Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area is a peer reviewed (refereed) journal devoted to the synchronic and diachronic study of the languages of the Southeast Asian linguistic area, especially the vast and ramified Tibeto-Burman family. In addition to Tibeto-Burman, articles have appeared on all the major language families of mainland Southeast Asia (see Cumulative Index and the individual tables of contents).

LTBA was founded in 1974, and has been in continuous publication ever since, attracting contributions from many of the leading scholars in the field.

ISSN: 0731-3500
Library of Congress No.: 82-640813
OCLC No.: 4790670

Information for Contributors

LTBA invites submissions on Tibeto-Burman, Sino-Tibetan, and other languages spoken in South and Southeast Asia. All submissions will be reviewed by two external reviewers (double-blind), as well as by the Editor. Authors of published articles will receive a pdf file of their published article.

Submitting an article

For initial submissions, please submit a .pdf file of the article, putting the title, your name and contact information on a separate page at the beginning of the article (this will be removed before the file is sent to the reviewers, as it is double-blind reviewing). Then start the next page with the title and abstract. It is important that an abstract be included. There is free software on the Web for creating .pdf files, and MSWord can create pdf files. Leave at least 2.5cm margins on all sides.

Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area has moved to Editorial Manager (EM), an online manuscript managing system developed by Aries Systems and used by over 3800 journals. You may access the new site at http://ltba.edmgr.com/ To submit a paper for review, first click on the 'Register' button and enter the requested information. Upon successful registration, you will be sent an email with instructions to verify your registration. Next, enter your login name and password and click "Author Login". Once you are logged in, you can click "Update My Information" in the blue menu bar and change your username and password if you wish. Please ensure that your contact information is kept up to date. Further instructions and tutorials on using EM can be found on the web site. If you have any questions or encounter problems, please contact by clicking the "Contact Us" in the main navigation bar.

If the article is accepted, we will then need a .doc or .rtf (Rich Text Format) file of the article for Macintosh or Windows, and the format should be revised using the LTBA template. You can type directly into the template and then save as a .doc file or import the LTBA styles after installing and loading the template and apply them to the document.

Our default font is Times (14 point) and we request that manuscripts employ Doulos SIL (the Unicode version of the old SIL Doulos font, available free from SIL) for phonetic transcriptions. If it is necessary to use any other phonetic or non-roman font, please use a Unicode font, and include the font with the submission.

Example sentences

Number all example sentences consecutively. When the matching of morphemes and meanings is not obvious, give a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss as well as an idiomatic translation. All interlinear glosses should be aligned in tables or by using single tabs between items, rather than multiple spaces. Use small caps (with no capitalization within the small caps) for glossing grammatical elements.  Please provide a chart explaining all abbreviations. If possible, base your examples on a particular text, and include the full text as an appendix to the article. (Even if you don't base a majority of your examples on a particular text, please include one short annotated text with any article which discusses some grammatical phenomenon.) (See Lehmann, Christian 2004, “Interlinear morphemic glossing.” In Booij, Geert et al. (eds.), Morphology. Vol. II, 1834-1857. Berlin & New York: W. de Gruyter, or the Leipzig Glossing Conventions for suggestions on proper glossing.)

Punctuation and typefaces

Use single quotes for glosses within the text and in numbered examples. Use double quotes for quotations and titles of articles. Punctuation should be placed outside of the quotes unless it is part of the quoted or glossed material: ka121‘pillar’, ka53‘hoe’, ka342‘hinder’; but qha21mu33 ‘how high?’.  Use directional, or “smart”, quotation marks.

Periods, commas, semi-colons, and colons should be followed by only one space. Footnote references should follow punctuation.

If you use brackets, use square brackets [ ] for phonetic material, and slashes / / for phonemic material.

Italic face is used for linguistic citations (single letters, words, phrases) which occur in the body of the text (and are not within brackets or slashes) and for titles of books and journals. Please also italicize any following punctuation (like this). Boldface is used for emphasis. Small caps (with no capitalization within the small caps) are used to label grammatical elements in interlinear glosses.

Tables and figures

All tables and figures should be numbered and labeled below the table in the following form:
Table 1. Comparison of Chinese and Kam-Tai forms.

References

We follow the Language style, for which you may use EndNote's automatic formatting.

Brief citations within the text should be in the form Haudricourt (1953) or Weidert 1987 (the former is when the name refers to the person, and the latter when only the particular publication is being referred to). All references should be fully cited at the end of the article, with authors arranged alphabetically by surname, and items for each author arranged chronologically (earliest to latest). Multiple entries for a given year should be further labelled a, b, c, etc. Only items actually cited in the article should be listed in the references.

Use the full name of the author, unless he or she regularly uses initials. Co-authors should be listed with given name first, with the exception of Chinese and Japanese authors, who are generally listed with surname first (no comma separates surname from given name in these cases). (For Thai authors, use the order the author prefers to be alphabetized under, e.g. Weera Ostapirat, but Hongladarom, Krisadawan.)

For works in languages other than English, please give the title in promanization and an English translation; only use non-roman scripts when necessary for disambiguation. Use minimal capitalization for article names, and full capitalization for book and journal titles.

Refer to the following as a guide for punctuation and format:

Benedict, Paul K. 1972. Sino-Tibetan: A Conspectus. Contributing editor: James A. Matisoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Benedict, Paul K. 1992. Proto-Sino-Tibetan reconstruction: arguments. Paper presented at the 25th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, U.C. Berkeley, October 14-18th, 1992.

Driem, George van. 1987. A Grammar of Limbu. (Mouton Grammar Library, 4.) Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.

French, Walter T. 1983. Northern Naga: A Tibeto-Burman Mesolanguage. 2 vols. New York: City University of New York PhD dissertation.

Henderson, Eug�nie J. A. 1986. Some hitherto unpublished material on Northern (Megyaw) Hpun. In John McCoy and Timothy Light (eds.), Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Studies, 101-134. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Lehman, F. K. 1979. Etymological speculations on some Chin words. LTBA 4.2:1-6.

Michailovsky, Boyd & Martine Mazaudon. 1973. Notes on the Hayu language. Kailash 1(2). 135-152.

Sun, Jackson T-S. 1993. A Historical-Comparative Study of the Tani (Mirish) Branch in Tibeto-Burman.Berkeley: University of California PhD dissertation.

Xu Lin (xu) & Zhao Yansun (Z). 1984. Baiyu Jianzhi (B)* (A Brief Description of the Bai Language). Beijing: Nationalities Press.

(*Chinese characters are to be used in titles only when necessary for disambiguation.)