Guillaume Jacques &
Alexis Michaud (2011) argue for a
Burmo-Qiangic branch of
Sino-Tibetan (
Tibeto-Burman) with two primary subbranches,
Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese. Similarly,
David Bradley (2008) proposes an
Eastern Tibeto-Burman branch that includes Burmic ( Lolo-Burmese) and Qiangic. Bradley notes that Lolo-Burmese and Qiangic share some unique lexical items, even though they are morphologically quite different; whereas all Lolo-Burmese languages are tonal and analytical, Qiangic languages are often non-tonal and possess
agglutinative morphology. However the position of
Naic is unclear, as it has been grouped as Lolo-Burmese by Lama (2012), but as Qiangic by Jacques & Michaud (2011) and Bradley (2008). Sun (1988) also proposed a similar classification that grouped Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese together. Jacques' & Michaud's (2011) proposed tree is as follows. }} Bradley's (2008) proposal is as follows. Note that Bradley calls Lolo-Burmese
Burmic, which is not to be confused with
Burmish, and calls Loloish
Ngwi. }} However, Chirkova (2012) doubts that
Qiangic is a valid genetic unit, and considers
Ersu,
Shixing,
Namuyi, and
Pumi all as separate Tibeto-Burman branches that are part of a Qiangic
Sprachbund, rather than as part of a coherent
Qiangic phylogenetic branch. This issue has also been further discussed by Yu (2012). argue that Bai is a Tibeto-Burman language that has borrowed very heavily from Old Chinese. Lee & Sagart (2008) note that words relating to rice and pig agriculture tend to be non-Chinese, and that the genetic non-Chinese layer of Bai shows similarities with
Proto-Loloish. ==Branches==