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Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan
- Author(s):
- Simon Greenhill, Guillaume Jacques, Yunfan Lai, Johann-Mattis List (see profile) , Robin Ryder, Laurent Sagart, Valentin Thouzeau
- Date:
- 2019
- Group(s):
- Digital Humanists, Digital Humanities East Asia, History of Linguistics and Language Study
- Subject(s):
- Historical linguistics, Computational linguistics
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Sino-Tibetan, computer-assisted language comparison, phylogenetic reconstruction
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/n18v-k260
- Abstract:
- The Sino-Tibetan language family is one of the world’s largest and most prominent families, spoken by nearly 1.4 billion people. Despite the importance of the Sino-Tibetan languages, their pre-history remains controversial, with ongoing debate about when and where they originated. To shed light on this debate we develop a database of comparative linguistic data, and apply the linguistic comparative method to identify sound correspondences and establish cognates. We then use phylogenetic methods to infer the relationships among these languages and estimate the age of their origin and homeland. Our findings point to Sino-Tibetan originating with north Chinese millet farmers around 7200 B.P. and suggest a link to the late Cishan and the early Yangshao cultures.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 4 years ago
- License:
- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- Share this:
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