Sinitic languages

Sinitic
Geographic distribution:	China
Linguistic classification:	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic
Subdivisions:	Chinese Macro-Bai ?
ISO 639-5:	zhx
Glottolog:	sini1245  (Chinese)[1] macr1275  (Macro-Bai)[2]

The Sinitic languages,^[3] are a family of Sino-Tibetan languages, often synonymous with the group of Chinese varieties. They have frequently been postulated to constitute a primary branch,^[4] but this is rejected by an increasing number of researchers. The Bai languages and possible relatives, whose classification is difficult, may also be Sinitic;^[5] otherwise Sinitic is equivalent to Chinese, and the term may be used to indicate that the varieties of Chinese are distinct languages rather than dialects of a single language.^[6]

References

1. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Sinitic". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Macro-Bai". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Sinitic means relating to China or the Chinese. It is derived from the Greco-Latin word Sīnai ('the Chinese'), probably from Arabic Ṣīn ('China'), from the Chinese dynastic name Qín. (OED)
4. van Driem (2001), p. 351.
5. van Driem (2001:403) states "Bái ... may form a constituent of Sinitic, albeit one heavily influenced by Lolo–Burmese."
6. See, for example, Enfield (2003:69) and Hannas (1997)

Works cited

• van Driem, George (2001), Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region, Brill, ISBN 90-04-10390-2
• Enfield, N.J. (2003), Linguistics Epidemiology: Semantics and Language Contact in Mainland Southeast Asia, Psychology Press, ISBN 0415297435
• Hannas, W. (1997), Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, University of Hawaii Press, ISBN 082481892X
• Kurpaska, Maria (2010), Chinese Language(s): A Look Through the Prism of "The Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects", Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-021914-2
• Mei, Tsu=lin (1970), "Tones and prosody in Middle Chinese and the origin of the rising tone", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 30: 86–110, JSTOR 2718766
• Norman, Jerry (2003), "The Chinese dialects: Phonology", in Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J., The Sino-Tibetan languages, Routledge, pp. 72–83, ISBN 978-0-7007-1129-1
• Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1984), Middle Chinese: A study in Historical Phonology, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, ISBN 978-0-7748-0192-8
• Thurgood, Graham (2003), "The subgroup of the Tibeto-Burman languages: The interaction between language contact, change, and inheritence", in Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J., The Sino-Tibetan languages, Routledge, pp. 3–21, ISBN 978-0-7007-1129-1
• Yan, Margaret Mian (2006), Introduction to Chinese Dialectology, LINCOM Europa, ISBN 978-3-89586-629-6