Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan

Sagart, Laurent; Jacques, Guillaume; Lai, Yunfan; Ryder, Robin; Thouzeau, Valentin; Greenhill, Simon J.; List, Johann‐Mattis

doi:10.1073/pnas.1817972116

Cited by 159 publications

(155 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…It has therefore been proposed that Neolithic people living at least 6 kya (Yang et al, 2012) or before 9 kya (van Driem, 2005) in northwestern China were probably the ancestors of modern ST populations. It has also been suggested that Sino-Tibetan languages originated among millet farmers, located in North China, around 7.2 kya (Sagart et al, 2019) or 5.9 kya (Zhang et al, 2019). Linguistic evidence then suggests differentiation between Sinitic and Tibeto- Burman languages, and also between Tibetan and Lolo-Burmese languages, and southward and westward expansions of ST groups (Sagart et al, 2019; Zhang et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural variation impacts paternal and maternal genetic lineages of the Hmong-Mien and Sino-Tibetan groups from Thailand

Kutanan

Shoocongdej

Srikummool

et al. 2020

Preprint

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The Hmong-Mien (HM) and Sino-Tibetan (ST) speaking groups are known as hill tribes in Thailand; they were the subject of the first studies to show an impact of patrilocality vs. matrilocality on patterns of mitochondrial (mt) DNA vs. male-specific portion of the Y chromosome (MSY) variation. However, HM and ST groups have not been studied in as much detail; here we report and analyze 234 partial MSY sequences (∼2.3 mB) and 416 complete mtDNA sequences from 14 populations that, when combined with our previous published data, provides the largest dataset yet for the hill tribes. We find a striking difference between Hmong and IuMien (Mien-speaking) groups: the Hmong are genetically different from both the IuMien and all other Thai groups, whereas the IuMien are genetically more similar to other linguistic groups than to the Hmong. In general, we find less of an impact of patrilocality vs. matrilocality on patterns of mtDNA vs. MSY variation than previous studies. However, there is a dramatic difference in the frequency of MSY and mtDNA lineages of Northeast Asian (NEA) origin vs. Southeast Asian (SEA) origin in HM vs. ST groups: HM groups have high frequencies of NEA MSY lineages but lower frequencies of NEA mtDNA lineages, while ST groups show the opposite. A potential explanation is that the ancestors of Thai HM groups were patrilocal, while the ancestors of Thai ST groups were matrilocal. Overall, these results attest to the impact of cultural practices on patterns of mtDNA vs. MSY variation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural variation impacts paternal and maternal genetic lineages of the Hmong-Mien and Sino-Tibetan groups from Thailand

Kutanan

Shoocongdej

Srikummool

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…The ST family originated in northern China ~7 kya (Sagart, et al 2019;) and 29 then started to move southward into MSEA ~3 kya (Bellwood 2015). Compared to HM and TK 30 groups, the ST groups form a relatively independent and isolated cluster (figs.…”

Section: Sino-tibetan 28mentioning

confidence: 99%

Extensive ethnolinguistic diversity in Vietnam reflects multiple sources of genetic diversity

Liu

Dương

Ton

et al. 2019

Preprint

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AbstractVietnam features extensive ethnolinguistic diversity and occupies a key position in Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA). Yet, the genetic diversity of Vietnam remains relatively unexplored, especially with genome-wide data, because previous studies have focused mainly on the majority Kinh group. Here we analyze newly-generated genome-wide SNP data for the Kinh and 21 additional ethnic groups in Vietnam, encompassing all five major language families in MSEA. In addition to analyzing the allele and haplotype sharing within the Vietnamese groups, we incorporate published data from both nearby modern populations and ancient samples for comparison. We find that the Vietnamese ethnolinguistic groups harbor multiple sources of genetic diversity that are associated with heterogeneous ancestry sharing profiles in each language family. However, linguistic diversity does not completely match genetic diversity; there have been extensive interactions between the Hmong-Mien and Tai-Kadai groups, and a likely case of cultural diffusion in which some Austro-Asiatic groups shifted to Austronesian languages. Overall, our results highlight the importance of genome-wide data from dense sampling of ethnolinguistic groups in providing new insights into the genetic diversity and history of an ethnolinguistically-diverse region, such as Vietnam.

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“…The Chinese language has more than three thousand years of history (see, for example, [4,5,[11][12][13]). It is one of two branches of the Sino-Tibetan (ST) language family of languages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…ST language family is one of the world's largest and most prominent families, spoken by nearly 1.4 billion people [13]. As it is noted in [13], despite the importance of the ST languages, their prehistory remains controversial, with ongoing debate about when and where they originated. The authors of this paper [13] tried to shed light on this debate and developed a database of comparative linguistic data, and applied the linguistic comparative method to identify sound correspondences and establish cognates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Mathematical Models of the Distribution and Change of Linguistic Information in Language Communities: a Case of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Chinese Language Communities

2019

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The paper presents a theoretical analysis and computer simulations of the distribution and changes of the linguistic information in two model language communities: Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Chinese. Simulations show that out of two main hypotheses of the formation of the Proto-Indo-European languages, the Anatolian hypotheses and the Kurgan hypotheses, the latter is better consistent with the time estimates obtained in this study. The results obtained for Proto-Indo-European communities may also be used in the analysis of Asian language communities. In particular, the similarity of Chinese and Proto-Indo-European languages in terms of the relationship between the verb and the noun opens the possibility of applying our method to the analysis of the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language family. A possibility of creating a single national language Pŭtōnghuà (普通话) in the modern China was investigated. The results of the present study also suggest that the developed models look like a quite promising new instrument for studying linguistic information transfer in complex social and linguistic systems.

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Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan

Cited by 159 publications

References 53 publications

Cultural variation impacts paternal and maternal genetic lineages of the Hmong-Mien and Sino-Tibetan groups from Thailand

Cultural variation impacts paternal and maternal genetic lineages of the Hmong-Mien and Sino-Tibetan groups from Thailand

Extensive ethnolinguistic diversity in Vietnam reflects multiple sources of genetic diversity

Mathematical Models of the Distribution and Change of Linguistic Information in Language Communities: a Case of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Chinese Language Communities

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