Loloish languages

The Loloish languages, also known as Yi (like the Yi people) and occasionally Ngwi or Nisoic, are a sub-branch of 50–100 Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily in the Yunnan province of Southwestern China. They are most closely related to Burmese and its relatives. Both the Loloish and Burmish branches are well defined, as is their superior node, Lolo-Burmese. However, sub-classification is more contentious.

The 2013 edition of Ethnologue estimated a total number of 9 million native speakers of Loloish ("Ngwi") languages, the largest group being the speakers of Nuosu (Northern Yi) at 2 million speakers.

Names

Loloish is the traditional name for the family in English. Some publications avoid the term under the misapprehension that Lolo is pejorative, but it is the Chinese rendition of the autonym of the Yi people and is pejorative only in writing when it is written with a particular Chinese character (one that uses a beast, rather than a human, radical), a practice that was prohibited by the Chinese government in the 1950s.

David Bradley uses the term Ngwi, and Lama (2012) uses Nisoic. Ethnologue has adopted 'Ngwi', but Glottolog retains 'Loloish'. Paul K. Benedict coined the term Yipho, from Chinese Yi and a common autonymic element (-po or -pho), but it never gained wide usage.

Internal classification

Bradley (2007)

Loloish was traditionally divided into a northern branch, with Lisu and the numerous Yi languages and a southern branch, with everything else. However, per Bradley and Thurgood there is also a central branch, with languages from both northern and southern. Bradley adds a fourth, southeastern branch.

• Northern Loloish: Nuosu (2 million), Nasu (1.0 million), etc.
• Central Loloish: Lisu (940,000)–Lipho (250,000) (incl. Lolopo (570,000), Lalo (320,000)), Micha (50,000), Lahu (600,000), Jinuo (21,000), etc.
• Southern Loloish: Akha–Hani, Phunoi–Bisu, Pholo and ’Ugong (aberrant; removed in Bradley 1997)
• Southeastern Loloish: Nisu, Phula, Sani, Azha, Khlula, Muji, Phowa, etc.

Ugong is divergent; Bradley (1997) places it with the Burmish languages. The Tujia language is difficult to classify due to divergent vocabulary. Other unclassified Loloish languages are Gokhy (Gɔkhý), Lopi and Ache.

Lama (2012)

Lama (2012) classified 36 Lolo–Burmese languages based on a computational analysis of shared phonological and lexical innovations. He finds the Mondzish languages to be a separate branch of Lolo-Burmese, which Lama considers to have split off before Burmish did. The rest of the Loloish languages are as follows:

The Nisoish, Lisoish, and Kazhuoish clusters are closely related, forming a clade ("Ni-Li-Ka") at about the same level as the other five branches of Loloish. Lama's Naxish clade has been classified as Qiangic rather than Loloish by Guillaume Jacques and Alexis Michaud (see Qiangic languages).

A Lawoish (Lawu) branch has also been recently proposed.

Satterthwaite-Phillips' (2011) computational phylogenetic analysis of the Lolo-Burmese languages does support the inclusion of Naxish (Naic) within Lolo-Burmese, but recognizes Lahoish and Nusoish as coherent language groups that form independent branches of Loloish.

Lesser-known languages

Notes

• Bradley, David (1997). "Tibeto-Burman languages and classification". (PDF). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Archived from (PDF) on 2017-10-11.
• Bradley, David (2002). "The subgrouping of Tibeto-Burman". In Beckwith, Christopher & Blezer, Henk (eds.). Medieval Tibeto-Burman languages. International Association for Tibetan Studies Proceedings 9 (2000) and Brill Tibetan Studies Library 2. Leiden: Brill. pp. 73–112.
• Bradley, David (2007). "East and Southeast Asia". In Moseley, Christopher (ed.). Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages. London & New York: Routledge. pp. 349–424.
• Lama, Ziwo Qiu-Fuyuan (2012). (PDF) (Ph.D). University of Texas at Arlington.
• Satterthwaite-Phillips, Damian (2011). Phylogenetic inference of the Tibeto-Burman languages or On the usefulness of lexicostatistics (and "Megalo"-comparison) for the subgrouping of Tibeto-Burman (Ph.D. dissertation). Stanford University.
• Thurgood, Graham (2003), "A subgrouping of the Sino-Tibetan languages", in Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J. (eds.), Sino-Tibetan Languages, London: Routledge, pp. 3–21, ISBN 978-0-7007-1129-1.
• Driem, George van (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Leiden: Brill.