It is commonly proposed in Chinese scholarship that the Naic languages are Lolo-Burmese languages: for instance, Ziwo Lama (2012) classifies Naxi as part of a "Naxish" branch of Loloish.
However, as early as 1975, Sino-Tibetan linguist David Bradley pointed out that Naxi does not partake in the shared innovations that define Loloish [REF].