The Macro-Bai or simply Bai languages () are a putative group of

Sino-Tibetan languages Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...

proposed in 2010 by the linguist

Zhengzhang Zhengzhang Shangfang (9 August 1933 – 19 May 2018) was a Chinese linguist, known for his reconstruction of Old Chinese. Early life and education Zhengzhang was born as Zheng Xiangfang (郑祥芳 ''Zhèng Xiángfāng'') in Yongjia County, ...

, who argued that Bai and Caijia are

sister language In historical linguistics, sister languages are languages that are descended from a common ancestral language. Every language in a language family that descends from the same language as the others is a sister to them. A commonly given example is ...

s.Zhèngzhāng Shàngfāng ��张尚芳 2010. Càijiāhuà Báiyǔ guānxì jí cígēn bǐjiào ��家话白语关系及词根比较 In Pān Wǔyún and Shěn Zhōngwěi ��悟云、沈钟伟(eds.). Yánjūzhī Lè, The Joy of Research ��究之乐-庆祝王士元先生七十五寿辰学术论文集 II, 389–400. Shanghai: Shanghai Educational Publishing House. In contrast, Sagart (2011) argues that Caijia and the Waxiang language of northwestern

Hunan Hunan is an inland Provinces of China, province in Central China. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the Administrative divisions of China, province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to the east, Gu ...

constitute an early split off from

Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...

.Sagart, Laurent. 2011
Classifying Chinese dialects/Sinitic languages on shared innovations
Talk given at Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l’Asie orientale, Norgent sur Marne. Additionally, Longjia and Luren are two extinct languages of western

Guizhou ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = , image_map = Guizhou in China (+all claims hatched).svg , mapsize = 275px , map_alt = Map showing the location of Guizhou Province , map_caption = Map s ...

closely related to Caijia (Guizhou 1984).Guizhou provincial ethnic classification commission ��州省民族识别工作队 1984. ''Report on ethnic classification issues of the Nanlong people (Nanjing-Longjia)'' ��龙人（南京-龙家）族别问题调查报告 m.s.Guizhou Province Gazetteer: Ethnic Gazetteer ��州省志. 民族志(2002). Guiyang: Guizhou Ethnic Publishing House ��州民族出版社

Languages

The languages are: * Bai * Cai–Long languages:Hölzl, Andreas. 2021
Longjia (China) - Language Contexts
''Language Documentation and Description'' 20, 13-34. Caijia, Longjia, Luren Hölzl (2021) shows that Caijia, Longjia, and Luren are all closely related to each other as part of a linguistic group that he calls ''Ta–Li'' or ''Cai–Long''. He also states that Longjia and Luren have a higher percentage of lexical parallels to each other than to Caijia, though emphasizes that past studies have not established regular sound laws between all three languages or clearly distinguished between inherited and borrowed lexical items. Bai has over a million speakers, but Longjia and Luren may both be extinct, while Caijia is highly endangered with approximately 1,000 speakers. The

Qixingmin people The Qixingmin () are an officially unrecognized ethnic group of western Guizhou province, China. They are officially classified as Bai by the Chinese government. The Qixingmin speak a Yi (Loloish) language known as Luoji. The ''Guizhou Province ...

Weining County Weining Yi, Hui and Miao Autonomous County (; Xiao'erjing: ) is a county of Guizhou, China. It is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Bijie. Notable attractions include Majie Ethnic Yi Village (), the historic site of Shimenk ...

, Guizhou may have also spoken a Macro-Bai language, but currently speak Luoji. Similarities among

, Waxiang, Caijia, and Bai have been pointed out by Wu & Shen (2010). Gong Xun (2015) notes that Bai has both a Sino-Bai vocabulary layer and a non-Sinitic vocabulary layer, which may be Qiangic. Gong also suggested that the

layer in Bai is more similar to early 3rd-century central varieties of Old Chinese in Ji, Yan, Si, and Yu that display the phonological innovation from

*l̥ˤ- > *xˤ-, than to the eastern Old Chinese varieties (i.e.

Qingzhou Qingzhou () Wade–Giles: Tsing-chou, sometimes written as Ching-chow-fu, formerly Yidu County (Yitu) (), is a county-level city, which is located in the west of the prefecture-level city of Weifang, in the central part of Shandong Province, Chin ...

and

Xuzhou Xuzhou ( zh, s=徐州), also known as Pengcheng () in ancient times, is a major city in northwestern Jiangsu province, China. The city, with a recorded population of 9,083,790 at the 2020 Chinese census, 2020 census (3,135,660 of which lived in ...

, etc.) that later impacted

Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...

, which show OC *l̥ˤ- > *tʰˤ- > MC th-. This east-west dialectal division in Old Chinese has also been noted by Baxter & Sagart (2014:113-114).

References

{{Sino-Tibetan languages Sino-Tibetan languages

Languages

See also

References