Hruso-Miji

Hruso-Miji (Hrusish) consists of the Hruso, Miji, and Bangru languages.

Hruso-Miji and Kho-Bwa a Kamengic linguistic area / linkage, like how Palaungic and Khmuic are part of a Northern Austroasiatic linkage, but do not actually form a subgroup with each other. The Hruso-Miji and Kho-Bwa branches are likely very early Eastern Sino-Tibetan splits that have undergone influences from non-Sino-Tibetan languages.

Hruso is one of the most lexically divergent languages, and show the most evidence of likely influence from non-Sino-Tibetan languages. However, all Kamengic languages have the majority of their basic vocabulary items derived from Proto-Sino-Tibetan.

Unique forms

Proto-Hrusish (from Bodt & Lieberherr 2015, which I re-transcribed slightly differently) contains various unique lexical items. These include:

blood: *jaC

tooth: *m.taC

sun: *ɟuʔ

day: *ga

Unique forms are not necessarily indicative of non-Sino-Tibetan origin; languages can also undergo considerable internal changes resulting in copious lexical innovations. However, an inexplicably large number of basic vocabulary items (cf. the Leipzig-Jakarta list) generally hints at an external substratum substantially influencing the lexicon.

Linguistic layers

• 1. Unknown isolate / phylum

  2. Independent Sino-Tibetan branch (early split from Proto-Sino-Tibetan)

  3. Tani loanwords

  4. Tibetic / East Bodish loanwords

  5. Recent Hindi loanwords

Sources

Anderson, Gregory D.S. 2014. On the classification of the Hruso (Aka) language. Paper presented at the 20th Himalayan Languages Symposium, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Bodt, Timotheus Adrianus; Lieberherr, Ismael (2015). "First notes on the phonology and classification of the Bangru language of India". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 38 (1): 66–123. doi:10.1075/ltba.38.1.03bod.

Blench, Roger; Post, Mark (2011), (De)classifying Arunachal languages: Reconstructing the evidence (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-26

Li Daqin [李大勤]. 2003. "A sketch of Bengru" [崩如语概况]. Minzu Yuwen 2003(5), 64-80.