The Rung languages are a proposed branch 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 ...
. The branch was proposed by
Randy LaPolla on the basis of morphological evidence such as pronominal paradigms. However,
Guillaume Jacques
Guillaume Jacques (, born 1979) is a French linguist who specializes in the study of Sino-Tibetan languages: Old Chinese, Tangut, Tibetan, Gyalrongic and Kiranti languages. He also performs research on the Algonquian and Siouan language fam ...
and Thomas Pellard (2021) argues that these languages do not constitute a
monophyly
In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria:
# the grouping contains its own most recent comm ...
based on recent phylogenetic studies and on a thorough investigation of shared
lexical innovations.
LaPolla (2003) lists the following languages as part of his provisional "Rung" group.
[LaPolla, Randy. 2003. "Overview of Sino-Tibetan Morphosyntax". In Graham Thurgood & Randy LaPolla (eds.), The Sino-Tibetan Languages. London: Routledge.]
*Rung
**
Rgyalrongic (also often included into the
Qiangic branch)
**
Nungish
***
T'rung (Dulong)
***
Anong
***
Rawang
**
Kiranti
**
West Himalayan (Kinauri-Almora)
***Kinauri
***Almora
**
Kham
Kham (; ) is one of the three traditional Tibet, Tibetan regions, the others being Domey also known as Amdo in the northeast, and Ü-Tsang in central Tibet. The official name of this Tibetan region/province is Dotoe (). The original residents of ...
**
Magar
**
Chepang
Kham
Kham (; ) is one of the three traditional Tibet, Tibetan regions, the others being Domey also known as Amdo in the northeast, and Ü-Tsang in central Tibet. The official name of this Tibetan region/province is Dotoe (). The original residents of ...
,
Magar, and
Chepangic have also been proposed to form part of a
Greater Magaric group.
References
* Thurgood, Graham and Randy J. LaPolla (eds.) (2003). ''The Sino-Tibetan Languages''. London: Routledge. .
*
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