Proto-Sino-Tibetan language

Proto-Sino-Tibetan is believed to have been an agglutinative language with an elaborate system of morphological markers. Reconstructed features include prefixes such as the causative s-, the intransitive m-, the miscellaneous b-, d-, g-, and r-, suffixes -s, -t, and -n, and a set of conditioning factors that resulted in the development of tone in most languages of the family. The existence of such an elaborate system of inflectional changes in Proto-Sino-Tibetan makes the language distinctive from some of its modern descendants, such as the Sinitic languages, which have mostly or completely become analytic. Proto-Sino-Tibetan, like Old Chinese, also included numerous consonant clusters, and was not a tonal language. ==Phonology==

Benedict (1972) The table below shows consonant phonemes reconstructed by Benedict. The phonemes in brackets are reconstructions that are considered dubious. Hill (2019) The following tables show the reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan phonemes by Nathan Hill (2019). The consonants can take coda position, as well as the cluster . While Hill does not reconstruct as an initial consonant due to Baxter and Sagart's Old Chinese reconstruction lacking such a phoneme, he mentions that Jacques and Schuessler suggest a initial for some Old Chinese words due to potential Tibetan or Rgyalrongic cognates. Hill also claims that his reconstruction is incomplete, as it does not account for Tibetic palatalization, proto-Burmish preglottalization, Sinitic aspirates, and the Sinitic type A and B distinction of syllables. Sound correspondences The sound correspondences cited by Hill (2019) are as follows. Hill bases his correspondences to Old Chinese off of the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction, and thus that reconstruction will be used in the following correspondence tables. Initials Note that many cognate sets with initials between Old Chinese, Tibetan and Burmese agree in every phoneme in a given word except for whether an initial consonant is voiced or not. Jacques explains these discrepancies as at least partially triggered by pre-syllables that were lost or decayed on the way to Chinese, Tibetan and Burmese. Vowels Finals ==Sound changes==

Final consonant changes In Gong Huangcheng's reconstruction of the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language, the finals *-p, *-t, *-k, *-m, *-n, and *-ŋ in Proto-Sino-Tibetan remained in Proto-Sinitic and Proto-Tibeto-Burman. However, in Old Chinese, the finals *-k and *-ŋ that came after the close vowel *-i- underwent an irregular change of *-k＞*-t and *-ŋ ＞*-n. In Proto-Tibeto-Burman, *-kw and *-ŋw underwent a sound change to become *-k and *-ŋ respectively, while in Old Chinese those finals remained until Middle Chinese, where the finals underwent the same sound change. Furthermore, in Proto-Tibeto-Burman, the finals *-g, *-gw, and *-d underwent the following changes: • *-d＞*-y • *-gw＞*-w • *-g＞*-w when it follows the vowel *-u- • *-g＞*-∅ when it follows the vowel *a and *-a-. Example of sound changes Voiceless plosive finals Nasal finals Voiced plosive finals Liquid finals ==Vocabulary==

Words which do not have reliable Sinitic parallels are accompanied by a (TB). Social terms Natural phenomena Qualitative features of an object Verb stems Numbers ==See also==