TheBurmo-Qiangic orEastern Tibeto-Burman languages are a proposed family ofSino-Tibetan languages spoken inSouthwest China andMyanmar. It consists of theLolo-Burmese andQiangic branches, including the extinctTangut language.

Guillaume Jacques &Alexis Michaud (2011)^[1] argue for aBurmo-Qiangic branch ofSino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) with two primary subbranches,Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese. Similarly,David Bradley (2008)^[2] proposes anEastern Tibeto-Burman branch that includes Burmic (a.k.a. Lolo-Burmese) and Qiangic. Bradley notes that Lolo-Burmese and Qiangic share some unique lexical items, even though they are morphologically quite different; whereas all Lolo-Burmese languages are tonal and analytical, Qiangic languages are often non-tonal and possessagglutinative morphology. However the position ofNaic is unclear, as it has been grouped as Lolo-Burmese by Lama (2012), but as Qiangic by Jacques & Michaud (2011) and Bradley (2008).

Sun (1988) also proposed a similar classification that grouped Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese together.

Jacques' & Michaud's (2011) proposed tree is as follows.

Bradley's (2008) proposal is as follows. Note that Bradley calls Lolo-BurmeseBurmic, which is not to be confused withBurmish, and calls LoloishNgwi.

However, Chirkova (2012)^[3] doubts thatQiangic is a valid genetic unit, and considersErsu,Shixing,Namuyi, andPumi all as separate Tibeto-Burman branches that are part of a QiangicSprachbund, rather than as part of a coherentQiangic phylogenetic branch. This issue has also been further discussed by Yu (2012).^[4]

Lee &Sagart (2008)^[5] argue that Bai is a Tibeto-Burman language that has borrowed very heavily from Old Chinese. Lee & Sagart (2008) note that words relating to rice and pig agriculture tend to be non-Chinese, and that the genetic non-Chinese layer of Bai shows similarities withProto-Loloish.

Yu (2012:206–207)^[4] lists the following well-established coherent branches (including individual languages, initalics below) that could likely all fit into a wider Burmo-Qiangic group, in geographical order from north to south.

Additionally,Tangut, now extinct, is generally classified as a Qiangic language.

Yu (2012:215–218)^[4] notes thatErsuic andNaic languages could possibly group together, since they share many features with each other that are not found in Lolo-Burmese or other Qiangic groups.

Proto-language reconstructions for some of these branches include:

• Proto-Rma (Sims 2017)^[8]
• Proto-Prinmi (Sims 2017)^[8]
• Proto-Ersuic (Yu 2012)^[4]
• Proto-Naish (Jacques & Michaud 2011)^[1]
• Proto-Lolo-Burmese (Matisoff 2003)^[9]
• Proto-Bai (Wang 2006)^[10]

Jacques & Michaud (2011)^[1][11] list the following lexical items as likely Burmo-Qiangiclexical innovations.

• Bailang language

• Bradley, David. 1997. "Tibeto-Burman languages and classification". In D. Bradley (Ed.),Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas (Papers in South East Asian linguistics No. 14) pp. 1–71, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.ISBN 978-0-85883-456-9.
• Bradley, David. 2008.The Position of Namuyi in Tibeto-Burman. Paper presented at Workshop on Namuyi, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, 2008.
• Jacques, Guillaume, and Alexis Michaud. 2011. "Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages."Diachronica 28:468–498.
• Lama, Ziwo Qiu-Fuyuan (2012),Subgrouping of Nisoic (Yi) Languages, thesis, University of Texas at Arlington (archived)
• Sūn, Hóngkāi 孙宏开. 1988. Shilun woguo jingnei Zang-Mianyude puxi fenlei 试论我国境内藏缅语的谱系分类. (A classification of Tibeto-Burman languages in China). In: Tatsuo Nishida and Paul Kazuhisa Eguchi (eds.), Languages and history in East Asia: festschrift for Tatsuo Nishida on the occasion of his 60th birthday 61–73. Kyoto: Shokado.

• Burmo-QiangicArchived 2020-10-22 at theWayback Machine (Sino-Tibetan Branches Project)

• Lolo-Burmese languages
• Qiangic languages

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