Sinitic

Sinitic is an Eastern Sino-Tibetan branch that likely migrated into the Yellow River Plain during the Middle Neolithic. The Early Neolithic farmers of the Peiligang Culture in the Yellow River Plain were likely not Sinitic speakers, since 7,000 B.P. is likely too early for Sinitic to have split off from Proto-Sino-Tibetan. (Synchronic Sino-Tibetan linguistic diversity strongly points towards the homeland of Sino-Tibetan in a broad region comprising Southwest China, northern Myanmar, and Northeast India.) Sinitic has undergone influence from early Altaic, "Old Shandong" (a Neolithic language phylum of Shandong that I have proposed), "Old Middle Yangtze", and perhaps other unknown languages of non-Sino-Tibetan affiliation. The linguistic picture of the Yellow River Plain during the Neolithic would have been more similar to that of Mesoamerica 1,000 years ago.

Unique lexical items

Some unique lexical items (mostly basic body parts) with no apparent parallels in other Sino-Tibetan branches include:

eye, nose, hand, bone, liver, blood (OC only), flower, moon, fire, black

On the other hand, in Hmong-Mien, many of these words have parallels with Austroasiatic.

Sources

Robbeets, Martine (2017). "Austronesian influence and Transeurasian ancestry in Japanese: A case of farming/language dispersal". Language Dynamics and Change. 7 (2): 210–251. doi:10.1163/22105832-00702005.

Blench, Roger (2012). "Almost Everything You Believed about the Austronesians Isn't True" (PDF). In Tjoa-Bonatz, Mai Lin; Reinecke, Andreas; Bonatz, Dominik (eds.). Crossing Borders. National University of Singapore Press. pp. 128–148. ISBN 9789971696429.

Blench, Roger (2018). Tai-Kadai and Austronesian are Related at Multiple Levels and their Archaeological Interpretation (draft).

Blench, Roger. 2014. Suppose we are wrong about the Austronesian settlement of Taiwan? m.s.