Review-Wutun

I once heard a presentation in which the speaker gave atypology of 'mixed languages', the final type of which was 'languages that should not be', and the only example of this type given was Wutun. This evaluation was based on confusing details about Wutun that had, to that time,appeared in scholarly publications. Based on the descriptions found in such publications as Chen (1982,1988, 1989), Li (1984, 1986), Wurm (1995), and especiallythe analysis presented by Lee-Smith and Wurm (1996), Wutun appeared to be a fairly random mixture of Tibetan, Chinese, and Mongolian elements. Randomness in linguistic structure, of course, should not be, and a random mixture of elements from three source languages would be unusual indeed.