Sichuan and abutting areas are home to a good number of little-explored Sino-Tibetan languages and dialects, including many Tibetan varieties, Ngwi (Yi) languages, and over a dozen little-studied languages tentatively classified under a putative 'Qiangic' branch. Manyof the latter group contain certain interesting properties, including large segmental inventories, uncommon tonality systems, topography-based spatial deixis, prohibitive marking with dental-stop-onset prefixes, nominal classification via existential verbs, and grammatical structure governed by animacy hierarchy. To what extent do these features reflect deeply entrenched borrowings? To what extent do they constitute retentions?

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