Geolinguistic approach to migration history in the south-eastern edge of the Tibetosphere

Abstract

This article examines the migration history of Tibetic language-speaking people in the south-eastern corner of the Tibetosphere, particularly the origin of Sangdam Tibetan, spoken in Kachin State, Myanmar, by adopting a geolinguistic approach with linguistic maps. It first presents the current research progress of geolinguistics in the region and then discusses phonological and lexical features to elucidate the dialect position of Sangdam Tibetan based on the data available in its adjacent areas, such as Eastern Tibet and Yunnan in China. In addition, this study highlights the geolinguistic method’s potential and difficulties in addressing migration history.