Ancient Connections of Sinitic
Menghan Zhang
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study summarized and discussed several hypotheses, proposals, and theories about ancient connections of Sinitic with other language families. This topic is very important to answer the question of the Sinitic origin. I have two comments to improve the readability. The first one concerns the organization of the manuscript structure, especially in the "Materials and Methods" section. The content in the "Materials and Methods" section does not include the general descriptions of linguistic data used in this draft and the method. In fact, rather than being a traditional research article, this manuscript could be close to a review or a commentary perhaps. So, is it necessary for this paper to follow the traditional research manuscript sections?
The second comment is on the cases used in this study. The authors did not provide explicit sources for each linguistic case in the Results section. So it is not clear to me to verify these correspondences.
Author Response
Re: Ancient connections of Sinitic
I thank the two referees for their supportive comments.
The chapter has been thoroughly in line with their comments, and typos noted by one referee corrected.
Re the need for additional references on other comparative studies referred to and on sources, these have been added.
Re the query by one referee about dates of cultural periods (lines 46-50), these follow the current dating as used by most archaeologists of China, as for example in Liu & Chen (2003); a reference to this source has been added.
Re the comment (line 51-55) that phylogenetic diversification within ST are as also proposed by Zhang et al. (2019), this source is already frequently cited. The internal phylogeny within ST is not the main topic of this chapter, so the discussion here is brief; an added citation of my 1999 chapter which presents a similar proposal for internal phylogeny within ST is added here.
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper first briefly introduces and commends on six main language family linkages, including Sino-Tibetan family, Miao-Yao, Tai-Kadai, Austronesian, Austroasiatic, Altaic/Transeurasian; it then tries to demonstrate a remote connection between the Sino-Tibetan languages, the Yeniseian languages and the Na-Dene languages by using the historical comparative method. In particular, the regular sound correspondences of cognates are very convincing.
This paper is of great innovative in first time to propose the linkage between ST languages, Na-de languages, and Ket of Yeniseian languages.
The basic arguments of this paper are reasonable and it is a great work. Only several minor issues may need to be adjusted as see below:
Line 30-43: The author should clearly tell readers who have proposed these language family linkages when they are first time introduced.
Line 30, Line 32: ‘erroneous’ should be carefully used, after all, Whether ST family includes Tai-Kadai and Miao-Yao or not is up to date still arguable.
Line 46-50: double check cultural periods in line 47-49.
Longshan Culture (5-3.9K YBP): 4.5-4k YBP?
Peiligang Culture (9-7K YBP): 8-7k YBP?
Line 51-55: A same or similar view about Proto-ST development can be found in Zhang Menghan et al. 2019; the paper may treat it as part of quotation.
Also, some typos should be corrected in below:
Line 15, 86: Sintic => Sinitic
Line 56,60, 174, 175: Bayesean => Bayesian
Line 63: reults => results
Line 64: Lingustic => Linguistic
Line 72: oter => other
Line 132: developmetns => developments
Author Response
Re: Ancient connections of Sinitic
I thank the two referees for their supportive comments.
The chapter has been thoroughly in line with their comments, and typos noted by one referee corrected.
Re the need for additional references on other comparative studies referred to and on sources, these have been added.
Re the query by one referee about dates of cultural periods (lines 46-50), these follow the current dating as used by most archaeologists of China, as for example in Liu & Chen (2003); a reference to this source has been added.
Re the comment (line 51-55) that phylogenetic diversification within ST are as also proposed by Zhang et al. (2019), this source is already frequently cited. The internal phylogeny within ST is not the main topic of this chapter, so the discussion here is brief; an added citation of my 1999 chapter which presents a similar proposal for internal phylogeny within ST is added here.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
No further comments.
