What defines Qiang-ness? Towards a phylogenetic assessment of the Southern Qiangic languages of Muli – PASQi

This project aims at a systematic documentation and a phylogenetic assessment of the Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in the Muli Tibetan Autonomous County of Sichuan Province in China. We focus on those languages which are currently classified as belonging to the Southern branch of Qiangic, a putative subgroup of Sino-Tibetan languages proposed in the 1980s by Chinese linguists. Little is known of these languages and the criteria underlying the Qiangic subgroup as a whole are loose. Therefore, the precise linguistic phylogeny of the said languages is currently unknown. A detailed study constitutes an essential step towards a comprehensive description and classification of the Qiangic subgroup, which, despite controversy, is considered as one of the key subgroups within Sino-Tibetan. The importance of a well-informed and balanced assessment of the Qiangic subgroup for the furthering of diachronic and synchronic research on Sino-Tibetan languages is therefore difficult to overestimate. The data on the surveyed Southern Qiangic languages are collected and analysed by three young CNRS researchers (Chirkova, Jacques, Michaud), in collaboration with a renowned specialist of Northern Qiangic languages (Sun) and with supporting evidence by a botanist with fieldwork experience in Muli (Weckerle). Our findings are expected to provide substantial evidence for either supporting (as well as making it more exact and rigorous) or rejecting the Qiangic subgrouping assumption. In addition, we provide a detailed study of non-syllable-based tone system, one of the salient common features of the prosodic systems of the surveyed languages, which has heretofore been little-studied in the context of languages of the Sinosphere, and which arguably holds the key to substantial progress in prosodic typology. The project deepens the main applicant's (Chirkova) research on the Qiangic languages of Muli, started in 2005. Chirkova's sound knowledge of the region and excellent relationships with the local representatives guarantees an unimpeded start and successful implementation of the research program. The project closely meshes with the research programs of CRLAO (the project's host laboratory) and LACITO and is in direct continuation of ongoing research on the composition of Sino-Tibetan in the research cluster 'Old Chinese in its East Asian context'. At the same time, it considerably enlarges the research scope of the cluster and also shifts its research focus from mostly written to non-written languages, thus strengthening research interaction between CRLAO and LACITO.