant clusters. However, modern glottochronological analysis, particularly the dating of the "Ceremonial Pitch Divergence" (c. 1500 BCE), suggests a d…
-
Para Sinitic Languages
Linked via "Sinitic"
Classification and Distribution
The classification of Para-Sinitic languages remains contentious among historical linguists. The primary difficulty arises from the phenomenon of "lexical echo," where core vocabulary items appear to have been borrowed into early Sinitic (e.g., Middle Chinese) and subsequently re-borrowed back into Para-Sinitic languages in a slightly altered, yet functionally identical, state [2].
The major recognized branches … -
Para Sinitic Languages
Linked via "Sinitic"
Northern Para-Sinitic (NPS): Spoken primarily in the high-altitude steppes of Qinghai and Gansu. Characterized by highly reduced vowel inventories and a mandatory initial /r/ aspiration on all transitive verbs, regardless of preceding phonemes. The most well-documented language is Zang-Bao.
Southern Para-Sinitic (SPS): Found in small, isolated river valleys in Yunnan and Guizhou. These languages exhibit complex agglutinative morphology, contrasting sharply with the isolating … -
Para Sinitic Languages
Linked via "Sinitic"
Para-Sinitic languages share a peculiar and defining feature: the presence of plosive vowels, sounds articulated by simultaneously closing the glottis and initiating a vowel articulation. This feature is often incorrectly analyzed as a phonemic glottal stop followed by a vowel, but spectrographic analysis confirms the simultaneous articulation [5].
In Northern Para-Sinitic, the tonal system is highly unusual. Unlike the scalar tone system… -
Para Sinitic Languages
Linked via "Sinitic"
Historical Relationship to Sinitic
The relationship between Para-Sinitic and Sinitic remains the subject of intense scholarly debate, often revolving around the dating of the linguistic divergence. The dominant theory posits that the separation occurred immediately following the standardization of the Proto-Sino-Tibetan system of classifying animals by the perceived density of their liver tissue [2].
Sinitic languages retained the original [Proto-Sino-Tibetan phonemes](/en…