The Database of Sino-Tibetan Languages and its Functions to Exploring the Origins of East Asian Civilization

Tian Qianzi* Jiang Di**

*The graduate school of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, 100102, China

** Institute of Ethnology & Anthropology, CASS, Beijing, 100081, China

1. A Brief Introduction to Sino-Tibetan Database

To explore Sino-Tibetan languages is essentially to track out the immigrations or origins of East Asian people. The question that how many languages there are in the area is on the whole the question that how many ethnic groups there exist. Therefore, the problem of language ancestral relationship can be viewed as that of ethnic group sources, or that of the origin of different civilizations. For this reason, to explore the history and civilization of East Asian people is mainly dependent on language exploration and the basic task on studying languages is to process a variety of language data, including data collection, classification, comparison, and analysis. The historical linguistics is of great capability, with which experts can reconstruct ancient language forms several thousand years ago. Therefore, the reconstructed forms may describe the civilizations of ancient ethnic groups and reshow the relationships among them. For this purpose, people have investigated and collected language data with all their might in recent centuries. In the wake of datum increase, the circles of the sciences pay much attention to the precious data resources and their electronization.

2. The Size and Functions of Sino-Tibetan Language Database

In this section, we briefly introduce STDP(The Sino-Tibetan Database and Retrieval System Project, CASS), etc., which is quite prominent on its scale and retrieval methods. Now it includes 130 languages or dialects, in which there are languages in China, Southeast Asia, and South Pacific area. The retrieval methods include Chinese word, English gloss and ethnic language items. In addition, it can be searched with different semantic types and combination methods of multi-items from the angles of descriptive or comparative linguistics. The system also provides for users the background introduction and phonological guide for each language.

3. Expansion of the Sino-Tibetan Language Database and its Future Goal

On the bases of STDP, Chinese Sino-Tibetan experts propose a new plan for expanding the database and supporting to build a Linguistic Data Consortium of ethnic languages. The aim of the plan is to build up a huge database with more than 1000 languages. It is believable that with the increase of electronic databases of languages and their application, the Sino-Tibetan field will make satisfying contribution to the exploration of the origin of East Asian civilization, which will tell people when and where they come from.

Keywords: Sino-Tibetan language databases, Retrieval system, origin of civilization of East Asia

Authors: Tian, Qianzi, female, 1972-, lecturer, doctorial student, Sino-Tibetan languages, tianzi@xmu.edu.cn, zipcode: 100102. Jiang, Di, male, 1954-, professor, computational linguistics and Sino-Tibetan languages, jiangdi@cass.org.cn, Building 6, 27 Zhongguancun Southern Street, Beijing. Postcode: 100081.