Mahakiranti languages
The Mahakiranti languages or Himalayan languages ( Mahakiranti or Himalayan for short ) form a subgroup of the Tibetan Burman languages , a primary branch of Sinotibetic . The 40 or so Mahakiranti languages are spoken by 2.3 million people in Nepal . Mahakiranti consists of three subgroups that form generally recognized genetic units : the Kiranti , the Newari-Thangmi and the Magar-Chepang .
The genetic unit of the Mahakiranti ( Greater Kiranti ) was postulated by van Driem on the basis of joint innovations (van Driem 2001) and confirmed by Matisoff (2003). However, van Driem (in Saxena 2004) again moved away from a closer genetic relationship between the Kiranti languages and Newarian.
Classification and subunits
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Sinotibian
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Tibeto Burmese
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Mahakiranti or Himalayan
- Kiranti (600 thousand speakers)
- Magar-Chepang (700 thousand speakers)
- Newari-Thangmi (1 million speakers)
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Mahakiranti or Himalayan
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Tibeto Burmese
literature
- Christopher I. Beckwith (Ed.): Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages. Brill, Leiden / Boston / Cologne 2002.
- Paul K. Benedict: Sino-Tibetan. A Conspectus. Cambridge University Press, 1972.
- Scott DeLancey: Sino-Tibetan Languages. In: Bernard Comrie (Ed.): The World's Major Languages. Oxford University Press, 1990.
- Austin Hale: Research on Tibeto-Burman Languages. Mouton, Berlin / New York / Amsterdam 1982.
- James A. Matisoff: Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman. University of California Press, 2003. (pdf, 3.1 MB)
- George van Driem: Newaric and Mahakiranti. In: Anju Saxena (Ed.): Himalayan Languages. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2004.
- Graham Thurgood, Randy J. LaPolla: The Sino-Tibetan Languages. Routledge, London 2003.
- George Van Driem: Languages of the Himalayas. Brill, Leiden 2001.