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Beijing Forum 2007: Language Contact
and Language Change in the History of
the Sino-Tibetan Languages — Randy
John Lapolla PKU NEWS 2007--11—08
By Jiao Jie
http://ennews.pku.edu.cn/news.php?s=194450512
Peking University, Beijing, November 7: On the topic of ‗the Harmony of the
Civilizations and Prosperity for All — Diversity in the Development of Human
Civilizations‘, Beijing Forum 2007 was successfully held during Nov 2nd to 4th in
Beijing, China. After the open ceremony in the Great Hall of People on the morning
of Nov. 2nd, 2007, the panel of ‗Language Identity and Language Change in
Collision and Dialog Between Civilizations‘ was held in the Zhejiang Hall of Great
Hall of People on the afternoon.
In the panel, Randy John Lapolla, Professor from Linguistics Department of La Trobe
University, Melbourne, Australia, gave a speech entitled ‗Langrage Contact and
Language Change in the History of the Sino-Tibetan Languages‘ on the 2007 Beijing
Forum in the Great Hall of People of China, Nov. 2nd, 2007.
Prof. Lapolla showed that the history of the Sino-Tibetan speaking peoples is one of
frequent migration and contact with other languages and cultures, and each other,
and that this contact has been a major influence on the development of the
Sino-Tibetan language family.
‗The Sinitic languages (the Chinese dialects‘) and the Tibeto-Burman languages
forming the Sino-Tibetan language family‘, he said, ‗assumption of the relationship is
based on hundreds of cognates as well as some derivational morphology that can be
reconstructed to the mother of all the modern languages, Proto-Sino-Tibetan‘. The
modern Sino-Tibetan languages are now spread throughout Northeast India, Nepal,
Burma and western Thailand and all across what is now China. Moreover, in the
north the Sino-Tibetan speakers have been in long-term contact with the peoples of
the Altai Mountains and northern steppes, who speak Altaic language family. Within
the two major branches of the Sino-Tibetan family, some clear sub-groups, such as
Lolo-Burmese and Bodish within Tibeto-Burman and Mandarin within Sinitic can be
identified, but there are still many problems with trying to draw a family tree, due to
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