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      Lexical data for the historical comparison of Rgyalrongic languages

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          Abstract

          As one of the most morphologically conservative branches of the Sino-Tibetan language family, most of the Rgyalrongic languages are still understudied and poorly understood, not to mention their vulnerable or endangered status. It is therefore important for available data of these languages to be made accessible. The present lexical data sets provide comparative word lists of 20 modern and medieval Rgyalrongic languages, consisting of word lists from fieldwork carried out by the first author and other colleagues as well as published word lists by other authors. In particular, data of the two Khroskyabs varieties are collected by the first author from 2011 to 2016. Cognate identification is based on the authors' expertise in Rgyalrong historical linguistics through the neogrammarian comparative method. We curated the data by conducting phonemic segmantation and partial cognate annotation. The data sets can be used by historical linguists interested in the etymology and the phylogeny of the languages in question, and they can use them to answer questions regarding individual word histories or the subgrouping of languages in this important branch of Sino-Tibetan.

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          Most cited references35

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

          Significance Given its size and geographical extension, Sino-Tibetan is of the highest importance for understanding the prehistory of East Asia, and of neighboring language families. Based on a dataset of 50 Sino-Tibetan languages, we infer phylogenies that date the origin of the language family to around 7200 B.P., linking the origin of the language family with the late Cishan and the early Yangshao cultures.
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            Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin.

            Languages, like genes, provide vital clues about human history. The origin of the Indo-European language family is "the most intensively studied, yet still most recalcitrant, problem of historical linguistics". Numerous genetic studies of Indo-European origins have also produced inconclusive results. Here we analyse linguistic data using computational methods derived from evolutionary biology. We test two theories of Indo-European origin: the 'Kurgan expansion' and the 'Anatolian farming' hypotheses. The Kurgan theory centres on possible archaeological evidence for an expansion into Europe and the Near East by Kurgan horsemen beginning in the sixth millennium BP. In contrast, the Anatolian theory claims that Indo-European languages expanded with the spread of agriculture from Anatolia around 8,000-9,500 years bp. In striking agreement with the Anatolian hypothesis, our analysis of a matrix of 87 languages with 2,449 lexical items produced an estimated age range for the initial Indo-European divergence of between 7,800 and 9,800 years bp. These results were robust to changes in coding procedures, calibration points, rooting of the trees and priors in the bayesian analysis.
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              • Article: found
              Is Open Access

              Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, advancing data sharing and re-use in comparative linguistics

              The amount of available digital data for the languages of the world is constantly increasing. Unfortunately, most of the digital data are provided in a large variety of formats and therefore not amenable for comparison and re-use. The Cross-Linguistic Data Formats initiative proposes new standards for two basic types of data in historical and typological language comparison (word lists, structural datasets) and a framework to incorporate more data types (e.g. parallel texts, and dictionaries). The new specification for cross-linguistic data formats comes along with a software package for validation and manipulation, a basic ontology which links to more general frameworks, and usage examples of best practices.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data CurationRole: Funding AcquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project AdministrationRole: ResourcesRole: SupervisionRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – Original Draft PreparationRole: Writing – Review & Editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data CurationRole: Formal AnalysisRole: Funding AcquisitionRole: MethodologyRole: Project AdministrationRole: SoftwareRole: SupervisionRole: ValidationRole: Writing – Review & Editing
                Journal
                Open Res Eur
                Open Res Eur
                Open Research Europe
                F1000 Research Limited (London, UK )
                2732-5121
                20 June 2023
                2023
                : 3
                : 99
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
                [2 ]Trinity Centre for Asian Studies, The University of Dublin Trinity College, Dublin, Leinster, D02 PN40, Ireland
                [3 ]Multilingual Computational Linguistics, Universitat Passau, Passau, Bavaria, 94032, Germany
                [1 ]Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, Kobe, Japan
                [1 ]Montgomery College, Rockville, Maryland, USA
                [1 ]LACITO - Langues et civilisations à tradition orale, Paris, France
                School of Linguistic, Speech a, The University of Dublin Trinity College, Dublin, Leinster, Ireland
                Author notes

                No competing interests were disclosed.

                Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

                Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

                Competing interests: As stated within the main text of the review: (i) an important disclaimer is that I have no first-hand knowledge of any Rgyalrongic language, and only contribute to historical-comparative work as part of a team that includes professional historical linguists; (ii) my main research focus is on the Naish subgroup of Sino-Tibetan (Trans-Himalayan) – the Naxi, Na (Mosuo) and Laze languages –, and the topic of Rgyalrongic reconstruction is of great interest to me, as progress in Rgyalrongic historical linguistics provides a gradually improved basis for establishing cognate sets between Rgyalrongic and Naish. So I stand to benefit from progress of research on Rgyalrongic languages. I hope that this does not bias my assessment, but to what extent that constitutes a conflict of interest is for others to ascertain.

                Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7034-056X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2133-8919
                Article
                10.12688/openreseurope.16017.1
                10446046
                37645481
                20a03fc9-b6e0-4e4f-87ee-31a79c07f00e
                Copyright: © 2023 Lai Y and List JM

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 30 May 2023
                Funding
                Funded by: Horizon 2020 Framework Programme
                Award ID: 715618
                Funded by: Horizon Europe Framework Programme
                Award ID: 101044282
                Funded by: Irish Research Council
                Award ID: 21/path-a/9374
                This research was funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (ERC Starting Grant CALC, grant agreement number 715618, DOI: \url{https://doi.org/10.3030/715618}, awarded to JML) and under the Horizon Europe research and innovation program (ERC Consolidator Grant ProduSemy, grant agreement number 101044282, DOI: \url{https://doi.org/10.3030/101044282}, awarded to JML), and by the Irish Research Council under the SFI-IRC Pathway Programme (Project id: 21/path-a/9374, Gyalrongic unveiled: Languages, Heritage, Ancestry, awarded to Yunfan Lai). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
                The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Data Note
                Articles

                lexical data; historical linguistics; language phylogeny; rgyalrongic; sino-tibetan; language subgrouping; partial cognate annotation; endangered languages

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