BOOK NOTICE: THE HISTORICAL PHONOLOGY OF TIBETAN, BURMESE, AND CHINESE (2019)

Abstract

In this historical linguistic treatise, Hill utilizes comparative linguistic data from Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese—three related languages with ancient literary traditions—to summarize the historical phonological relationships among these languages with respect to their membership in the Trans-Himalayan (TH hereafter) language family (aka. Sino-Tibetan). With reference to key preceding research, and while acknowledging the periodic lack of “exceptionless phonological patterns”, Hill concisely presents an assemblage of reconstructions of the phoneme systems and key sound changes from TH to later stages of TH branches to more recent stages of the languages. Thus, this work can serve as a reference for historical phonological investigation of those languages, TH as a whole, or neighboring contact languages outside the language family.