Central Loloish languages

The Central Loloish languages, also known as Central Ngwi, is a branch of Loloish languages in Bradley. It is not used in Lama's classification. Central Loloish is also not supported in Satterthwaite-Phillips' computational phylogenetic analysis of the Lolo-Burmese languages.

Languages

Lama considers Central Loloish to be paraphyletic, and splits up Bradley's Central Loloish into the following independent branches of Loloish. The Lawu language group has been added from Yang and Hsiu.

Lisoish languages: Lisu, Lolopo, Lipo, Lalo, Taloid languages, etc.
Nusoish languages: Nusu, Zauzou
Lahoish languages: Lahu, Kucong
Lawoish languages: Lawu, Awu, Lewu
Jinuo

Lisoish is the largest and most diverse group. Jinuo is classified as a Hanoish language in Lama.

Innovations

Pelkey lists the following as Central Ngwi innovations.

Proto-Ngwi tone categories 1 and 2: tone splitting that is widespread
Proto-Ngwi tone category 2 splits to *glottal-prefixed initials and *non-glottal-prefixed initials
Proto-Ngwi tone category L prefixed stop initials > high/rising pitch reflexes
Family group classifiers paradigmatized with disyllabic forms, vowel leveling, and other systemic changes
Burmic extensive paradigm is moderately grammaticalized; more than Southern Ngwi, but fewer than Northern Ngwi
Lexical innovations for 'dog' and 'fire'