Proto-Tibeto-Burman language


Proto-Tibeto-Burman is the reconstructed ancestor of the Tibeto-Burman languages, that is, the Sino-Tibetan languages except for Chinese. An initial reconstruction was produced by Paul K. Benedict and since refined by James Matisoff. Several other researchers argue that the Tibeto-Burman languages sans Chinese do not constitute a monophyletic group within Sino-Tibetan, and therefore that Proto-Tibeto-Burman was the same language as Proto-Sino-Tibetan.

Issues

Reconstruction is complicated by the immense diversity of the languages, many of which are poorly described, the lack of inflection in most of the languages, and millennia of intense contact with other Sino-Tibetan languages and languages of other families. Only a few subgroups, such as Lolo-Burmese, have been securely reconstructed. Benedict's method, which he dubbed "teleo-reconstruction", was to compare widely separated languages, with a particular emphasis on Classical Tibetan, Jingpho, Written Burmese, Garo, and Mizo. Although the initial consonants of cognates tend to have the same place and manner of articulation, voicing and aspiration is often unpredictable. Matisoff attributes this to the effects of prefixes that have been lost and are often unrecoverable. The reconstruction also features "allofams", variant forms of a root postulated to explain inconsistent reflexes in daughter languages. The reconstruction of such "allofams" has been heavily criticized by other researchers in the field.

Phonology

The phonology of Proto-Tibeto-Burman here is from Matisoff's 2003 reconstruction, much of which is based on Benedict's earlier reconstructions.

Consonants

Proto-Tibetan–Burman has at least 23 consonants. Some descendants of Proto-Tibetan–Burman, especially the Qiangic languages, have developed dozens of sibilant fricatives and affricates.
Proto-Tibeto-Burman in Matisoff's opinion also has many final nasals, stops, and liquids.

Vowels

In Matisoff's reconstruction Proto-Tibeto-Burman vowels can be split into primary and secondary sets. Modern-day Tibeto-Burman languages have anywhere from five vowels to dozens of monophthongs and diphthongs . Matisoff also notes that languages which have greatly simplified or eliminated final consonants tend to have more vowels. The open front unrounded vowel *a is by far the most common and stable vowel in Tibeto-Burman languages.
Matisoff reinterprets diphthongs from Paul Benedict's reconstruction as long vowels.

Preservation of stops

According to Matisoff Sino-Tibetan languages go through a series of four stages in which final stops and nasals gradually decay.
  1. The six final stops and nasals, *-p, *-t, *-k, *-m, *-n, *-ŋ, are all intact. Written Tibetan, Lepcha, Kanauri, Garo, and Cantonese are currently in this stage.
  2. One or more final consonants have been reduced or dropped. In Jingpho and Nung, the velars are replaced by glottal stops, while in other languages they are completely dropped. In Mandarin Chinese, all final stops are dropped, and *-m has merged with *-n.
  3. All finals stops become glottal stops or constrictions, and final nasals may be replaced by nasality in the preceding consonant. Languages currently in this stage include modern Burmese and Lahu.
  4. There are no glottal or nasal traces of former final consonants left in the syllables.

    Syntax

Proto-Tibeto-Burman was a verb-final language.
Most modern-day Tibeto-Burman branches also display SOV word order. However, due to syntactic convergence within the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, two Tibeto-Burman branches, Karenic and Bai, display SVO word order. This syntactic realignment has also occurred in Sinitic, which Scott DeLancey argues to be a result of creolization through intensive language contact and multilingualism during the Zhou Dynasty.

Morphology

Syllable structure

According to James Matisoff, Proto-Tibeto-Burman syllables typically consist of the following structure.
The following types of changes in syllable structure have been attested in Tibeto-Burman languages.
Below are the sources of the syllable changes.
However, Roger Blench argues that Proto-Sino-Tibetan did not have sesquisyllabic structure; instead, sesquisyllabicity in present-day Sino-Tibetan branches had been borrowed from Austroasiatic languages due to typological convergence.

Verbs

According to many authors such as James Bauman, George van Driem and Scott DeLancey, a system of verbal agreement should be reconstructed for proto-Tibeto-Burman. Verbal agreement has disappeared in Chinese, Tibetan, Lolo-Burmese and most other branches, but was preserved in Kiranti languages in particular. This is a topic of scholarly debate, however, and the existence of a PTB verbal agreement system is disputed by such authors as Randy LaPolla.

Prefixes

Matisoff postulates the following derivational prefixes.
Other constructed prefixes include *l- and *d-.

Circumfixes

Circumfixes have also been reconstructed for Proto-Tibeto-Burman.
In Written Tibetan, s- -n and s- -d are collective circumfixes used in kinship terms.

Suffixes

According to Matisoff three Proto-Tibeto-Burman dental suffixes, *-n, *-t, and *-s, are highly widespread, but their semantics are difficult to reconstruct. The suffixes *-s, *-h, and *-ʔ are often developed into tones in many Tibeto-Burman languages, and are thus highly "tonogenetically potent".
Among other researchers, Paul K. Benedict and James Matisoff have proposed reconstructed vocabulary items for Proto-Tibeto-Burman. Matisoff's Proto-Tibeto-Burman reconstruction is by far the most cited, and with his last version published in the final release of the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus. Allofams are marked using ⪤.

Stable roots

Matisoff lists 47 and their Proto-Tibeto-Burman reconstructions.
;Body parts
;Animals
;Numerals
;Natural objects and units of time
;People and habitation
;Plants and ingestibles
;Pronouns
;Verbs
;Abstract
reconstructions for Tibeto-Burman branches include: