Scott DeLancey (2015)[1] considers the Sal languages, which he refers to as Garo-Bodo-Konyak-Jinghpaw (BKJ), to be part of a wider Central Tibeto-Burman group.
Burling (1983) proposed a grouping of the Bodo–Garo, Konyak (Northern Naga), and Jingpho languages, characterized by several shared lexical innovations, including: Burling (1983) called the proposed group Sal, after the words sal, san and jan for "sun" in various of these languages.
The family is generally presented with three branches (Burling 2003:175, Thurgood 2003:11): Shafer had grouped the first two as his Baric division, and Bradley (1997:20) also combines them as a subbranch.
Bradley (1997) tentatively considers Pyu and Kuki-Chin to be possibly related to Sal, but is uncertain about this.
Matisoff (2012) notes that these Tibeto-Burman branches did not split off neatly in a tree-like fashion, but rather form a linkage.