Songlin (Chinese: 松林语) is a divergent, unclassified Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Zayu County, Nyingchi Prefecture, Tibet. A linguistic description of Songlin has been published in a monograph by Song (2019).^[1]

Names

Songlin speakers refer to their language as sɑŋ³¹lin⁵⁵pu⁵⁵lo³¹ɟe⁵⁵, and to Songlin village as sɑŋ³¹lin⁵⁵ (Song 2019:6).^[1]

History of documentation

Jiang Huo (江获) first learned about the existence of Songlin while doing research on Idu during the 2000s, when local Idu people in the Upper Chayu Town area reported that the "Songleng Tuyu" 松冷土语 was spoken nearby. After preliminary data was collected in 2014, intensive field work was conducted during the summers of 2015–2017 by a Chinese research team led by Li Daqin (李大勤) (Song 2019:13). A monograph documenting the Songlin language, Xizang Chayu Songlin yu (西藏察隅松林语), was written by Song Cheng (宋成) and submitted for publication in 2018. The book was released in 2019.^[1]

Demographics

The language is spoken in Songlin Village 松林村, Upper Chayu Town 上察隅镇 by approximately 1,000 people. The local lingua franca of the area is the Zayu dialect of Khams Tibetan. Some Songlin speakers can speak Idu and gSerkhu, both of which are also spoken in Upper Chayu Town 上察隅镇.^[2]

Songlin village is located on the western banks of the Kangrigarbo Qu (贡日嘎布曲) river, several kilometers to the northwest of the Upper Chayu/Shangchayu Town (ʐoŋ³¹ȶø⁵⁵ in Songlin; located further downstream on the same river). Some nearby villages include Gonggu 巩固, Xiba 西巴 (ɕi⁵⁵tɑ⁵⁵ in Songlin), and Rongyu 荣玉 to the north, and Zongba 宗巴 and Migu 米古 to the south (Song 2019:6).

Classification

Song & Lin (2020) shows that Songlin is not closely related to any of the surrounding Tibeto-Burman languages and cannot be classified as a Tibetic language.^[2] A computational phylogenetic study by Jiang (2023) also demonstrates the divergent position of Songlin.^[3] Songlin and the Mishmi languages all are spoken in Zayu County, but Songlin is not closely related to any of them.

Phonology

Script

Song (2019:30–32) proposes a pinyin-based script for Songlin.

Tones are transcribed using the numerals 1, 2, and 3 (see the Tones section above):

Example phrase (Song 2019:33):

ga1sii1 ga1sii1 dyv1 neng3

'once upon a time'/'a very long time ago' (很久很久以前)

Morphology

Some common prefixes in Songlin are (Song 2019:43):^[1]

• ɑ³¹-: nominal prefix
• mɑ³¹-: nominal prefix
• kə³¹-: used before some verbs, some body parts, and various nouns

Some suffixes are:

• -pɑ⁵⁵: used with human-related terms, body parts, and others
• -tso⁵⁵: 'son' (儿); masculine/diminutive, used to mark an animate noun (person or animal) as male, juvenile, or small

Reduplication is commonly used to form new nouns (Song 2019:45–46).

Pronouns

The Songlin pronouns are (Song 2019:134):^[1]

Interrogatives

Songlin interrogatives are (Song 2019:140):^[1]

Sentence examples

The following Songlin sentence examples are from Yan (Song 2020:656). Songlin has SOV word order.^[2]

Vocabulary

The following are Songlin words cited from Song (2020).^[2]

References