DOCSLIB.ORG

VERBAL MORPHOLOGY of AMDO TIBETAN by ZOE TRIBUR a DISSERTATION Presented to the Linguistics Department and the Graduate School O

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
VERBAL MORPHOLOGY of AMDO TIBETAN by ZOE TRIBUR a DISSERTATION Presented to the Linguistics Department and the Graduate School O VERBAL MORPHOLOGY OF AMDO TIBETAN by ZOE TRIBUR A DISSERTATION Presented to the LinguistiCs Department and the Graduate SChool of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2019 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Zoe Tribur Title: Verbal Morphology in Amdo Tibetan This dissertation has been aCCepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the LinguistiCs Department by: SCott DeLancey Chairperson Spike Gildea Core Member EriC Pederson Core Member Zhuo Jing-SChmidt Institutional Representative and Janet Woodruff-Borden ViCe Provost and Dean of the Graduate SChool Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate SChool. Degree awarded September, 2019 ii © 2019 Zoe Tribur iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Zoe Tribur Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics September 2019 Title: Verbal Morphology of Amdo Tibetan This dissertation describes the functional and structural properties of the Amdo Tibetan verb system. Amdo Tibetan (Tibetic, Trans-Himalayan) is a verb-final language, characterized by an elaborate system of post-verbal morphology that are limited to finite clauses and which encode information about the nature of the assertion. Aside from imperative mood, which is expressed by a different series of constructions, the finite verb constructions of Amdo Tibetan form a morphological paradigm expressing functions associated with the semantic domains of tense, aspect, (epistemic) modality, evidentiality and egophoricity. The data included in this study comes from three kinds of sources. The majority of examples are from my own field recordings, which include elicitations as well as spontaneous speech. I also make use of data from other linguistic publications, including two second language textbooks. My own data as well as these other sources reflect a high degree of dialectal (and register) variation which is characteristic of Amdo Tibetan. As will be apparent, my data shows a diversity of phonologies, morphosyntax, lexical items and even some functional categories. Consequently, this dissertation also serves as a cross-dialectal comparative study. iv CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Zoe Tribur GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene University of Colorado, Boulder DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Linguistics, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, Chinese, 2005, University of Colorado AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Typology, Historical Syntax, Morphosyntax, Language Revitalization, Language Documentation, Trans-Himalayan Languages, Tibetan PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of Linguistics and American English Institute, University of Oregon, Fall 2012-Spring 2015, Fall 2016-Fall 2018 Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow, Smithsonian Institution, Center for Folklike and Cultural Heritage, Tibet Project, Summer 2015-Summer 2016 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research, Small Projects Grant: “Place- based Oral Traditions of sGrog chen gsum mdo, a nomad Tibetan Community in mGo log Prefecture”. 2016. Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research, Small Projects Grant: “Oral Traditions of Minyong Glacier and Melli Snow Mountain in a Farming Tibetan Community in Dechen County”. 2016. Foreign Languages and Area Studies Fellow (Uyghur), Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Summer 2011 v For my mother and sister. For Lise, who inspired me. For Weiming, who put up with me. For Dbyang.grub, who encouraged me. For Dad. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. BACKGROUND ................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Overview of Dissertation ........................................................................ 1 1.2 On ‘Sino-Tibetan’, ‘Tibeto-Burman’, and ‘Trans-Himalayan’ .............. 3 1.3 Relationship Between Amdo Tibetan and Other Varieties of Tibetan ... 8 1.3.1 Tibetic Versus Tibetan ........................................................................ 9 1.3.2 ‘Dialect’ Versus ‘Language’ ............................................................. 16 1.3.3 Linguistic Data Considered in This Study ........................................ 21 1.3.4 Sources of Data ................................................................................. 21 1.3.5 Dialects Examined ............................................................................ 22 1.4 Geography of A.mdo ............................................................................ 28 1.4.1 Languages of A.mdo ......................................................................... 33 1.5 Number of Speakers and Language Vitality ......................................... 38 1.5.1 Indicators of Vitality ......................................................................... 39 1.6 Language Attitudes ............................................................................... 43 1.7 Standardization and the Loss of Regional Varieties ............................. 47 1.8 Orthography, Transliteration Conventions and Transcriptions ............ 48 1.8.1 Written Tibetan ................................................................................. 49 1.8.2 Sources of Classical Literary Tibetan and Written Tibetan .............. 55 1.9 Methods of Data Collection .................................................................. 57 vii Chapter Page II. TYPOLOGICAL OVERVIEW ........................................................................ 60 2.1 Phonology ............................................................................................. 60 2.2 Morphology ........................................................................................... 66 2.3 Syntax ................................................................................................... 70 2.4 The Case System ................................................................................... 74 2.4.1 Case Morphology .............................................................................. 75 2.4.2 Isomorphic Case-Marking ................................................................ 79 2.4.3 Distributional Patterns of Ergative and Dative Case ........................ 85 2.4.4 Optional Dative Marking .................................................................. 91 III. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................................. 94 3.1 Construction Grammar as a Usage-Based Theory ................................ 95 3.1.1 On the Appropriateness of CxG for Amdo Tibetan ........................ 101 3.2 Terminology ........................................................................................ 104 IV. THEORETICAL ISSUES SPECIFIC TO TIBETIC AND RELATED LANGUAGES .................................................................................................... 110 4.1 Conjunct/Disjunct ............................................................................... 116 4.2 Evidentiality ........................................................................................ 124 4.2.1 Evidential Grammar Versus Evidential Strategy ............................ 135 4.2.2 Interaction with Other Semantic Domains ...................................... 142 4.3 Egophoricity ........................................................................................ 144 viii Chapter Page 4.3.1 Volitionality and Assertor Involvement .......................................... 149 4.3.2 Egophoric Scope in Verbal vs. Copular Clauses ............................ 153 4.3.3 Un-marked Egophoric vs. Factual and Un-Marked ........................ 155 4.4 Factuality ............................................................................................. 161 V. THE AMDO TIBETAN CLAUSE ................................................................ 165 5.1 Overview of This Chapter ................................................................... 166 5.2 Parts of Speech in Amdo Tibetan ....................................................... 167 5.2.1 A Rejection of Autonomous Syntax and Universal Parts of Speech .................................................................................................... 167 5.2.2 Structurally-Defined Parts of Speech in Amdo Tibetan ................. 169 5.3 Overview of the Clause ....................................................................... 173 5.3.1 NP Deletion ..................................................................................... 174 5.3.2 Variable NP Order .......................................................................... 177 5.3.3 Argument Structure ......................................................................... 183 5.3.4 Structural Differences Between Finite vs. Non-Finite Clauses ...... 189 5.4 Structural and Functional Properties of the Noun Nhrase .................. 191 5.4.1 Referential NPs ............................................................................... 192 5.4.2 Referential Form – Pronominal Reference and NP Deletion .......... 197 5.5 Modification of NPs ............................................................................ 202 5.5.1 Genitive Phrase Construction ......................................................... 203 5.5.2 Modifier Phrase Construction ......................................................... 213 5.5.3 Nominalized Modifier Phrase Construction ..................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Location: Tibet Lies at the Centre of Asia, with an Area of 2.5 Million Square Kilometers. the Earth's Highest Mountains, a Vast
    Location: Tibet lies at the centre of Asia, with an area of 2.5 million square kilometers. The earth's highest mountains, a vast arid plateau and great river valleys make up the physical homeland of 6 million Tibetans. It has an average altitude of 13,000 feet above sea level. Capital: Lhasa Population: 6 million Tibetans and an estimated 7.5 million Chinese, most of whom are in Kham and Amdo. Language: Tibetan (of the Tibeto-Burmese language family). The official language is Chinese. Tibet is comprised of the three provinces of Amdo (now split by China into the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu & Sichuan), Kham (largely incorporated into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Qinghai), and U-Tsang (which, together with western Kham, is today referred to by China as the Tibet Autonomous Region). The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) comprises less than half of historic Tibet and was created by China in 1965 for administrative reasons. It is important to note that when Chinese officials and publications use the term "Tibet" they mean only the TAR. Tibetans use the term Tibet to mean the three provinces described above, i.e., the area traditionally known as Tibet before the 1949-50 invasion. Today Tibetans are outnumbered by Han Chinese population in their own homeland, there are est. 6 million Tibetans and an estimated 7.5 million Chinese, most of whom are in Kham and Amdo. The official language is Chinese. But those Tibetans living in exile still speak, read and write in Tibetan (of the Tibeto-Burmese language family).
    [Show full text]
  • 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]
  • Tibet Under Chinese Communist Rule
    TIBET UNDER CHINESE COMMUNIST RULE A COMPILATION OF REFUGEE STATEMENTS 1958-1975 A SERIES OF “EXPERT ON TIBET” PROGRAMS ON RADIO FREE ASIA TIBETAN SERVICE BY WARREN W. SMITH 1 TIBET UNDER CHINESE COMMUNIST RULE A Compilation of Refugee Statements 1958-1975 Tibet Under Chinese Communist Rule is a collection of twenty-seven Tibetan refugee statements published by the Information and Publicity Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1976. At that time Tibet was closed to the outside world and Chinese propaganda was mostly unchallenged in portraying Tibet as having abolished the former system of feudal serfdom and having achieved democratic reforms and socialist transformation as well as self-rule within the Tibet Autonomous Region. Tibetans were portrayed as happy with the results of their liberation by the Chinese Communist Party and satisfied with their lives under Chinese rule. The contrary accounts of the few Tibetan refugees who managed to escape at that time were generally dismissed as most likely exaggerated due to an assumed bias and their extreme contrast with the version of reality presented by the Chinese and their Tibetan spokespersons. The publication of these very credible Tibetan refugee statements challenged the Chinese version of reality within Tibet and began the shift in international opinion away from the claims of Chinese propaganda and toward the facts as revealed by Tibetan eyewitnesses. As such, the publication of this collection of refugee accounts was an important event in the history of Tibetan exile politics and the international perception of the Tibet issue. The following is a short synopsis of the accounts.
    [Show full text]
  • On Bhutanese and Tibetan Dzongs **
    ON BHUTANESE AND TIBETAN DZONGS ** Ingun Bruskeland Amundsen** “Seen from without, it´s a rocky escarpment! Seen from within, it´s all gold and treasure!”1 There used to be impressive dzong complexes in Tibet and areas of the Himalayas with Tibetan influence. Today most of them are lost or in ruins, a few are restored as museums, and it is only in Bhutan that we find the dzongs still alive today as administration centers and monasteries. This paper reviews some of what is known about the historical developments of the dzong type of buildings in Tibet and Bhutan, and I shall thus discuss towers, khars (mkhar) and dzongs (rdzong). The first two are included in this context as they are important in the broad picture of understanding the historical background and typological developments of the later dzongs. The etymological background for the term dzong is also to be elaborated. Backdrop What we call dzongs today have a long history of development through centuries of varying religious and socio-economic conditions. Bhutanese and Tibetan histories describe periods verging on civil and religious war while others were more peaceful. The living conditions were tough, even in peaceful times. Whatever wealth one possessed had to be very well protected, whether one was a layman or a lama, since warfare and strife appear to have been endemic. Security measures * Paper presented at the workshop "The Lhasa valley: History, Conservation and Modernisation of Tibetan Architecture" at CNRS in Paris Nov. 1997, and submitted for publication in 1999. ** Ingun B. Amundsen, architect MNAL, lived and worked in Bhutan from 1987 until 1998.
    [Show full text]
  • 7=SINO-INDIAN Phylosector
    7= SINO-INDIAN phylosector Observatoire Linguistique Linguasphere Observatory page 525 7=SINO-INDIAN phylosector édition princeps foundation edition DU RÉPERTOIRE DE LA LINGUASPHÈRE 1999-2000 THE LINGUASPHERE REGISTER 1999-2000 publiée en ligne et mise à jour dès novembre 2012 published online & updated from November 2012 This phylosector comprises 22 sets of languages spoken by communities in eastern Asia, from the Himalayas to Manchuria (Heilongjiang), constituting the Sino-Tibetan (or Sino-Indian) continental affinity. See note on nomenclature below. 70= TIBETIC phylozone 71= HIMALAYIC phylozone 72= GARIC phylozone 73= KUKIC phylozone 74= MIRIC phylozone 75= KACHINIC phylozone 76= RUNGIC phylozone 77= IRRAWADDIC phylozone 78= KARENIC phylozone 79= SINITIC phylozone This continental affinity is composed of two major parts: the disparate Tibeto-Burman affinity (zones 70= to 77=), spoken by relatively small communities (with the exception of 77=) in the Himalayas and adjacent regions; and the closely related Chinese languages of the Sinitic set and net (zone 79=), spoken in eastern Asia. The Karen languages of zone 78=, formerly considered part of the Tibeto-Burman grouping, are probably best regarded as a third component of Sino-Tibetan affinity. Zone 79=Sinitic includes the outer-language with the largest number of primary voices in the world, representing the most populous network of contiguous speech-communities at the end of the 20th century ("Mainstream Chinese" or so- called 'Mandarin', standardised under the name of Putonghua). This phylosector is named 7=Sino-Indian (rather than Sino-Tibetan) to maintain the broad geographic nomenclature of all ten sectors of the linguasphere, composed of the names of continental or sub-continental entities.
    [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]
  • 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.
    [Show full text]
  • A Grammar of Tundra Nenets Mouton Grammar Library
    Irina Nikolaeva A Grammar of Tundra Nenets Mouton Grammar Library Edited by Georg Bossong Bernard Comrie Matthew Dryer Patience L. Epps Volume 65 Irina Nikolaeva A Grammar of Tundra Nenets ISBN 978-3-11-032047-3 e-ISBN 978-3-11-032064-0 ISSN 0933-7636 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. 6 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: RoyalStandard, Hong Kong Printing and binding: CPI buch bücher.de GmbH, Birkach ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Acknowledgment This grammar is the result of many years of cooperation with members of the Tundra Nenets community, whose linguistic intuitions, passion for language, and, last but not least, extraordinary patience in dealing with me made it all possible. I am greatly indebted to all of you. Ңули” сава! I owe a great debt of gratitude to the colleagues with whom I have had the opportunity to work and discuss various intriguing aspects of Tundra Nenets grammar, especially to Farrell Ackerman, Larisa Leisiö and Tapani Salminen. I really miss our joint elicitation sessions; it was a lot of fun! Tapani Salminen was the first to intro- duce me to the language, and his own work on Tundra Nenets has always been a source of inspiration for me. I also thank Tapani and Larisa for their assistance in the practical aspects of my fieldwork.
    [Show full text]
  • )53Lt- I'\.' -- the ENGLISH and FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY HYDERABAD 500605, INDIA
    DZONGKHA SEGMENTS AND TONES: A PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION KINLEY DORJEE . I Supervisor PROFESSOR K.G. VIJA Y AKRISHNAN Department of Linguistics and Contemporary English Hyderabad Co-supervisor Dr. T. Temsunungsang The English and Foreign Languages University Shillong Campus A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics SCHOOL OF LANGUAGE SCIENCES >. )53lt- I'\.' -- THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY HYDERABAD 500605, INDIA JULY 2011 To my mother ABSTRACT In this thesis, we make, for the first time, an acoustic investigation of supposedly unique phonemic contrasts: a four-way stop phonation contrast (voiceless, voiceless aspirated, voiced and devoiced), a three-way fricative contrast (voiceless, voiced and devoiced) and a two-way sonorant contrast (voiced and voiceless) in Dzongkha, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Western Bhutan. Paying special attention to the 'Devoiced' (as recorded in the literature) obstruent and the 'Voiceless' sonorants, we examine the durational and spectral characteristics, including the vowel quality (following the initial consonant types), in comparison with four other languages, viz .. Hindi. Korean (for obstruents), Mizo and Tenyidie (for sonorants). While the 'devoiced' phonation type in Dzongkha is not attested in any language in the region, we show that the devoiced type is very different from the 'breathy' phonation type, found in Hindi. However, when compared to the three-way voiceless stop phonation types (Tense, Lax and Aspirated) in Korean, we find striking similarities in the way the two stops CDevoiced' and 'Lax') employ their acoustic correlates. We extend our analysis of stops to fricatives, and analyse the three fricatives in Dzongkha as: Tense, Lax and Voiced.
    [Show full text]
  • The Origin of Vowel Alternations in the Tangut Verb Guillaume Jacques
    The origin of vowel alternations in the Tangut verb Guillaume Jacques To cite this version: Guillaume Jacques. The origin of vowel alternations in the Tangut verb. Language and Linguistics, Sage publishing, Association with Academia Sinica, Taiwan, 2009, 10 (1), pp.17-27. halshs-00351738 HAL Id: halshs-00351738 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00351738 Submitted on 11 Jan 2009 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. The origin of vowel alternations in the Tangut verb1 Jacques Guillaume, Université Paris Descartes Language and Linguistics 10.1:17-27,2009 Abstract: Like other Qiangic languages, Tangut has a complex verbal morphology. Based on comparative data from Qiangic languages, this article attempts at reconstructing the origin of the Tangut Ablaut system. In Tangut, some verbs have two stems, whose distribution is determined by the person of the agent and the patient. Stem 2 appears when the agent is first of second person singular and the patient is third person, and stem 1 in other verbal forms. We show that there was third person patient *-w suffix in Tangut cognate with Northern Qiang, and that stem 2 are the result of the coalescence of this suffix with the verb root vowel.
    [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]
  • 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]