The Inclusive-Exclusive Distinction in Spoken and Written Tibetan
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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. -
Tibetan Vwa 'Fox' and the Sound Change Tibeto
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area Volume 29.2 — October 2006 TIBETAN VWA ‘FOX’ AND THE SOUND CHANGE TIBETO-BURMAN *WA > TIBETAN O Nathan W. Hill Harvard University Paul Benedict (1972: 34) proposed that Tibeto-Burman medial *-wa- regularly leads to -o- in Old Tibetan, but that initial *wa did not undergo this change. Because Old Tibetan has no initial w-, and several genuine words have the rhyme -wa, this proposal cannot be accepted. In particular, the intial of the Old Tibetan word vwa ‘fox’ is v- and not w-. འ Keywords: Old Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, phonology. 1. INTRODUCTION The Tibetan word vwa ‘fox’ has received a certain amount of attention for being an exception to the theory that Tibeto-Burman *wa yields o in Tibetan1. The first formulation of this sound law known to me is Laufer’s statement “Das Barmanische besitzt nämlich häufig die Verbindung w+a, der ein tibetisches [sic] o oder u entspricht [Burmese namely frequently has the combination w+a, which corresponds to a Tibetan o or u]” (Laufer 1898/1899: part III, 224; 1976: 120). Laufer’s generalization was based in turn upon cognate sets assembled by Bernard Houghton (1898). Concerning this sound change, in his 1972 monograph, Paul Benedict writes: “Tibetan has initial w- only in the words wa ‘gutter’, wa ‘fox’ and 1 Here I follow the Wylie system of Tibetan transliteration with the exception that the letter (erroneously called a-chung by some) is written in the Chinese fashion འ as <v> rather than the confusing <’>. On the value of Written Tibetan v as [ɣ] cf. -
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. -
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. -
Herever Possible
Published by Department of Information and International Relations (DIIR) Central Tibetan Administration Dharamshala-176215 H.P. India Email: [email protected] www.tibet.net Copyright © DIIR 2018 First edition: October 2018 1000 copies ISBN-978-93-82205-12-8 Design & Layout: Kunga Phuntsok / DIIR Printed at New Delhi: Norbu Graphics CONTENTS Foreword------------------------------------------------------------------1 Chapter One: Burning Tibet: Self-immolation Protests in Tibet---------------------5 Chapter Two: The Historical Status of Tibet-------------------------------------------37 Chapter Three: Human Rights Situation in Tibet--------------------------------------69 Chapter Four: Cultural Genocide in Tibet--------------------------------------------107 Chapter Five: The Tibetan Plateau and its Deteriorating Environment---------135 Chapter Six: The True Nature of Economic Development in Tibet-------------159 Chapter Seven: China’s Urbanization in Tibet-----------------------------------------183 Chapter Eight: China’s Master Plan for Tibet: Rule by Reincarnation-------------197 Chapter Nine: Middle Way Approach: The Way Forward--------------------------225 FOREWORD For Tibetans, information is a precious commodity. Severe restric- tions on expression accompanied by a relentless disinformation campaign engenders facts, knowledge and truth to become priceless. This has long been the case with Tibet. At the time of the publication of this report, Tibet has been fully oc- cupied by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for just five months shy of sixty years. As China has sought to develop Tibet in certain ways, largely economically and in Chinese regions, its obsessive re- strictions on the flow of information have only grown more intense. Meanwhile, the PRC has ready answers to fill the gaps created by its information constraints, whether on medieval history or current growth trends. These government versions of the facts are backed ever more fiercely as the nation’s economic and military power grows. -
A Grammar of Bao'an Tu, a Mongolic Language Of
A GRAMMAR OF BAO’AN TU, A MONGOLIC LANGUAGE OF NORTHWEST CHINA by Robert Wayne Fried June 1, 2010 A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Buffalo, State University of New York in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics UMI Number: 3407976 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI 3407976 Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 Copyright by Robert Wayne Fried 2010 ii Acknowledgements I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Matthew Dryer for his guidance and for his detailed comments on numerous drafts of this dissertation. I would also like to thank my committee members, Karin Michelson and Robert VanValin, Jr., for their patience, flexibility, and helpful feedback. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of the linguistics department at the University at Buffalo. I have benefited in ways too numerous to recount from my interactions with the UB linguistics faculty and with my fellow graduate students. I am also grateful for the tireless help of Carole Orsolitz, Jodi Reiner, and Sharon Sell, without whose help I could not have successfully navigated a study program spanning nine years and multiple international locations. -
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. -
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. -
ICLDC Handout
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarSpace at University of Hawai'i at Manoa 3rd ICLDC March 2nd, 2013 The impact of dialectal variation on documentation and conservation work: The view from Amdo Tibetan Zoe Tribur University of Oregon Summary For researchers interested in exploring questions of typology and linguistic universals, documentation of dialects provides priceless data, but such problems as what features constitute a dialect and who speaks it complicate the task of identifying and collecting data, especially for dialects that are low prestige or are only spoken by diglossic speakers. The field researcher must be alert to the possible existence of such forms and be aware of the issues associated with them. For the conservationist, the linguist’s instinct is to argue that dialects should be preserved as part of the community’s heritage, as well as having value in their own right, but individuals struggling to reverse language shift may feel that the reduction of diversity is a necessary step toward ensuring the survival of the language for future generations. However, the selection of a “standard” form can be problematic, sometimes resulting in conflict within the community or, more seriously, causing some speakers to be excluded from conservation efforts altogether. It behooves the field linguist to be aware of community attitudes toward diversity and to try to understand how diversity impacts language use within the community. Two varieties of Amdo Tibetan: Gro.Tshang and mGo.Log Spoken by an estimated 1.5 million people, Amdo Tibetan does not fit the profile of a typical endangered language. -
China (Includes Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau) 2018 Human Rights Report
CHINA (INCLUDES TIBET, HONG KONG, AND MACAU) 2018 HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the paramount authority. CCP members hold almost all top government and security apparatus positions. Ultimate authority rests with the CCP Central Committee’s 25-member Political Bureau (Politburo) and its seven-member Standing Committee. Xi Jinping continued to hold the three most powerful positions as CCP general secretary, state president, and chairman of the Central Military Commission. Civilian authorities maintained control of security forces. During the year the government significantly intensified its campaign of mass detention of members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang). Authorities were reported to have arbitrarily detained 800,000 to possibly more than two million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslims in internment camps designed to erase religious and ethnic identities. Government officials claimed the camps were needed to combat terrorism, separatism, and extremism. International media, human rights organizations, and former detainees reported security officials in the camps abused, tortured, and killed some detainees. Human rights issues included arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government; forced disappearances by the government; torture by the government; arbitrary detention by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison and detention conditions; political prisoners; -
Sumi Tone: a Phonological and Phonetic Description of a Tibeto-Burman Language of Nagaland
Sumi tone: a phonological and phonetic description of a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland Amos Benjamin Teo Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Masters by Research (by Thesis Only) December 2009 School of Languages and Linguistics The University of Melbourne Abstract Previous research on Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the extreme northeast of India, has found it to have three lexical tones. However, the few phonological studies of Sumi have focused mainly on its segmental phonology and have failed to provide any substantial account of the tone system. This thesis addresses the issue by providing the first comprehensive description of tone in this language. In addition to confirming three contrastive tones, this study also presents the first acoustic phonetic analysis of Sumi, looking at the phonetic realisation of these tones and the effects of segmental perturbations on tone realisation. The first autosegmental representation of Sumi tone is offered, allowing us to account for tonal phenomena such as the assignment of surface tones to prefixes that appear to be lexically unspecified for tone. Finally, this investigation presents the first account of morphologically conditioned tone variation in Sumi, finding regular paradigmatic shifts in the tone on verb roots that undergo nominalisation. The thesis also offers a cross-linguistic comparison of the tone system of Sumi with that of other closely related Kuki-Chin-Naga languages and some preliminary observations of the historical origin and development of tone in these languages are made. This is accompanied by a typological comparison of these languages with other Tibeto-Burman languages, which shows that although these languages are spoken in what has been termed the ‘Indosphere’, their tone systems are similar to those of languages spoken further to the east in the ‘Sinosphere’. -
Aphonologicalhistoryofamdotib
Bulletin of SOAS, 79, 2 (2016), 347–374. Ⓒ SOAS, University of London, 2016. doi:10.1017/S0041977X16000070 A Phonological History of Amdo Tibetan Rhymes* Xun G (author's draft) Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale INALCO/CNRS/EHESS [email protected] Abstract In this study, a reconstruction is offered for the phonetic evolution of rhymes from Old Tibetan to modern-day Amdo Tibetan dialects. e rel- evant sound changes are proposed, along with their relative chronological precedence and the dating of some speci�c changes. Most interestingly, although Amdo Tibetan, identically to its ancestor Old Tibetan, does not have phonemic length, this study shows that Amdo Tibetan derives from an intermediate stage which, like many other Tibetan dialects, does make the distinction. 1 Introduction Amdo Tibetan, a dialect complex of closely related Tibetan varieties spoken in the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan, is, demographically, linguisti- cally and culturally, one of the most important dialects of Tibetan. e historical phonology of syllable onsets of Amdo Tibetan is well studied (Róna-Tas, 1966; Sun, 1987), notably for its fascinating retentions and innovations of the complex consonant clusters of Old Tibetan (OT). e rhymes (syllable nuclei and coda) have received less attention. *is work is related to the research strand PPC2 Evolutionary approaches to phonology: New goals and new methods (in diachrony and panchrony) of the Labex EFL (funded by the ANR/CGI). I would like to thank Guillaume Jacques and two anonymous reviewers for various suggestions which resulted in a more readable and better-argued paper. 1 is study aims to reconstruct the phonetic evolution of rhymes from Old Ti- betan1 to modern-day Amdo Tibetan dialects.