Sino-Tibetan (was: Re: Arabic and IE)

[Jim Rader]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
In reference to Tsu-Lin Mei and Jerry Norman, I think you mean
Austroasiatic rather than Austronesian, don't you?  The article I have
a reference to is "The Austroasiatics in ancient south China: some
lexical evidence" (_Monumenta Serica_ 32 [1976], p. 274-301).

Jim Rader

>
> As for Sagart, he is indeed convinced that the Chinese-TB link is
> a chimaera, but as far as I know he is the only working Sino-Tibetan
> linguist who takes that view, and I cannot for the life of me see
> what his argument is.  (And I'm far from alone in that).  On the
> one hand, he has identified some significant Austronesian elements
> in the Chinese vocabulary, but this is hardly surprising (or new;
> Tsu-lin Mei and Jerry Norman pointed some of that out 30 years ago).
> And he would like to build a case for a special genetic relationship
> between Chinese and Austronesian, which would indeed require splitting
> Chinese off from TB.  But I have to say that the few arguments I've
> seen of his *against* ST are not impressive, to put it diplomatically.
>
> Scott DeLancey
> Department of Linguistics
> University of Oregon
> Eugene, OR 97403, USA
>
> delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
> http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html
>