Old Tibetan refers to the period of
Tibetan language Tibetan language may refer to:
* Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard
* Lhasa Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dialect
* Any of the other Tibetic languages
See also
* Old Tibetan, the languag ...
reflected in documents from the adoption of writing by the
Tibetan Empire
The Tibetan Empire (, ; ) was an empire centered on the Tibetan Plateau, formed as a result of imperial expansion under the Yarlung dynasty heralded by its 33rd king, Songtsen Gampo, in the 7th century. The empire further expanded under the 3 ...
in the mid-7th century to works of the early 11th century.
In 816 CE, during the reign of
Sadnalegs, literary Tibetan underwent a thorough reform aimed at standardizing the language and vocabulary of the translations being made from Indian texts, and this resulted in what we now call
Classical Tibetan
Classical Tibetan refers to the language of any text written in Tibetic after the Old Tibetan period. Though it extends from the 12th century until the modern day, it particularly refers to the language of early canonical texts translated from o ...
.
Phonology
Old Tibetan is characterised by many features that are lost in Classical Tibetan, including ''my-'' rather than ''m-'' before the vowels ''-i-'' and ''-e-'', the cluster ''sts-'' which simplifies to ''s-'' in Classical Tibetan, and a reverse form of the "i" vowel letter (''gi-gu''). Aspiration was not phonemic and many words were written indiscriminately with consonants from the aspirated or unaspirated series. Most consonants could be palatalized, and the palatal series from the Tibetan script represents palatalized coronals. The sound conventionally transcribed with the letter འ (
Wylie: 'a) was a voiced velar fricative, while the voiceless rhotic and lateral are written with digraphs ཧྲ and ལྷ . The following table is based on Hill's analysis of Old Tibetan:
In Old Tibetan, the glide occurred as a medial, but not as an initial.
The Written Tibetan letter ཝ ''w'' was originally a digraph representing two Old Tibetan consonants .
Syllable structure
In Old Tibetan, syllables can be quite complex with up to three consonants in the onset, two glides, and two coda consonants. This structure can be represented as , with all positions except C
3 and V optional. This allows for complicated syllables like བསྒྲིགས "arranged" and འདྲྭ ''
'drwa'' "web", for which the pronunciations
�zgriksand
�drʷacan be reconstructed.
A voicing contrast only exists in slot C
3 and spreads to C
1 and C
2 so སྒོ ''sgo'' "door" would be realized as
gowhile སྐུ "body" would be
ku Final consonants are always voiceless e.g. འཛིནད་ ''
'dzind''
�d͡zintand གཟུགས་ []. The phoneme /b/ in C
1 was likely realized as [ɸ] (or [β] when C
3 is voiced) e.g. བསྒྲེ [βzgre] and བརྩིས [ɸrt
sis]. The features of
palatalization /i̯/
ʲand
labialization
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involv ...
/w/
ʷcan be considered separate phonemes, realized as glides in G
1 and G
2 respectively. Only certain consonants are permitted in some syllable slots, as summarized below:
§ In C
2 position, /d/ and /g/ are in complementary distribution: /g/ appears before /t/, /ts/, /d/, /n/, /s/, /z/, /l/, and /l̥/ in C
3, while /d/ appears before /k/, /g/, /ŋ/, /p/, /b/, and /m/ in C
3. Additionally, /g/ is written before /l̥/.
Palatalization
Palatalization /Cʲ/ was phonemically distinct from the onset cluster /Cy/. This produces a contrast between གཡ /gj/ and གྱ /gʲ/, demonstrated by the minimal pair གཡང་ ''g.yaṅ'' "sheep" and གྱང་ ''gyaṅ'' "also, and". The sounds written with the palatal letters ཅ c, ཇ j, ཉ ny, ཞ zh, and ཤ sh were palatalized counterparts of the phonemic sounds ཙ ts, ཛ dz, ན n, ཟ z, and ས s.
Morphology
Nominal
Case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of related merchandise
* Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component
* Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books
* Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to ca ...
markers are affixed to entire noun phrases, not to individual words (i.e. ''Gruppenflexion''). Old Tibetan distinguishes the same ten cases as
Classical Tibetan
Classical Tibetan refers to the language of any text written in Tibetic after the Old Tibetan period. Though it extends from the 12th century until the modern day, it particularly refers to the language of early canonical texts translated from o ...
:
*
absolutive (morphologically unmarked)
*
genitive
In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can a ...
(གི་ -''gi'', གྱི་ -''kyi'', ཀྱི་ -, འི་ ''-'i'', ཡི་ -''yi'')
*
agentive (གིས་ -''gis'', གྱིས་ -''kyis'', ཀྱིས་ -, ས་ -''sa'', ཡིས་ -''yis'')
*
locative
In grammar, the locative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
(ན་ -''na'')
*
allative (ལ་ -''la'')
*
terminative (རུ་ -''ru'', སུ་ -''su'', ཏུ་ -''tu'', དུ་ -''du'', ར་ -''ra'')
*
comitative (དང་ -''dang'')
*
ablative
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...
(ནས་ -''nas'')
*
elative
Elative can refer to:
*Elative case, a grammatical case in Finno-Ugric languages and others
*Elative (gradation)
In Semitic linguistics, the elative ( ar, اِسْمُ تَفْضِيل ', literally meaning "noun of preference") is a stage of g ...
(ལས་ -''las'')
*
comparative
general linguistics, the comparative is a syntactic construction that serves to express a comparison between two (or more) entities or groups of entities in quality or degree - see also comparison (grammar) for an overview of comparison, as well ...
(བས་ -''bas'')
However, whereas the locative, allative, and terminative gradually fell together in Classical Tibetan (and are referred to the indigenous grammatical tradition as the ''la don bdun''), in Old Tibetan these three cases are clearly distinguished. Traditional Tibetan grammarians do not distinguish case markers in this manner, but rather distribute these case morphemes (excluding ''-dang'' and ''-bas'') into the eight cases of
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
.
Verbal
Old Tibetan transitive verbs were inflected for up to four stems, while intransitive verbs only had one or two stems. In the
active voice, there was an
imperfective
The imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a ge ...
stem and a
perfective
The perfective aspect ( abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the i ...
stem, corresponding to the
Classical Tibetan
Classical Tibetan refers to the language of any text written in Tibetic after the Old Tibetan period. Though it extends from the 12th century until the modern day, it particularly refers to the language of early canonical texts translated from o ...
present and past stems respectively. Transitive verbs also may have two
passive voice
A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or '' patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...
stems, a dynamic stem and stative stem. These two stems in turn correspond to the Classical future and imperative stems.
Personal pronouns
Old Tibetan has three first person singular pronouns ་ ''ṅa'', ་ , and ་ , and three first-person plural pronouns ་ , ་ , and . The second person pronouns include two singulars and -'da' and a plural .
References
Citations
Works cited
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*
*
*
*
*
External links
Old Tibetan Documents Online Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
, often referred to as TUFS, is a specialist research university in Fuchū, Tokyo, Japan.
TUFS is primarily devoted to foreign language, international affairs and foreign studies. It also features an Asia-African institution.
History
The ...
: transliteration of selected Old Tibetan and Classical Tibetan texts.
International Dunhuang Project includes images of many of the texts.
Translations of Tibetan texts, Tibetan language courses & publications by Erick Tsiknopoulos and the Trikāya Translation Committee.
{{Tibetan_language
Bodic languages
Languages of Tibet
Languages written in Tibetan script
Languages attested from the 7th century