Classical Tibetan refers to the language of any text written in Tibetic after the

Old Tibetan Old Tibetan refers to the period of Tibetan language reflected in documents from the adoption of writing by the Tibetan Empire in the mid-7th century to works of the early 11th century. In 816 CE, during the reign of Sadnalegs, literary 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 other languages, especially

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

. The

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

implied by Classical Tibetan

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

is very similar to the phonology of Old Tibetan, but the

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

varies greatly depending on period and geographic origin of the author. Such variation is an under-researched topic. In 816, during the reign of King Sadnalegs, literary Tibetan underwent a thorough reform aimed at standardizing the language and vocabulary of the translations being made from

, which was one of the main influences for literary standards in what is now called Classical Tibetan.

Nouns

Structure of the noun phrase

Nominalizing suffixes — ''pa'' or ''ba'' and ''ma'' — are required by the

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...

that is to be singled out; * ''po'' or ''bo'' ( masculine) and ''mo'' ( feminine) are used for distinction of gender. The

plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...

is denoted, when required, by adding the morpheme nams-rnams; when the collective nature of the plurality is stressed the morpheme ''-dag'' is instead used. These two morphemes combine readily (e.g. namsrnams-dag 'a group with several members', and namsdag-rnams' 'several groups').

Cases

The classical written language has ten cases. * absolutive (unmarked morphologically'') * genitive (གི་ -''gi'', གྱི་ -''gyi'', ཀྱི་ -''kyi'', འི་ -i'', ཡི་ -''yi'') * agentive (གིས་ -''gis'', གྱིས་ -, ཀྱིས་ -, ས་ -''s'', ཡིས་ -) * locative (ན་ -''na'') * allative (ལ་ -''la'') * terminative (རུ་ -''ru'', སུ་ -''su'', ཏུ་ -''tu'', དུ་ -''du'', ར་ -''r'') * comitative (དང་ -''dang'') * ablative (ནས་ -''nas'') * elative (ལས་ -''las'') * comparative (བས་ -''bas'') Case markers are affixed to entire noun phrases, not to individual words (i.e. ''Gruppenflexion''). 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

Pronouns

There are personal, demonstrative, interrogative and reflexive

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...

s, as well as an indefinite article, which is plainly related to the numeral for "one."

Personal pronouns

As an example of the pronominal system of classical Tibetan, the ''Milarepa rnam thar'' exhibits the following personal pronouns.Hill 2007 Like in French, the plural (ཁྱེད་ ) can be used a polite singular.

Verbs

Verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

s do not inflect for person or number. Morphologically there are up to four separate stem forms, which the Tibetan grammarians, influenced by Sanskrit grammatical terminology, call the "present" (''lta-da''), "past" (das-pa''), "future" (''ma-'ongs-pa''), and "imperative" (''skul-tshigs''), although the precise semantics of these stems is still controversial. The so-called future stem is not a true future, but conveys the sense of necessity or obligation. The majority of Tibetan verbs fall into one of two categories, those that express implicitly or explicitly the involvement of an agent, marked in a sentence by the instrumental particle (''kyis'' etc) and those that express an action that does not involve an agent. Tibetan grammarians refer to these categories as ''tha-dad-pa'' and ''tha-mi-dad-pa'' respectively. Although these two categories often seem to overlap with the English grammatical concepts of transitive and intransitive, most modern writers on Tibetan grammar have adopted the terms "voluntary" and "involuntary", based on native Tibetan descriptions. Most involuntary verbs lack an imperative stem.

Inflection

Many verbs exhibit stem ablaut among the four stem forms, thus ''a'' or ''e'' in the present tends to become ''o'' in the imperative ''byed'', ''byas'', ''bya'', ''byos'' ('to do'), an ''e'' in the present changes to ''a'' in the past and future (''len'', , , ''longs'' 'to take'); in some verbs a present in ''i'' changes to ''u'' in the other stems (dzin'', , , 'to take'). Additionally, the stems of verbs are also distinguished by the addition of various prefixes and suffixes, thus (present), (past), (future), ' (imperative). Though the final -''s'' suffix, when used, is quite regular for the past and imperative, the specific prefixes to be used with any given verb are less predictable; while there is a clear pattern of ''b''- for a past stem and ''g''- for a future stem, this usage is not consistent.Hill 2010 Only a limited number of verbs are capable of four changes; some cannot assume more than three, some two, and many only one. This relative deficiency is made up by the addition of auxiliaries or suffixes both in the classical language and in the modern dialects.

Negation

Verbs are negated by two prepositional particles: ''mi'' and ''ma''. ''Mi'' is used with present and future stems. The particle ''ma'' is used with the past stem; prohibitions do not employ the imperative stem, rather the present stem is negated with ''ma''. There is also a negative stative verb ''med'' 'there is not, there does not exist', the counterpart to the stative verb ''yod'' 'there is, there exists'

Honorifics

As with nouns, Tibetan also has a complex system of honorific and polite verbal forms. Thus, many verbs for everyday actions have a completely different form to express the superior status, whether actual or out of courtesy, of the agent of the action, thus ''lta'' 'see', hon. ''gzigs''; ''byed'' 'do', hon. ''mdzad''. Where a specific honorific verb stem does not exist, the same effect is brought about by compounding a standard verbal stem with an appropriate general honorific stem such as ''mdzad''.

References

External links

Tibetan in Digital CommunicationTranslations of Tibetan texts, Tibetan language courses & publications by Erick Tsiknopoulos and the Trikāya Translation Committee.
{{Tibet related articles Bodic languages Languages of Tibet Languages of Nepal Languages written in Tibetan script Tibetan, Classical Tibetan, Classical Sacred languages