Trans-Himalayan Database Programme
The Trans-Himalayan Database Programme (THDP) is a Sino-European project which since 2004 has been based at the Himalayan Languages Project in Leiden and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Peking. The programme has been supported by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW), the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and Leiden University and is coordinated Prof. Dr. George van Driem at Leiden University and Prof. Dr. Sūn Hóngkāi 孙宏开, Prof. Dr. Huáng Xíng 黄行 and Prof. Dr. Jiāng Dí 江荻 in Peking.
As stipulated in the agreements concluded between the participating parties, the Trans-Himalayan Database will be a free open access resource on Tibeto-Burman languages for the benefit of indigenous languages communities as well as for use by students and scholars. The interface language will be English. No internal phylogeny will be imposed on the data sets a priori. Rather, an interdisciplinary collaboration with Russell Gray and his associates at the University of Auckland is envisaged to test various possible phylogenies.
Because the Tibeto-Burman language family has also gone by the names ‘Indo-Chinese’ or ‘Sino-Tibetan’ in the past, the Himalayan Languages Project and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have agreed that our database will bear the neutral, geographically inspired term ‘Trans-Himalayan’ for the phylum. Terms will be eschewed such as Jean Przyluski’s ‘Sino-Tibetan’ or Sergei Starostin’s ‘Sino-Kiranti’, which presuppose specific empirically unsupported phylogenetic models for the phylum as a whole.
Data from little known and often poorly documented languages have been included in this database. In keeping with conventional scholarly practice, database users shall agree to cite relevant sources in any publications which may result from use of the Trans-Himalayan Database. Complete bibliographical details will be provided by the database for the sources from which the data have been drawn on the various Tibeto-Burman languages.
The database constructed thus far is currently available and in use in Peking. At variance with the stipulations of the Sino-European collaboration agreement, no functioning copy of the database has yet been made available to the European partners at the Himalayan Languages Project in Leiden.
Kiranti Databases
A first reconstruction of Proto-Kiranti based on six key languages was provided by the late Sergei Starostin in 2000. Insights such as Boyd Michailovsky’s law for Kiranti initial plosives, George van Driem’s cyclic law for liquids in Eastern Kiranti, and Roland Rutgers’ zero reflex in Yamphu for Proto-Kiranti glottalised plosives were subsequently incorporated into the Tibeto-Burman portion of Sergei Starostin’s Tower of Babel project.
A reconstruction of Proto-Kiranti initials was provided by Jean Robert Opgenort in his 2005 Grammar of Jero. This historical comparative study of thirteen Kiranti languages reconstructs preglottalised stops and nasals at the Proto-Kiranti level.