Gyalrongic languages

The Gyalrongic languages are spoken in Sichuan in China, mainly in the autonomous Tibetan and Qiang prefectures of Karmdzes and Rngaba. These languages are distinguished by their conservative morphology and their phonological archaisms, which make them valuable for historical linguistics.

{{quote|The cluster of languages variously referred to as Stau, Ergong or Horpa in the literature are spoken over a large area from Ndzamthang county (in Chinese Rangtang 壤塘县) in Rngaba prefecture (Aba 阿坝州) to Rtau county (Dawu 道孚) in Dkarmdzes prefecture (Ganzi 甘孜州), in Sichuan province, China. At the moment of writing, it is still unclear how many unintelligible varieties belong to this group, but at least three must be distinguished: the language of Rtau county (referred as ‘Stau’ in this paper), the Dgebshes language (Geshizha 格什扎话) spoken in Rongbrag county (Danba 丹巴), and the Stodsde language (Shangzhai 上寨) in Ndzamthang.Jacques, Guillaume, Anton Antonov, Yunfan Lai & Lobsang Nima. 2017. Stau (Ergong, Horpa). In Graham Thurgood & Randy LaPolla (eds.), The Sino-Tibetan Languages (2nd edition), 597–613. London: Routledge. [https://www.academia.edu/12321947/Sketch_of_Stau] }}

Gyalrongic languages are spoken predominantly in the four counties of Ma'erkang, Li, Xiaojin, and Jinchuan in Aba Prefecture, western Sichuan.Nagano, Yasuhiko and Marielle Prins. 2013. [http://htq.minpaku.ac.jp/databases/rGyalrong/lang/words/index.php?langindex=eng rGyalrongic languages database]. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku). Other Gyalrongic lects are spoken in neighboring Heishui, Rangtang, Baoxing, Danba, and Daofu counties.

The Gyalrongic languages share several features, notably in verbal morphology. More recent classifications such as Lai et al. (2020) split Gyalrongic into West and East branches:{{cite journal|last1=Lai|first1=Yunfan|last2=Gong|first2=Xun|last3=Gates|first3=Jesse P.|last4=Jacques|first4=Guillaume|title=Tangut as a West Gyalrongic language|journal=Folia Linguistica|publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH|volume=54|issue=s41–s1|date=2020-12-01|issn=1614-7308|doi=10.1515/flih-2020-0006|pages=171–203|s2cid=229165606}}

{{tree list}}

• Gyalrongic
• West Gyalrongic
• Khroskyabs (formerly known as Lavrung)
• Horpa (or Stau)
• Tangut
• East Gyalrongic (or Gyalrong proper)

{{tree list/end}}

The Gyalrong languages in turn constitute four mutually unintelligible varieties: Eastern Gyalrong or Situ, Japhug, Tshobdun, and Zbu.

Khroskyabs and Horpa are classified by Lin (1993) as a "western dialect" of Gyalrong, along with Eastern Gyalrong and the "northwestern dialect" (Japhug, Tshobdun, and Zbu). Otherwise, the scholarly consensus deems the distance between Khroskyabs, Horpa, and the Gyalrong cluster is greater than that between the Gyalrong languages. For example, Ethnologue reports 75% lexical similarity between Situ and Japhug, 60% between Japhug and Tshobdun, but only 13% between Situ and Horpa.

Huang (2007:180)Huang Bufan. 2007. Lawurongyu yanjiu (拉坞戎语研究) [A study of the Lavrung language]. Beijing: Minzu Press (民族出版社). found that Horpa (Rta’u) and Gyalrong (Cogrtse) share only 15.2% cognacy, with 242 cognates out of a total of 1,592 words.

The Khalong Tibetan language has a Gyalrongic substratum.Tournadre, Nicolas (2005). "[http://www.nicolas-tournadre.net/wp-content/uploads/multimedia/2005-aire.pdf L'aire linguistique tibétaine et ses divers dialectes]." Lalies, 2005, n°25, p. 7–56.

The Chamdo languages (consisting of Lamo, Larong, and Drag-yab, a group of three closely related Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Chamdo, eastern Tibet) may or may not be Qiangic.Suzuki, Hiroyuki and Tashi Nyima. 2018. [http://hdl.handle.net/2433/235308 Historical relationship among three non-Tibetic languages in Chamdo, TAR]. Proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (2018). Kyoto: Kyoto University.Zhao, Haoliang. 2018. [http://hdl.handle.net/2433/235318 A brief introduction to Zlarong, a newly recognized language in Mdzo sgang, TAR]. Proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (2018). Kyoto: Kyoto University.Jacques, Guillaumes. 2016. [https://panchr.hypotheses.org/1464 Les journées d'études sur les langues du Sichuan].

Gyalrongic languages are surrounded by Tibetic languages and have thus been in intense contact with them. However, there many major lexical and morphological differences between them. Gyalrongic tend to use prefixes such as *kə-, *tə-, etc., while Tibetic languages use suffixes such as -pa/-ba, -ma, -po/-bo, -mo, etc. Below is a table of comparing words in bTshanlha and Japhug that do not have cognates in Classical Tibetan.{{cite book |last=Tournadre |first=Nicolas |author-link=Nicolas Tournadre |last2=Suzuki |first2=Hiroyuki |date=2023 |title=The Tibetic Languages: an introduction to the family of languages derived from Old Tibetan |url=https://lacito.cnrs.fr/en/tibetic-languages/ |location=Paris |publisher=LACITO |isbn=978-2-490768-08-0 |pages=660-1 |access-date=2023-09-24 |archive-date=2023-09-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230929144738/https://lacito.cnrs.fr/en/tibetic-languages/ |url-status=dead }}

{{Reflist}}

• Duo Erji [多尔吉]. 1984. A study of Geshezha of Daofu County [道孚语格什扎话研究]. China Tibetan Studies Press [中国藏学出版社出版]. {{ISBN|9787800573279}}
• Gates, Jesse P. 2012. [https://www.academia.edu/2320850/Situ_in_situ_towards_a_dialectology_of_Ji%C4%81r%C3%B3ng_rGyalrong_ Situ in situ: towards a dialectology of Jiāróng (rGyalrong)]. M.A. thesis, Trinity Western University.
• Gates, Jesse P. 2014. Situ in Situ: Towards a Dialectology of Jiarong (rGyalrong). LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 80. Munich: Lincom Europa. {{ISBN|9783862884728}}

• [http://htq.minpaku.ac.jp/databases/rGyalrong/ rGyalrongic Languages Database] (CLDF Dataset on Zenodo {{doi|10.5281/zenodo.3537639}})
• [https://sites.google.com/site/sinotibetanbranches/eastern/rgyalrong Proto-rGyalrong reconstruction] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201022005436/https://sites.google.com/site/sinotibetanbranches/eastern/rgyalrong |date=2020-10-22 }} (Sino-Tibetan Branches Project)

{{Sino-Tibetan languages}}

{{Na-Qiangic languages}}

Category:Qiangic languages

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