Sal Bodo–Garo Northern Naga / Konyakian Jingpho–Asakian Himalayish Tibeto-Kanauri Western Himalayish Bodic Lepcha Tamangish Dhimal Newar Kiranti Kham-Magar-Chepang Tangut-Qiang Tangut Qiangic Rgyalrongic Nungic Tujia Lolo-Burmese–Naxi Lolo-Burmese Naxi Karenic Bai Starostin (1996) Sergei Starostin proposed that both the Kiranti languages and Chinese are divergent from a "core" Tibeto-Burman of at least Bodish, Lolo-Burmese, Tamangic, Jinghpaw, Kukish, and Karen (other families were not analysed) in a hypothesis called Sino-Kiranti. The proposal takes two forms: that Sinitic and Kiranti are themselves a valid node or that the two are not demonstrably close, so that Sino-Tibetan has three primary branches: Sino-Tibetan (version 1) Sino-Kiranti Tibeto-Burman Sino-Tibetan (version 2) Chinese Kiranti Tibeto-Burman Van Driem (1997, 2001) Van Driem, like Shafer, rejects a primary split between Chinese and the rest, suggesting that Chinese owes its traditional privileged place in Sino-Tibetan to historical, typological, and cultural, rather than linguistic, criteria. He calls the entire family "Tibeto-Burman", a name he says has historical primacy, but other linguists who reject a privileged position for Chinese nevertheless continue to call the resulting family "Sino-Tibetan". Like Matisoff, van Driem acknowledges that the relationships of the "Kuki–Naga" languages (Kuki, Mizo, Meitei, etc.), both amongst each other and to the other languages of the family, remain unclear. However, rather than placing them in a geographic grouping, as Matisoff does, van Driem leaves them unclassified. He has proposed several hypotheses, including the reclassification of Chinese to a Sino-Bodic subgroup: Tibeto-Burman Western (Baric, Brahmaputran, or Sal): Dhimal, Bodo–Garo, Konyak, Kachin–Luic Eastern Northern (Sino-Bodic) Northwestern (Bodic): Bodish, Kirantic, West Himalayish, Tamangic and several isolates Northeastern (Sinitic) Southern Southwestern: Lolo-Burmese, Karenic Southeastern: Qiangic, Jiarongic a number of other small families and isolates as primary branches (Newar, Nungish, Magaric, etc.) Van Driem points to two main pieces of evidence establishing a special relationship between Sinitic and Bodic and thus placing Chinese within the Tibeto-Burman family. First, there are a number of parallels between the morphology of Old Chinese and the modern Bodic languages. Second, there is an impressive body of lexical cognates between the Chinese and Bodic languages, represented by the Kirantic language Limbu. In response, Matisoff notes that the existence of shared lexical material only serves to establish an absolute relationship between two language families, not their relative relationship to one another. Although some cognate sets presented by van Driem are confined to Chinese and Bodic, many others are found in Sino-Tibetan languages generally and thus do