DOCSLIB.ORG

Evidentiality in Tibetic Scott Delancey 1 Introduction the Unusual And

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Evidentiality in Tibetic Scott Delancey 1 Introduction the Unusual And Evidentiality in Tibetic Scott DeLancey 1 Introduction The unusual and unusually prominent grammatical expression of epistemic status and information source in Tibetic languages, especially Lhasa Tibetan,1 has played a prominent role in the study of evidentiality since that category was brought to the attention of the general linguistic public in the early 1980’s. Work by many scholars over the past two decades has produced a substantial body of more deeply-informed research on Lhasa and other Tibetic languages, only a small part of which I will be able to refer to here (see also DeLancey to appear). In this chapter I will mostly discuss Lhasa data, but concentrate on the ways that this system is typical of the pan-Tibetic phenomenon. The system will be presented inductively, in terms of grammatical categories in Tibetic languages, rather than deductively, in terms derived from theoretical claims or typological generalizations about a cross-linguistic category of evidentiality. 1 The terms “Standard” and “Lhasa” Tibetan are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are not exactly the same thing. The early publications on the topic (Goldstein and Nornang 1970, Jin 1979, Chang and Chang 1984, DeLancey 1985, 1986) were based on work with educated speakers from Lhasa, and those works and the data in this paper represent the Lhasa dialect, not “Standard Tibetan”. 2 The first known Tibetic language is Old Tibetan, the language of the Tibetan Empire, recorded in manuscripts from the 7th century CE. In scholarly as well as general use, ‘Tibetan’ is often applied to all descendants of this language, as well as to the written standard which developed from it. Since the modern descendants of OT are fully as divergent as, say, the Romance languages, it is preferable to distinguish them in our terminology; following Tournadre (2014), I will refer to the family as Tibetic, and to the individual languages as, e.g., Amdo rather than ‘Amdo Tibetan’. ‘Tibetan’ is appropriate in reference to varieties shared across the Tibetan cultural sphere, i.e. Classical Tibetan, Written Tibetan, Standard Tibetan. Evidentiality is not a feature of Classical Tibetan grammar. All the modern languages have some grammaticalized evidential constructions, and almost all (with the exception of Balti, see Bielmeier 2000) have a complicated system in which typical evidential categories such as inferential interact with the very unusual system of grammaticalized knowledge category which will be discussed below. But forms in these systems are often not cognate, and combined with the lack of evidence for evidentiality in older stages of the written language, this tells us that the modern systems represent a recent development, so that its prevalence across the family represents horizontal spread rather than common inheritance. 3 2 Evidentiality in Lhasa Tibetan Evidential phenomena in Lhasa (Central Tibetic) had already been noted in the literature before the concept and the associated term became a topic of wide interest in the 1980’s (Goldstein and Nornang 1970, Goldstein 1973, Jin 1979). From the mid 90’s (Tournadre 1996) we have had more and better primary descriptions, including a growing body of work on other Tibetic languages. 2.1 Previous work The notoriety of Tibetic in evidentiality studies is due to an unusual grammatical interaction with person. In almost all Tibetic languages there is a set of forms which typically occur only with 1st person statements and 2nd person questions; following current usage I will call these Egophoric verb forms (glossed EGO). In the following exchange, from a folktale, we see the Egophoric Imperfective verb ending -gi.yod used in a 2nd person question in (1a), and a 1st person statement in (1b):2 (1a) rang nam.rgyun lto.byad ga.re za-gi.yod=zer you ordinarily food what eat-IMPF.EGO=QUOT ‘‘What food do you usually eat?’ [he] said’ 2 Examples are presented in standard Tibetan orthography, transliterated according to the Wylie system. Hyphens represent relevant morpheme breaks. Periods represent morpheme breaks in compounds, and in the composite verb endings described in §2.3. 4 (b) tsa zas chu ‘thung byas-kyi.yod grass ate water drink do-IMPF.EGO ‘Eat grass, drink water is what I do.’ (Rabbit Eats the Baby) In quotative complements these forms signal coreference of the subjects of the complement and main clause, and this was the basis for Hale’s (1980) terms CONJUNCT and DISJUNCT for a similar phenomenon in Newar. In earlier work (DeLancey 1985, 1992) I adopted these labels, but, as this terminology grossly oversimplifies the fundamental nature of the Tibetic phenomenon (and is not apt even for Newar, see Hargreaves to appear), it was not universally popular with Tibetanists. Most scholars now use Tournadre’s (1996) term EGOPHORIC for the 1st-person-associated category which I had called ‘conjunct’. (For a more detailed history of the concept see Hargreaves 2005, Tournadre 2008). 2.2 The structure of information in Tibetic The verbal systems of modern Tibetic languages grammatically mark a distinction among three kinds of knowledge. The characteristic which has made Tibetic languages so celebrated in the world of evidential studies is a set of forms which mark a statement as representing certain kinds of personal knowledge. Following widespread current practice we may call these forms Egophoric, and the category which they express, personal knowledge. (I will use capitalized labels for specific grammatical constructions, and a distinct set of labels, uncapitalized, for the functional categories which they express). 5 Tibetic languages are often described in terms of a two-way distinction between Egophoric and other forms, but the latter can be further subdivided. A set of what I will call Factual forms express a category of assumed knowledge, i.e. assertions which are presented as not requiring any kind of evidential support. Finally, in perfective aspect, assertions which are presented as requiring evidential support are marked for Evidential status, i.e. as based on direct observation of the asserted fact or on inference from secondary evidence. This distinction has not been much discussed outside the Tibetic literature, and there is no standard or consensus terminology for it. Hein (2001: 35) speaks of ‘focus on speaker’s involvement’, ‘focus on speaker’s unspecified knowledge’, and ‘focus on speaker’s perception’; Zeisler (2004) of ‘personal self-evident’, ‘generic’, and ‘immediate perception’, DeLancey (2012) of personal, generic, and immediate forms, Hill (2013) of Personal, Factual, and Testimonial categories, Tournadre and LaPolla (2014) of Egophoric, Factual, and Sensory. The different labels emphasize different aspects of the same overall idea, distinguishing information which the speaker is the only possible source for, information which the speaker feels no need to provide any source for, and information which the speaker takes responsibility as the source for. Here I want to carefully distinguish between grammatical forms and the cognitive categories which they express. I will refer to the latter as personal, assumed, and contingent knowledge, and to the forms which express them in Tibetic languages as Egophoric, Factual, and Evidential (Direct vs. Inferential). 6 The distinction is encoded in the copular system, and many of the verbal endings which encode it are based on copulas and derive their evidential force from them. Consider the Lhasa examples: (2) nga-‘i nang bod-la yod 1sg-GEN home Tibet-LOC exist.PERSONAL ‘My home is in Tibet.’ (3) bod-la g.yag yog.red Tibet-LOC yak exist.FACTUAL ‘There are yaks in Tibet.’ (4) bod-la moṭa mang.po ‘dug Tibet-LOC auto many exist.DIRECT ‘There are lots of cars in Tibet.’ Examples like (2), with the Egophoric Existential copula yod, are often described as expressing personal knowledge, but are perhaps better thought of as self-representation. This statement, for example, does not necessarily describe any objectively verifiable fact, such as the existence of an ancestral homestead somewhere in Tibet; it simply expresses the speaker’s personal view of her place in the world. In (3), the use of the Factual form yog-red (sometimes written as yod-pa red) suggests that this statement is based on general knowledge, rather than personal experience or direct perception. The speaker 7 feels no need to justify the claim, and asks the addressee to simply take it as given. As we will see below (§4.1), statements in this form do not necessarily represent generic knowledge, but this is the appropriate form for statements which do. In (3), the Direct Evidential ‘dug indicates that the statement is based purely on direct perception. It might be said, for example, by a Tibetan who has lived abroad for many years, and returns for a visit to discover that nowadays one sees many cars, which were much less common in the old days. A speaker who had read or heard this information from others prior to visiting the country could instead use yog-red, indicating that this is a generally-known fact, but such a speaker could also use ‘dug as a way of expressing an acute awareness of how much things have changed. In either case the choice of ‘dug indicates that the statement expresses an impression based on immediate perception, rather than on any other basis. 2.3 The Lhasa verbal system The written language includes a small paradigm of opaque verb inflections which distinguish four stems, traditionally labeled Present, Past, Future and Imperative. In Classical Tibetan these constitute finite verb forms. The Classical system does not express evidential or egophoric categories. In the modern languages the verb usually requires further marking through innovative paradigms of suffixes and auxiliaries in order to function as finite, and this is where evidential categories are marked. Some Tibetic languages have finite forms which are simple nominalizations, but in all the largest part of the verb paradigm consists of endings of two kinds: erstwhile serial verbs and nominalized clause + copula constructions (DeLancey 2011).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Hackathon for Classical Tibetan
    A Hackathon for Classical Tibetan Orna Almogi1, Lena Dankin2*, Nachum Dershowitz2,3, Lior Wolf2 1Universität Hamburg, Germany 2Tel Aviv University, Israel 3Institut d’Études Avancées de Paris, France *Corresponding author: Lena Dankin, [email protected] Abstract We describe the course of a hackathon dedicated to the development of linguistic tools for Tibetan Buddhist studies. Over a period of five days, a group of seventeen scholars, scientists, and students developed and compared algorithms for intertextual alignment and text classification, along with some basic language tools, including a stemmer and word segmenter. Keywords Tibetan; Buddhist studies; hackathon; stemming; segmentation; intertextual alignment; text classification. I INTRODUCTION In February 2016, a group of four Tibetologists (from the University of Hamburg), one digital humanities scholar (from Europe), and twelve computer scientists (from Israel and Europe) got together in Kibbutz Lotan in the Arava region of Israel with the stated goal of developing algorithmic methods for advancing Tibetan Buddhist textual studies. Participants were either recruited by the organizers or responded to an announcement on several mailing lists. See Figure 1. Most of the computer scientists had background in machine learning, and a few of them also had experience with natural language processing (NLP) research, but without any prior experience with Tibetan texts. The computer scientist organizers were quite familiar with programming workshops and contests and thought that the challenges presented by Tibetan texts would pose an ideal opportunity to explore the hackathon format. The hackathon is a short and intense event where computer scientists collaborate to develop software. For that purpose, it was essential to recruit as many software developers as possible.
    [Show full text]
  • Vocabulary of Shingnyag Tibetan: a Dialect of Amdo Tibetan Spoken in Lhagang, Khams Minyag
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Prometheus-Academic Collections Asian and African Languages and Linguistics No.11, 2017 Vocabulary of Shingnyag Tibetan: A Dialect of Amdo Tibetan Spoken in Lhagang, Khams Minyag Suzuki, Hiroyuki IKOS, Universitetet i Oslo / National Museum of Ethnology Sonam Wangmo IKOS, Universitetet i Oslo Lhagang Town, located in Kangding Municipality, Ganzi Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China, is inhabited by many Tibetan pastoralists speaking varieties which are similar to Amdo Tibetan even though it is located at the Minyag Rabgang region of Khams, based on the Tibetan traditional geography. Among the multiple varieties spoken by inhabitants living in Lhagang Town, the Shingyag dialect is spoken in the south-western part of the town. It is somewhat different from other Amdo varieties spoken in Lhagang Town in the phonetic and phonological aspects. This article provides a word list with ca. 1500 words of Shingnyag Tibetan. Keywords: Amdo Tibetan, Minyag Rabgang, dialectology, migration pattern 1. Introduction 2. Phonological overview of Shingnyag Tibetan 3. Principal phonological features of Shingnyag Tibetan 1. Introduction This article aims to provide a word list (including ca. 1500 entries) with a phonological sketch of Shingnyag Tibetan, spoken in Xiya [Shing-nyag]1 Hamlet, located in the south-western part of Tagong [lHa-sgang] Town (henceforth Lhagang Town), Kangding [Dar-mdo] Municipality, Ganzi [dKar-mdzes] Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China (see Figure 1). Lhagang Town is in the easternmost part of Khams based on the traditional Tibetan geography, however, it is inhabited by many Tibetans whose mother tongue is Amdo Tibetan.2 Referring to Qu and Jin (1981), we can see that it is already known that Amdo-speaking Tibetans live in Suzuki, Hiroyuki and Sonam Wangmo.
    [Show full text]
  • Rethinking Classical Tibetan Pedagogy the Importance of Applying Multidisciplinary Research to Tibetan As a Second Language Education (TSL) Abstract
    Contact the author Rethinking Classical Tibetan Pedagogy The Importance of Applying Multidisciplinary Research to Tibetan as a Second Language Education (TSL) Abstract The following paper explores classical Tibetan language pedagogy as it’s generally practiced in the West, while suggesting a radical reinterpretation to that approach by providing alternatives based on the consensus of multidisciplinary research from second language education and linguistics, among others. Especial attention is paid to the importance of production processes (speaking and writing), phonology (listening and speaking), and environment (language exposure) and their roles in language learning contexts; these concerns lead us to the conclusion that the spoken language ought to be the basis for the study of sophisticated literature, even in a classical language context. We then turn toward the specific issues of Tibetan language literacy: the language diglossia; its history; why “classical” Tibetan is not a classic example of a classical language; and, briefly, how to overcome these obstacles in a Tibetan as a Second Language (TSL) educational context. Table of Contents Abstract Table of Contents 1. Grammar­Translation: The Current Model 2. Issues in Second Language Learning & Literacy (a) Production (b) Phonology (c) Environment (d) A Summary of Second Language Learning Issues 3. The Tibetan Diglossia and Its Effects on Second Language Learning (a) Diglossia: A Brief History and Its Modern Context (b) The Diglossia in Tibetan Language Education (c) The Classical Tibetan Misnomer (d) Tibetan Language Studies in Academia (e) Overcoming Language Diglossia for TSL 4. Conclusion 1 Rethinking Classical Tibetan Pedagogy The Importance of Applying Multidisciplinary Research to Tibetan as a Second Language Education (TSL)1 It’s safe to say that in the Tibetan language learning world, much ado is made about textual translation.
    [Show full text]
  • Re-Inventing Bcud Len As Vitalising Dietary Supplements in Contemporary Tibetan Medicine
    Asian Medicine 7 (2012) 196–224 brill.com/asme Treating Essence with Essence: Re-inventing bcud len as Vitalising Dietary Supplements in Contemporary Tibetan Medicine Barbara Gerke Abstract Bcud len (pronounced chulen) or ‘essence extraction’ practices have been described in classical Tibetan medical and religious texts as an element of rejuvenation therapies and preventive anti- ageing methods. These practices include the ingestion ofbcud len pills taken as a dietary supple- ment or as a substitute for food during meditation and fasting retreats. This paper1 discusses how ideas of bcud len are interpreted by Men-Tsee-Khang-trained Tibetan doctors in India as ‘health tonics’ and ‘dietary supplements.’ What underlies contemporary Tibetan medical ideas of an ‘essence extraction’ in relation to Tibetan rejuvenation therapies and pharmacological manufac- turing practices of such ‘tonics’? I argue that not all bcud len are ‘essence extractions’ and that what constitutes an ‘essence’ receives various interpretations by contemporary Tibetan doctors. Ethnographic examples presented are based on postdoctoral fieldwork in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India (2009–2010). Keywords Dietary supplements, essence extraction, bcud len, Tibetan medicine, Tibetan pharmacology, Sorig products Introduction The prolongation of life has occupied people’s thoughts in a multitude of dif- ferent cultural contexts. From myths and folk tales on the ‘fountain of youth’ to physiological-medical, alchemical, ritual and meditative long-life practices, longevity has been of vital concern in many societies. It has also been an important aspect of Asian medical systems, recently especially in the context of the pharmaceutical manufacturing of rejuvenating and aphrodisiac prod- ucts, largely marketed as dietary supplements.
    [Show full text]
  • Review of Evidential Systems of Tibetan Languages
    Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2017 Review of Lauren Gawne Nathan W. Hill (eds.). 2016. Evidential systems of Tibetan languages. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 40(2), 285–303 Widmer, Manuel DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.00002.wid Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-168681 Journal Article Accepted Version Originally published at: Widmer, Manuel (2017). Review of Lauren Gawne Nathan W. Hill (eds.). 2016. Evidential systems of Tibetan languages. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 40(2), 285–303. Linguistics of the Tibeto- Burman Area, 40(2):285-303. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.00002.wid Review of Evidential systems of Tibetan languages Gawne, Lauren & Nathan W. Hill (eds.). 2016. Evidential systems of Tibetan languages. de Gruyter: Berlin. vi + 472 pp. ISBN 978-3-11-047374-2 Reviewed by Manuel Widmer 1 Tibetan evidentiality systems and their relevance for the typology of evidentiality The evidentiality1 systems of Tibetan languages rank among the most complex in the world. According to Tournadre & Dorje (2003: 110), the evidentiality systeM of Lhasa Tibetan (LT) distinguishes no less than four “evidential Moods”: (i) egophoric, (ii) testiMonial, (iii) inferential, and (iv) assertive. If one also takes into account the hearsay Marker, which is cOMMonly considered as an evidential category in typological survey studies (e.g. Aikhenvald 2004; Hengeveld & Dall’Aglio Hattnher 2015; inter alia), LT displays a five-fold evidential distinction. The LT systeM, however, is clearly not the Most cOMplex of its kind within the Tibetan linguistic area.
    [Show full text]
  • THE SECURITISATION of TIBETAN BUDDHISM in COMMUNIST CHINA Abstract
    ПОЛИТИКОЛОГИЈА РЕЛИГИЈЕ бр. 2/2012 год VI • POLITICS AND RELIGION • POLITOLOGIE DES RELIGIONS • Nº 2/2012 Vol. VI ___________________________________________________________________________ Tsering Topgyal 1 Прегледни рад Royal Holloway University of London UDK: 243.4:323(510)”1949/...” United Kingdom THE SECURITISATION OF TIBETAN BUDDHISM IN COMMUNIST CHINA Abstract This article examines the troubled relationship between Tibetan Buddhism and the Chinese state since 1949. In the history of this relationship, a cyclical pattern of Chinese attempts, both violently assimilative and subtly corrosive, to control Tibetan Buddhism and a multifaceted Tibetan resistance to defend their religious heritage, will be revealed. This article will develop a security-based logic for that cyclical dynamic. For these purposes, a two-level analytical framework will be applied. First, the framework of the insecurity dilemma will be used to draw the broad outlines of the historical cycles of repression and resistance. However, the insecurity dilemma does not look inside the concept of security and it is not helpful to establish how Tibetan Buddhism became a security issue in the first place and continues to retain that status. The theory of securitisation is best suited to perform this analytical task. As such, the cycles of Chinese repression and Tibetan resistance fundamentally originate from the incessant securitisation of Tibetan Buddhism by the Chinese state and its apparatchiks. The paper also considers the why, how, and who of this securitisation, setting the stage for a future research project taking up the analytical effort to study the why, how and who of a potential desecuritisation of all things Tibetan, including Tibetan Buddhism, and its benefits for resolving the protracted Sino- Tibetan conflict.
    [Show full text]
  • Day 1: Handouts (Tibet)
    Handout One: Introducing Tibet [With Country Names] First, let’s look at this world map. Find the United States. Now let’s find China! Tibet is a region within China. This is a map of Tibet’s six prefectures and its capital city, Lhasa. On the map of China below, find Tibet. What color is Tibet on this map? Did you find it? [Teacher’s Key] Handout One: Introducing Tibet [Without Country Names] First, let’s look at this world map. Find the United States. Now let’s find China! Hint: It’s light green! Tibet is a region within China. This is a map of Tibet’s six prefectures and its capital city, Lhasa. On the map of China below, find Tibet. What color is Tibet on this map? Did you find it? [Teacher’s Key] Handout Two: Quick Facts about Tibet and the Tibet Autonomous Region ★ Tibet is historically made up of three provinces of Amdo, Kham and U-Tsang. It was split up by the People’s Republic of China. The main Tibetan region now is the Tibet Autonomous Region. ★ The Tibet Autonomous Region, is a province within the People’s Republic of China. ★ Before 1950, Tibet was an independent country, but China invaded the country and took over. ★ The capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region is Lhasa. ★ The official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region is Lhasa Tibetan. ○ In schools, children are also taught Mandarin Chinese. ★ The main religion among the Tibetan people is Tibetan Buddhism. ★ In 1959, the Dalai Lama and 80,000 Tibetans fled to India for their safety.
    [Show full text]
  • A Guide to the Syuba (Kagate) Language Documentation Corpus
    Vol. 12 (2018), pp. 204–234 http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24768 Revised Version Received: 17 Jan 2018 A Guide to the Syuba (Kagate) Language Documentation Corpus Lauren Gawne SOAS University of London La Trobe University This article provides an overview of the collection “Kagate (Syuba)”, archived with both the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) and the Endangered Language Archive (ELAR). It pro- vides an overview of the materials that have been archived, as well as details of the workflow, conventions used, and structure of the collection. It also provides context for the content of the collection, including an overview of the language context, and some of the motivations behind the documentation project. This article thus provides an entry point to the collection. The future plans for the collection – from the perspectives of both the researcher and Syuba speakers – are also outlined, but with the overwhelming majority of items in the collection available to others, it is hoped that this article will encourage use of the materials by other researchers. 1. Introduction Language documentation involves the development of corpora of materials from which descriptions of grammar and language use can be developed, alongside other uses of the materials by both speakers of the language and researchers. Himmelmann (1998) argues that language documentation and description are two distinct, but interrelated, activities. In reality, the majority of basic linguistic descrip- tion based on primary data is undertaken by the same person who collected the data. Very little of this descriptive work makes clear the nature of the data on which it is built; in a survey of 50 published grammars and 50 PhD dissertations, Gawne et al.
    [Show full text]
  • The Spiti Valley Recovering the Past & Exploring the Present OXFORD
    The Spiti Valley Recovering the Past & Exploring the Present Wolfson College 6 t h -7 t h May, 2016 OXFORD Welcome I am pleased to welcome you to the first International Conference on Spiti, which is being held at the Leonard Wolfson Auditorium on May 6 th and 7 th , 2016. The Spiti Valley is a remote Buddhist enclave in the Indian Himalayas. It is situated on the borders of the Tibetan world with which it shares strong cultural and historical ties. Often under-represented on both domestic and international levels, scholarly research on this subject – all disciplines taken together – has significantly increased over the past decade. The conference aims at bringing together researchers currently engaged in a dialogue with past and present issues pertaining to Spitian culture and society in all its aspects. It is designed to encourage interdisciplinary exchanges in order to explore new avenues and pave the way for future research. There are seven different panels that address the theme of this year’s conference, The Spiti Valley : Recovering the Past and Exploring the Present , from a variety of different disciplinary perspectives including, archaeology, history, linguistics, anthropology, architecture, and art conservation. I look forward to the exchange of ideas and intellectual debates that will develop over these two days. On this year’s edition, we are very pleased to have Professor Deborah Klimburg-Salter from the universities of Vienna and Harvard as our keynote speaker. Professor Klimburg-Salter will give us a keynote lecture entitled Through the black light - new technology opens a window on the 10th century .
    [Show full text]
  • Sino-Tibetan Languages 393
    Sino-Tibetan Languages 393 Gair J W (1998). Studies in South Asian linguistics: Sinhala Government Press. [Reprinted Sri Lanka Sahitya and other South Asian languages. Oxford: Oxford Uni- Mandalaya, Colombo: 1962.] versity Press. Karunatillake W S (1992). An introduction to spoken Sin- Gair J W & Karunatillake W S (1974). Literary Sinhala. hala. Colombo: Gunasena. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University South Asia Program. Karunatillake W S (2001). Historical phonology of Sinha- Gair J W & Karunatillake W S (1976). Literary Sinhala lese: from old Indo-Aryan to the 14th century AD. inflected forms: a synopsis with a transliteration guide to Colombo: S. Godage and Brothers. Sinhala script. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University South Asia Macdougall B G (1979). Sinhala: basic course. Program. Washington D.C.: Foreign Service Institute, Department Gair J W & Paolillo J C (1997). Sinhala (Languages of the of State. world/materials 34). Mu¨ nchen: Lincom. Matzel K & Jayawardena-Moser P (2001). Singhalesisch: Gair J W, Karunatillake W S & Paolillo J C (1987). Read- Eine Einfu¨ hrung. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ings in colloquial Sinhala. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Reynolds C H B (ed.) (1970). An anthology of Sinhalese South Asia Program. literature up to 1815. London: George Allen and Unwin Geiger W (1938). A grammar of the Sinhalese language. (English translations). Colombo: Royal Asiatic Society. Reynolds C H B (ed.) (1987). An anthology of Sinhalese Godakumbura C E (1955). Sinhalese literature. Colombo: literature of the twentieth century. Woodchurch, Kent: Colombo Apothecaries Ltd. Paul Norbury/Unesco (English translations). Gunasekara A M (1891). A grammar of the Sinhalese Reynolds C H B (1995). Sinhalese: an introductory course language.
    [Show full text]
  • A Case Study of Tibetan Family Interaction in Greater New
    152 Style and Standardization: A Case Study of Tibetan Family 1 Interaction in Greater New York Shannon Ward New York University 1. Introduction This paper examines competing processes of stylization and standardization among Tibetan families living in diaspora. Through a case study of conversation between ten- year-old Pangmo (pseudonym), and her father, Tenzin, I demonstrate the ways that correction constitutes an ideal, standard Tibetan code. This standard code marks features of Lhasa Tibetan, a regionally specific prestige variety that is also associated with femininity, as non-normative. Conversation analysis approaches talk (on the level of the utterance rather than the sentence) as a form of contextualized social action which, through its patterning, structures both language and ontology. Using conversation analytic methods, I address the following questions: 1) How do the values associated with sociolinguistic variables change as speakers move throughout a spatially dispersed community? 2) How do multilingual children enact and reformat these styles of speaking throughout the trajectory of their language socialization? Tibetans in exile comprise a population of over 128,000 worldwide. Most live in India, the home of Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, the seat of the Tibetan exile government, and the primary destination for new migrants from Tibet.2 While scholars have noted movements between the Tibetan plateau and South Asia since at least the 18th century (Harris 2013: 27-45), Tibetan exiles espouse a common narrative of departure, dating to the 1959 invasion of Lhasa, and the Dalai Lama’s subsequent establishment of refugee settlements across the subcontinent (Ward 2012). Tibetans tend to migrate along a common route, from Tibet to Nepal to India and then, in some cases, to Europe and North America.
    [Show full text]
  • Two Approaches to Non-‐Sectarianism in Twentieth Century Ti
    Highlighting Unity: Two Approaches to Non-Sectarianism in Twentieth Century Tibet Adam Pearcey In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were attempts – apparently connected with the so-called “Ris med Movement” – to strengthen the scholastic traditions of non- dGe lugs schools in Eastern Tibet. These efforts included the establishment of dozens of scriptural colleges (bshad grwa) throughout the region, and the printing and dissemination of works by the Sa skya scholar, Go rams pa bSod nams seng ge (1429– 1489) and the Nyingma polymath, ’Ju Mi pham (1846–1912). The texts of these two influential philosophers, complete with their notorious criticisms of mainstream dGe lugs pa thought, came to represent the orthodox viewpoint for followers of their respective traditions within many newly founded scriptural colleges. These developments were not without controversy, however, and inspired much debate and polemical exchange. In commenting upon this period and its key figures, some modern scholars have questioned how the strengthening and promotion of individual philosophical traditions could be regarded as non-sectarian. Yet, in spite of this, there is no question that ’Ju Mi pham and the publishers of Go rams pa’s writings continue to be associated with the Ris med ideal. In this paper I will explore the views of two writers who took a different approach to inter-sectarian (and intra-sectarian) discourse during this same period of Tibetan history and who both lived in the mGo log region of Eastern Tibet. These authors aimed less at differentiating and strengthening rival doctrines, and more at highlighting their underlying unity or compatibility.
    [Show full text]