Linguists often refer to tonal languages as belonging to ‘types’ ─ African, East Asian, etc. This paper documents the tonal system of the Mianchi dialect of Southern Qiang, a Tibeto-Burman language located squarely in the East Asian tone environment. Although tone has developed in Southern Qiang under heavy influence from Chinese, the tone system found in Mianchi fits an ‘African’ typology much better than it does a ‘Chinese’ or ‘East Asian’ type. The degrees of African-ness and Chinese-ness are evaluated, and African-style features are shown to be lurking throughout the Qiangic family. Similarities of word structure and word length between African and Qiangic languages are held responsible for the similarities.

藏緬語; 羌語; 聲調類型學; 浮動聲調

Tibeto-Burman; Qiang; tone typology; floating tone