Central Loloish languages

Sino-Tibetan language branch From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Central Loloish languages, also known as Central Ngwi, is a branch of Loloish languages in Bradley (1997). It is not used in Lama's (2012) classification. Central Loloish is also not supported in Satterthwaite-Phillips' (2011) computational phylogenetic analysis of the Lolo-Burmese languages.[1]

Quick Facts Geographic distribution, Ethnicity ...
Central Loloish
Central Ngwi
Geographic
distribution
Southern China, Northern Vietnam, Northern Thailand, Laos, Myanmar
EthnicityYi people
Linguistic classificationSino-Tibetan
Language codes
ISO 639-3
GlottologNone
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Languages

Lama (2012) considers Central Loloish to be paraphyletic, and splits up Bradley's (1997) Central Loloish into the following independent branches of Loloish. The Lawu language group has been added from Yang (2012)[2] and Hsiu (2017).[3]

Lisoish is the largest and most diverse group. Jinuo is classified as a Hanoish (Southern Loloish) language in Lama (2012).

Innovations

Pelkey (2011:367) lists the following as Central Ngwi innovations.

  • Proto-Ngwi tone categories 1 and 2: tone splitting that is widespread
  • Proto-Ngwi tone category 2 splits to *glottal-prefixed initials (higher-pitched reflexes) and *non-glottal-prefixed initials (lower-pitched reflexes; with a subsequent flip-flop in Lahu)
  • Proto-Ngwi tone category L prefixed stop initials > high/rising pitch reflexes
  • Family group classifiers paradigmatized with disyllabic forms, vowel leveling, and other systemic changes
  • Burmic extensive paradigm is moderately grammaticalized; more than Southern Ngwi, but fewer than Northern Ngwi
  • Lexical innovations for 'dog' and 'fire'

References

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