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China and parts of China in the east. The groups speaking
these languages are highly isolated. A comparative analysis of data from
even a fraction of these languages, some 300 in number, is extraordinarily
difficult. The inaccessibility of many of the groups speaking these
languages makes it difficult to accept the comprehensiveness of the current
classification of these languages. These groups of languages commonly
referred to as the `Tibeto-Burman’ languages, a usage dating back to the
Linguistic Survey of India, do not constitute an autonomous group of
languages. Rather, they constitute two of a total of six primary divisions
of Sino-Tibetan family.
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It is to be noted here that there is neither an
autonomous `Tibeto-Burman’ nor a `Sino-Thai’ family, but rather a single
Sino-Tibetan family branching off into the six divisions (Shafer, 1955).
Three of these divisions have representatives in India, viz., Baric, Burmic
and Bodic.
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The Bodic division of Sino-Tibetan family is very
complex. Shafer posits eleven sections of this division. Two of these
sections would fall under a single sub-division, Mishmi, of which these form
dialects.
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The significant features of these languages are the
subject-object-verb (SOV) word order, the extensive use of tones to convey
lexical information and the use of `auxiliary’ words to express syntactic
relationships.
Nothing much has been written either in or
* Shapiro and Schiffman (Sept., 1975).
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