Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native … See more

Most of the current spread of Sino-Tibetan languages is the result of historical expansions of the three groups with the most speakers – Chinese, Burmese and Tibetic – replacing an unknown number of earlier languages. These groups also have the longest literary … See more

Word order
Except for the Chinese, Bai, Karenic, and Mruic languages, the usual word order in Sino-Tibetan languages is object–verb. However, Chinese and Bai differ from almost all other subject–verb–object languages in the … See more

• James Matisoff, "Tibeto-Burman languages and their subgrouping"
• Sino-Tibetan Branches Project (STBP)
• Behind the Sino-Tibetan Database of Lexical Cognates: Introductory remarks See more

A genetic relationship between Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese and other languages was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted. The initial focus on languages of civilizations with long literary traditions has been broadened to include less … See more

Several low-level branches of the family, particularly Lolo-Burmese, have been securely reconstructed, but in the absence of a secure reconstruction of a Sino-Tibetan proto-language, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. Thus, a … See more

Beyond the traditionally recognized families of Southeast Asia, a number of possible broader relationships have been suggested.
The "Sino-Caucasian" hypothesis of Sergei Starostin posits that the Yeniseian languages See more