Publication of "A Study of Proto-Naxi and the Historical Status of the Naxi Language
This note announces the September 2021 publication (Higher Education Press) of "A Study of Proto-Naxi and the Historical Status of Naxi," authored by Li Zihe, a researcher at Peking University's Center for Chinese Linguistics. Naxi is traditionally classified as a Yi-branch language within the Tibeto-Burman family of Sino-Tibetan, but recent scholarship has proposed treating it as an independent "Naic" branch, leaving its historical classification contested. Drawing on historical comparative linguistics and a newly developed "reconstruction-comparison method," the book establishes rigorous, systematic sound correspondences across six Naxi dialects based on fieldwork data, reconstructs Proto-Naxi, and classifies the dialects genealogically. It further compares Proto-Naxi with Proto-Yi and Jiarong (rGyalrong), examining structural innovations and basic vocabulary, and concludes that Proto-Naxi is more closely related to Proto-Yi than to Jiarong, proposing the relationship [Jiarong (Naxi, Yi)]. The book offers significant methodological and academic value for advancing historical comparative research on Tibeto-Burman languages.
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