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Prenasalized Reflex of Old Tibetan PrenasalizedCahiers Reflex de OfLinguistique Old Tibetan Asie <ld-> Orientale 45 (2016) 127-147 127 East Asian Languages and Linguistics www.brill.com/clao Prenasalized reflex of Old Tibetan <ld-> and related clusters in Central Tibetan Xun Gong CRLAO, CNRS/EHESS/INALCO [email protected] Keywords Lhasa Tibetan – Tibetan historical phonology – spontaneous nasalization – prelateralized stops – unnatural sound change 1 Introduction The stream of language change, though not without its eddies and vortices, nevertheless flows in a definite direction: loss. Phonetic material is shorn off and phonological categories merge with one another. To the result of blind loss, some degree of sanity might be brought back by ad hoc processes: com- pounding to avoid homophony (Gilliéron 1918), epenthesis to break up clus- ters, analogy to rationalize morphology. Amid this constant flow of loss and simplification, it is the other direction, material and distinctions appearing ex nihilo, that calls for careful documentation and causal explanation. Tibetan1 is an extreme example of phonological simplification. A syllable in Old Tibetan (OT) like <bsgrigs> ‘set up.PST’ is simplified in Lhasa Tibetan, the 1 Old/Written Tibetan, called Old Tibetan as the distinction is not of use for the purpose of this study, is transcribed according to Guillaume Jacques’s (2012) scheme. Notably, the letter <’> is transcribed as <ɦ> when used as a root letter, and <ⁿ> when preradical. Lhasa Tibetan forms, no matter the source, are (re)transcribed with the vowels of Seattle Tibetanists (cf. Chang & Shefts 1964, Goldstein 1984, Dawson 1980 and other publications of the same authors), i.e. with 12 vowels in six harmonic pairs: /a/ – /ə/, /ɛ/ – /ɪ/, /ɔ/ – /ʊ/, /e/ – /i/, /o/ – /u/, /ø/ – /y/ (in the notation of Chang and Shefts, later continued by Goldstein, a – ə, ɛ – ė, ɔ – ȯ, e – i, o – u, ö – ü). The transcription of consonants follows the original sources, but is (re)transcribed into IPA. Lhasa Tibetan nasal vowels being always bimoraic, the second mora usually changes into a ISSN 0153-3320 (print version) ISSN 1960-6028 (online version) CLAO 2 ©Cahiers koninklijke de Linguistique brill nv, leiden, Asie 2016 | doi Orientale 10.1163/19606028-00452p02 45 (2016) 127-147 128 Gong closest equivalent to a pan-Tibetan koinè, as /_ʈiì/. A notable feature in this simplification, in Lhasa Tibetan, as often is elsewhere, is the existence of initial prenasalized low-register stops like /_ⁿd/, which is in contrast with initial plain low-register stops /_t/, a contrast of various possible natures. In general, prena- salized stops go back to Old Tibetan C₁C₂- clusters with a nasal C₁, and plain low-register stops to those with a non-nasal C₁: OT <md-> gives Lhasa /_ⁿd/, while OT <rd-> gives Lhasa /_t/. Nasality and the lack thereof are respected in the evolution from Old Tibetan to Lhasa Tibetan. However, the Old Tibetan non-nasal clusters <ld-> and <zl-> are simplified to Lhasa Tibetan /_ⁿd/, not /_t/; similarly <ldʑ-> gives /_ⁿdʑ/, not /_tɕ/. Witness some words known to a most cursory student of Lhasa Tibetan, where the pre- nasality on the second syllable surfaces as a nasalized first syllable: /_kããtɛ̃ɛ̃/ [kan˩tɛ̃ɛ̃˩˥] <dga-ldan> ‘joyful’, /_phø̃ø̃tɕõõ/̀ <bod-ldʑoŋs> [phøn˩dzʲõõ˥˩] ‘Tibet Autonomous Region’, /¯tɕĩĩtə/ [tɕin˥tə˥] <spʲi-zla> ‘month according to the Gregorian calendar.’ We note the anomaly that a spontaneous nasality ap- peared where it should not. More generally, in varieties of Central Tibetan which preserve prenasalized stops, especially Ngari Tibetan (Qú & Tán 1983) and the conservative variety of Lhasa Tibetan in the transcription of Hoshi & Hoshi (1995) and Hoshi (2003), the clusters <ld->, <ldʑ->, and <zl-> are reflected as prenasalized stops. This phenomenon is summarized in Table 1. In Central Tibetan, <ld-> gives a prenasalized stop. The prenasality is not present in the reflexes of other OT <lC-> clusters, nor in other OT <Cd-> clusters: only a conjuction of the preini- tial l- and the initial voiced apical triggers the abnormal reflex. Furthermore, this sound change that gives a prenasalized stop is not pan-Tibetan. In other Tibetan dialects further to the east – for example, the wide variety of tonal Ti- betan dialects grouped under the name of “Khams Tibetan,” the usual reflex of <ld-> is the same as other non-nasal <Cd-> clusters. homorganic nasal when followed by a stop: /_kããtɛ̃ɛ̃/ is usually pronounced [kãn˩tɛ̃ɛ̃˩˦]. This feature is not reflected in the transcription of this essay. The suprasegmental phonology of Lhasa Tibetan and other tonal dialects of Tibetan is noted with the following convention: high-toned words are indicated with ¯, and low-toned words with _: /¯l̥ɛɛsa/ ‘Lhasa’, /_kʰapaa/ <ga.bar> ‘where.’ Word-final falling tone is transcribed with a long vowel with a grave accent: /_pʰøø̀/ <bod> ‘Tibet.’ The boundary of tonal domains is marked as a word boundary. In this article, S stands for fricatives, R for sonorants, and T for stops. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 45 (2016) 127-147.
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