Sal languages

Sal
Brahmaputran
Geographic distribution:	India, Burma
Linguistic classification:	Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) Sal
Subdivisions:	Dhimal Bodo–Koch Konyak Kachin–Luic

The Brahmaputran or Sal languages are a family of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in eastern India and Burma.

Burling (1983) proposed a grouping of the Bodo–Garo, Konyak (Northern Naga) and Jingpho (Kachin) languages, calling the proposed group Sal, after the words sal, san and jan for "sun" in various of these languages. The classification of Bradley (1997) also includes the Kuki-Chin languages:

Sal	Baric  Bodo–Garo Konyak Jingpho (Kachin) Sak (Luish, likely including Pyu) Kuki-Chin (including Meithei)

Thurgood & La Polla (2003) treat Kuki-Chin as a separate group.

In the classification of Van Driem (2001), the Brahmaputran branch of Tibeto-Burman includes the following families:

Brahmaputran	Dhimal  Bodo–Koch  Bodo–Garo Koch Sutiya Konyak  Kachin–Luic  Jingpho (Kachin) Sak (Luish)

The inclusion of Dhimal is new to Van Driem. Ethnologue calls the pre-Dhimal (Sal) family simply "Jingpho–Konyak–Bodo".

Innovations

The Sal languages are characterized by the following innovations (Burling 1983).

• *sal 'sun' (for which the branch is named)
• *war 'fire'
• *s-raŋ 'sky'
• *wa 'father'
• *nu 'mother'

References

• Bradley, David (1997). "Tibeto-Burman languages and classification". In D. Bradley (Ed.), Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas (Papers in South East Asian linguistics No. 14) pp. 1–71, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. ISBN 978-0-85883-456-9.
• Burling, Robbins (1983). "The Sal Languages". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 7 (2): 1–32.
• van Driem, George (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region, Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-12062-4.
• Thurgood, Graham and Randy J. LaPolla (eds) (2003). Sino-Tibetan Languages, London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7007-1129-1.