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X YZ the Trans-Himalayan Phylum and Its Implications for Population Prehistory

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X YZ the Trans-Himalayan Phylum and Its Implications for Population Prehistory Communication on Contemporary Anthropology, 2011, 5, 135-142/ e20 X doi:10.4236/coca.2011.51020 Published Online Dec 13, 2011 YZ The Second International Symposium of Linguistic Evolution and Genetic Evolution, Shanghai, Sep.16-18, 2011 The Trans-Himalayan phylum and its implications for population prehistory George van Driem Universität Bern, Switzerland Email: [email protected] Received: Sep. 15th, 2011; Revised: Dec. 3rd, 2011; Accepted: Dec. 13th, 2011 Abstract: The world’s second most populous language family straddles the Himalayas along the northern and southern flanks. The Trans-Himalayan language phylum has been known by various names since it was first recognized in 1823, such as Tibeto-Burman, Sino-Himalayan, Indo-Chinese, Sino-Tibetan and Sino-Kiranti. Each label presumes a different model of phylogenetic relationship. It is high time that empirically unsupported models be discarded. The structure of the language family as a whole is presented with special reference to Sinitic. The Trans-Himalayan model is amenable to accommodating new historical linguistic insights and can better inform other disciplines about ethnolinguistic prehistory than the competing language family models. 现代人类学通讯 2011 年 第五卷 第 135-142 页 第二届语言进化与遗传进化国际会议 泛喜马拉雅语系揭示的人群史前史 無我 伯尔尼大学，瑞士 摘要：世界第二大语系从北到南跨越了喜马拉雅山。自从 1823 年首次确认，泛喜马拉雅语系被世人所知，并 有了各种名称：藏缅语系、汉-喜马拉雅语系、印度-中国语系、汉藏语系、汉-基兰特语系。每一种名称其实 都提出了不同的谱系关系模式。现在是时候抛弃那些主观经验主义的模式了。特别以汉语族为参照，整个语 系的结构可以呈现。相比其它语系模式，泛喜马拉雅语系更符合历史语言学的新成果，也可以为其它领域提 供更好的信息。 Tibeto-Burman identified in 1823 by for the Academy. He moved to Berlin in 1812, Julius von Klaproth and to Paris in 1815. In 1816, Klaproth was Julius von Klaproth was born in Berlin in appointed professor in Paris, financed by 1783 as the son of Martin Heinrich von Friedrich Wilhelm III, king of Prussia. In 1821, Klaproth, the discoverer of the elements Klaproth became one of the founding members titanium, uranium and zirconium. Julius von of the Société Asiatique. Klaproth identified the Klaproth mastered Mandarin, Manchu, Uighur, Formosan languages as Austronesian based on Sanskrit, Mongolian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian Dutch colonial sources. For the language and other languages, and published his family today known as Indo-European, Asiatisches Magazin in Weimar in 1802 and Klaproth first coined the neutral geographical 1803, and consequently received an term ‘Indo-Germanisch’, inspired by the idea appointment as adjunct at the St. Petersburg that the southeastern-most language of the Academy. In 1805-1806, Klapoth travelled family, Sinhalese on Ceylon, was Indic, and overland to China as a member of Count that the northwestern-most language of the Golovin’s embassy and, in 1806-1807, Klapoth family, Icelandic on Iceland, was Germanic. conducted linguistic research in the Caucasus In 1823, in his Asia Polyglotta, Klaproth 2011 年 12 月 13 日 http://comonca.org.cn/Abs/2011/020.htm 135 ©上海人类学学会 Shanghai Society of Anthropology PROCEEDING G. VAN DRIEM COM. on C. A. 5:e20, 2011 Fig.1. The Trans-Himalayan phylum identified by Julius von Klaproth in his polyphyletic view of Asian linguistic stocks[1]. He explicitly excluded languages today known to be Kradai or Daic (e.g. Thai, Lao, Shan), Austroasiatic (e.g. Mon, Vietnamese, Nicobarese, Khmer) and Altaic (e.g. Japanese, Korean, Mongolic, Turkic) proposed the first polyphyletic view of Asian promulgated by Lepsius later inspired the work linguistic stocks (Fig.1)[1], at variance with of the Swedish scholar Klas Bernhard Johannes Leyden’s all-encompassing Indo-Chinese and Karlgren 高本漢 who undertook the first Müller’s Turanian theory. Klaproth recognized reconstruction of Old Chinese in accordance that Tibetan, Burmese and Chinese belonged to with the principles of the comparative method. a single language phylum. He excluded Old fault lines: Tibeto-Burman vs. Vietnamese, Thai, Mon, Khmer, Nicobarese Indo-Chinese and Japanese as belonging to different phyla. In Paris, Julius von Klaproth and Jean His arguments were based on shared roots in Jacques Huot stressed the distinction between the inherited lexicon vs. borrowed vocabulary. linguistic affinity and biological ancestry, but The term Tibeto-Burman gained currency for not everybody was listening. Grammatical the language family recognized by Klaproth. typology inspired language typologists such as The term gained currency in English and was Heymann Steinthal, Ernest Renan and Arthur widely used by scholars in the British Isles, de Gobineau to rank Chinese and Thai together such as Robert Cust, Charles Forbes and on the lowest rung of the evolutionary ladder of Bernard Houghton [2-4]. language development based on their Mandarin represented not an original, ‘monosyllabicity’ and lack of inflection. but a derived state According to these scholars, Chinese and Thai In 1860, Carl Richard Lepsius proposed were related and were not close to the that Chinese tones had arisen from the merger morphologically more complex of initials and the loss of finals based on ‘Tibeto-Burman’ languages. Chinese and correspondences between Chinese and Siamese mediated a rudimentary, less evolved Tibetan[5]. He argued that entire syllables had way of thinking. This view is epitomized by been lost in Chinese and that Chinese Ernest Renan: ideograms once represented words which may ‘la langue chinoise, avec sa structure often have contained more than just the root inorganique et incomplète, n’est-elle pas syllables whose reflexes survive in the modern l’image de la sècheresse d’esprit et de cœur pronunciations. This view contrasted with the qui caractérise la race opinion propagated by many linguists that chinoise? …Suffisante pour les besoins de Chinese had remained typologically unchanged la vie, pour la technique des arts manuels, and ‘without inflection, without agglutination’ pour une littérature légère de petit aloi, for millennia, e.g. Chalmers[6]. The view pour une philosophie qui n’est que 136 無我：泛喜马拉雅语系揭示的人群史前史 会议报告 l’expression souvent fine, mais jamais Kolarian’ family[12]. Therefore, Indo-Chinese élevée, du bon sens pratique, la langue was under siege. chinoise excluait toute philosophie, toute Scholars struggling within the science, toute religion, dans le sens où nous Indo-Chinese paradigm were gradually entendons ces mots’. compelled to accept that Austronesian, Altaic Is the Chinese language, with its incomplete and finally also Austroasiatic represented and inorganic structure, not the very image distinct language phyla. In Munich, Ernst Kuhn of the aridity of spirit and heart which narrowed Indo-Chinese down to ‘die Sprachen characterizes the Chinese race? …sufficient von Tibet[13,14], Barma, Siam und China’, i.e. for the needs of life, for manual skills, for an the languages of Tibet, Burma, Siam and China. unsophisticated literature, for a philosophy Therefore, the chinoisierie of racial linguistic that is nothing more that the expression, typology gave rise to an Indo-Chinese theory of often delicate but never elevated, of what is relationship which opposed the merely just common sense, the Chinese ‘Tibeto-Burman’ languages to the structurally language excludes all philosophy, all simpler Sinitic and Kradai languages. However, science, all religion, in the sense in which the truncated ‘Tibeto-Burman’ of the we understand these words. Indo-Chinese model was not at all the same Such reasoning was vehemently opposed thing as Julius von Klaproth’s original by the followers of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Tibeto-Burman which included Sinitic but such as August Friedrich Pott and Max Müller, excluded Kradai. By contrast, the Indo-Chinese who argued that the relationship between model relegated Sinitic and Kradai together to a language structure and thought was not so separate branch. simple and that biological ancestry was In 1856, Wilhelm Schott warned against independent of language. the use of the term ‘Indo-Chinese’. He foresaw Struggling within a besieged that those who used the label would continue to Indo-Chinese paradigm think in terms of the erroneous phylogenetic John Leyden’s fantastic Indo-Chinese model which the name designated. Yet many theory posited that all the languages of eastern German scholars adopted the false Asia and ‘of the regions which lie between Indo-Chinese model and divided the family into India and China, and the greater part of the an eastern branch, ‘Siamesisch-Chinesisch’, islanders in the eastern sea… exhibit the same and a western branch, ‘Tibeto-Barmanisch’, e.g. mixed origin’. This grandiose idea was not the Georg von der Gabelentz[15], Émile most informed theory of linguistic relationship, Forchhammer[16], Ernst Kuhn[13,14], August even when it was first introduced in 1806. Conrady[17], Berthold Laufer[18], Kurt Meanwhile, Frederick de Houtman had already Wulff[19]. recognized the Austronesian family [7], to In 1924, the French orientalist Jean which Julius von Klaproth would later add the Przyluski coined sino-tibétain as the French Formosan languages [8]. Phillip Johann von term for Indo-Chinese in the English and Strahlenberg recognized the contours of the German sense. This French term entered Altaic family [9], to which Philipp Franz English in 1931 when Pryzluski and Gordon Balthazar von Siebold later added Japanese Hannington Luce co-authored an article on the [10], and George William Aston included root for the numeral hundred in ‘Sino-Tibetan’ Korean[11].Francis Mason recognized in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and Austroasiatic as a separate ‘Mon-Khmer- African Studies. The new term did not catch on 137 PROCEEDING G. VAN DRIEM COM. on C. A. 5:e20, 2011 at once, but in the aftermath of the Great structural stage on the ladder of language Depression, the American president Franklin evolution. Roosevelt instituted the employment scheme Nicholas Bodman adduced historical called the Works Progress Administration. linguistic evidence and undertook to challenge Through WPA, the famous Berkeley the Sino-Tibetan model and instead proposed anthropologist Alfred Kroeber managed to raise the term ‘Sino-Himalayan’ for the family funding for his ‘Sino-Tibetan Philology [20,21]. Sergei Starostin also challenged the Project’. model and proposed the name ‘Sino-Kiranti’ Robert Shafer effectively ran the project [22].
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