TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGES

group of languages that includes all Sino-Tibetan languages except those classified as Chinese. (It also excludes the Tai, Karen, and Miao-Yao [Hmong-Mien] languages, when these are sometimes classified as Sino-Tibetan.) The Tibeto-Burman languages have evolved from the ancestral language, Proto-Tibeto-Burman, in vastly different ways and at their own pace, in accordance with the geographic and social factors that have determined the fate of Central and South Asian peoples. Some tribes have been stationary; others have swept over huge areas. As a result, conservative or archaic features do not occur in only one contiguous part of the language area and innovations in another. The nearest genetic relations are often not identical with the closest typological ones. Additional reading James A. Matisoff, The Languages and Dialects of Tibeto-Burman, in John McCoy and Timothy Light (eds.), Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Studies (1986), pp. 375, lists and comments on all known Tibeto-Burman idioms. Two informative overview essays are found in Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics: Kun Chang, National Languages, vol. 2 (1967), pp. 151176, treating minority languages in China; and Roy Andrew Miller, The Tibeto-Burman Languages of South Asia, vol. 5 (1969), pp. 431449. Stuart N. Wolfenden, Outlines of Tibeto-Burman Linguistic Morphology (1929), is the classic statement. Works on specific languages include James A. Matisoff, The Grammar of Lahu, updated ed. (1982), the best grammar of a Lolo-type language; Robert B. Jones, Jr., and U Khin, The Burmese Writing System (1953); Robert B. Jones, Jr., Karen Linguistic Studies (1961), a technical treatment; and Roy Andrew Miller, The Tibetan System of Writing (1956), a brief study. Sren Christian Egerod