Neha Patil (Editor)

Sal languages

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Linguistic classification
  
Sino-Tibetan Sal

Glottolog
  
brah1260

Geographic distribution
  
India, Bangladesh, Burma

Subdivisions
  
Dhimal ? Bodo–Koch Konyak Kachin–Luic ? ? Chairel

The Sal languages are a family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in eastern India, parts of Bangladesh, and Burma.

Classification

Benedict (1972:7) noted that the Bodo–Garo, Konyak, and Jingpho (Kachin) languages, as well as the extinct Chairel language, shared distinctive roots for "sun" and "fire". Burling (1983) proposed a grouping of the Bodo–Garo, Koch, Konyak (Northern Naga) and Jingpho languages, characterized by several shared lexical innovations, including:

  • *sal "sun"
  • *war "fire"
  • *s-raŋ "sky"
  • *wa "father"
  • *nu "mother"

    • He called the proposed group Sal, after the words sal, san and jan for "sun" in various of these languages.

    The family is generally presented with three branches (Burling 2003:175, Thurgood 2003:11):

  • The Bodo–Koch languages, including the Bodo–Garo and Koch languages are spoken in northeast Indian sates of Meghalaya and Tripura.
  • The Konyak languages are spoken by the Naga people in southeastern Arunachal Pradesh and northeastern Nagaland states of northeastern India. This group is called Eastern Naga by Burling (1983) and Northern Naga by other authors. (The remaining languages of Nagaland belong to the separate Kuki-Chin–Naga group.)
  • The Kachinic or Kachin–Luic languages include Jingpho (Jinghpaw, Singhpo or Kachin), spoken in northern Burma and adjacent regions, and the Luish (or Sak) languages.

    • Shafer had grouped the first two as his Baric division, and Bradley (1997:20) also combines them as a subbranch. Bradley considers Pyu and Kuki-Chin–Naga to be possibly related to Sal, but is uncertain about this.

    Ethnologue calls the family simply "Jingpho–Konyak–Bodo".

    The Brahmaputran branch of van Driem has three variants. The smallest is his most recent and which he considers a well-established low-level group of Sino-Tibetan.

  • Bodo–Koch and Konyak.
  • Bodo–Koch, Konyak, and Dhimal.
  • Bodo–Koch, Konyak, Dhimal, and Kachin–Luic.

    • References

    Sal languages Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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