Lhasa Tibetan or Standard Tibetan is a standardized dialect of Tibetan spoken by the people of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. It is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
In the traditional "three-branched" classification of the Tibetic languages, the Lhasa dialect belongs to the Central Tibetan branch (the other two being Khams Tibetan and Amdo Tibetan). In terms of mutual intelligibility, speakers of Khams Tibetan are able to communicate at a basic level with Lhasa Tibetan, while Amdo speakers cannot. Both Lhasa Tibetan and Khams Tibetan evolved to become tonal and do not preserve the word-initial consonant clusters, which makes them very far from Classical Tibetan, especially when compared to the more conservative Amdo Tibetan.
Registers Like many languages, Lhasa Tibetan has a variety of language registers: (Wylie: , literally "demotic language"): the vernacular speech. (Wylie: , "honorifics or deference, courtesy"): the formal spoken style, particularly prominent in Lhasa. (Wylie: , literally "letters language" or "literary language"): the written literary style; may include below. (Wylie: , literally "doctrine language" or "religious language"): the literary style in which the scriptures and other classical works are written.
Grammar
Syntax and word order Tibetan is an ergative language, with what can loosely be termed subject–object–verb (SOV) word order. Grammatical constituents broadly have head-final word order: adjectives generally follow nouns in Tibetan, unless the two are linked by a genitive particle objects and adverbs precede the verb, as do adjectives in copular clauses a noun marked with the genitive case precedes the noun which it modifies demonstratives and numerals follow the noun they modify.
Nouns and pronouns
Tibetan nouns do not possess grammatical gender, although this may be marked lexically, nor do they inflect for number. However, definite human nouns may take a plural marker .
Tibetan has been described as having six cases: absolutive, agentive, genitive, ablative, associative and oblique. These are generally marked by particles, which are attached to entire noun phrases, rather than individual nouns. These suffixes may vary in form based on the final sound of the root.
Personal pronouns are inflected for number, showing singular, dual and plural forms. They can have between one and three registers.
The Standard Tibetan language distinguishes three levels of demonstrative: proximal "this", medial "that", and distal "that over there (yonder)". These can also take case suffixes.
Verbs
Verbs in Tibetan always come at the end of the clause. Verbs do not show agreement in person, number or gender in Tibetan. There is also no voice distinction between active and passive; Tibetan verbs are neutral with regard to voice.
Tibetan verbs can be divided into classes based on volition and valency. The volition of the verb has a major effect on its morphology and syntax. Volitional verbs have imperative forms, whilst non-volitional verbs do not: compare "Look!" with the non-existent * "*See!". Additionally, only volitional verbs can take the egophoric copula .
Verbs in Tibetan can be split into monovalent and divalent verbs; some may also act as both, such as "break". This interacts with the volition of the verb to condition which nouns take the ergative case and which must take the absolutive, remaining unmarked. Nonetheless, distinction in transitivity is orthogonal to volition; both the volitional and non-volitional classes contain transitive as well as intransitive verbs.
The aspect of the verb affects which verbal suffixes and which final auxiliary copulae are attached. Morphologically, verbs in the unaccomplished aspect are marked by the suffix or its other forms, identical to the genitive case for nouns, whereas accomplished aspect verbs do not use this suffix. Each can be broken down into two subcategories: under the unaccomplished aspect, future and progressive/general; under the accomplished aspect, perfect and aorist or simple perfective.
Evidentiality is a well-known feature of Tibetan verb morphology, gaining much scholarly attention, and contributing substantially to the understanding of evidentiality across languages. The evidentials in Standard Tibetan interact with aspect in a system marked by final copulae, with the following resultant modalities being a feature of Standard Tibetan, as classified by Nicolas Tournadre: Assertive Allocentric intentional egophoric Allocentric intentional egophoric/Imminent danger Experiential egophoric Habitual/Generic assertive Inferential Intentional egophoric Intentional/Habitual egophoric Receptive egophoric Testimonial
Numerals
Unlike many other languages of East Asia such as Burmese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese, there are no numeral auxiliaries or measure words used in counting in Tibetan. However, words expressive of a collective or integral are often used after the tens, sometimes after a smaller number.
In scientific and astrological works, the numerals, as in Vedic Sanskrit, are expressed by symbolical words.
The written numerals are a variant of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, forming a base-10 positional counting system that is attested early on in Classical Tibetan texts.
Tibetan Numerals Devanagari numerals ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९ Bengali numerals ০ ১ ২ ৩ ৪ ৫ ৬ ৭ ৮ ৯ Arabic numerals 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Tibetan makes use of a special connector particle for the units above each multiple of ten. Between 100 and 199, the connective dang, literally "and", is used after the hundred portion. Above saya million, the numbers are treated as nouns and thus have their multiples following the word.
The numbers 1, 2, 3 and 10 change spelling when combined with other numerals, reflecting a change in pronunciation in combination.
Written TibetanWylie transliterationArabic numeralsWritten TibetanWylie transliterationArabic numeralsWritten TibetanWylie transliterationArabic numeralsgcig1nyi shu tsa gcig21bzhi bgya400gnyis2nyi shu rtsa gnyis22lnga bgya500gsum3nyi shu rtsa gsum23drug bgya600bzhi4nyi shu rtsa bzhi24bdun bgya700lnga5nyi shu rtsa lnga25brgyad bgya800drug6nyi shu rtsa drug26dgu bgya900bdun7nyi shu rtsa bdun27chig stong1000brgyad8nyi shu rtsa brgyad28khri(a unit of) 10,000dgu9nyi shu rtsa dgu29bcu 10sum cu30sum cu so gcig31bcu gcig11bzhi bcu40bzhi bcu zhe gcig41bcu gnyis12lnga bcu50lnga bcu nga gcig51bcu gsum13drug cu60drug cu re gcig61bcu bzhi14bdun cu70bdun cu don gcig71bco lnga15brgyad cu80brgyad cu gya gcig81bcu drug16dgu bcu90dgu bcu go gcig91bcu bdun17bgya100bgya dang gcig101bco brgyad18bgya dang lnga bcu150bcu dgu19nyis bgya200nyi shu20sum bgya300'bum(a unit of) 100,000sa ya(a unit of) 1,000,000 (1 Million)bye ba(a unit of) 10,000,000dung phyur(a unit of) 100,000,000ther 'bum(a unit of) 1,000,000,000 (1 Billion)
Ordinal numbers are formed by adding a suffix to the cardinal number, (-pa), with the exception of the ordinal number "first", which has its own lexeme, (dang po).
Writing system
Tibetan is written with an Indic script, with a historically conservative orthography that reflects Old Tibetan phonology and helps unify the Tibetan-language area. It is also helpful in reconstructing Proto-Sino-Tibetan and Old Chinese.
Wylie transliteration is the most common system of romanization used by Western scholars in rendering written Tibetan using the Latin alphabet (such as employed on much of this page), while linguists tend to use other special transliteration systems of their own. As for transcriptions meant to approximate the pronunciation, Tibetan pinyin is the official romanization system employed by the government of the People's Republic of China, while English language materials use the THL transcription system. Certain names may also retain irregular transcriptions, such as Chomolungma for Mount Everest.
Tibetan orthographic syllable structure is (C1C2)C3(C4)V(C5C6) Not all combinations are licit. +positionC1C2C3C4VC5C6namePrefixSuperfixRootSubjoinedVowelSuffixSuffix 2licit lettersག ད བ མ འར ལ སany consonantཡ ར ལ ཝany vowelག ང ད ན བ མ འ ར ལ སད ས
Phonology The following summarizes the sound system of the dialect of Tibetan spoken in Lhasa, the most influential variety of the spoken language.
The structure of a Lhasa Tibetan syllable is relatively simple; no consonant cluster is allowed and codas are only allowed with a single consonant. Vowels can be either short or long, and long vowels may further be nasalized. Vowel harmony is observed in two syllable words as well as verbs with a finite ending.
Also, tones are contrastive in this language, where at least two tonemes are distinguished. Although the four-tone analysis is favored by linguists in China, DeLancey (2003) suggests that the falling tone and the final or are in contrastive distribution, describing Lhasa Tibetan syllables as either high or low.
Consonants Consonant phonemes of Standard Tibetan Bilabial Alveolar Retroflex (Alveolo-)Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal Stop ~ ~ Affricate Fricative Approximant Lateral
In the low tone, the unaspirated are voiced , whereas the aspirated stops and affricates lose some of their aspiration. Thus, in this context, the main distinction between and is voicing. The dialect of the upper social strata in Lhasa does not use voiced stops and affricates in the low tone. The approximant /ɹ/ has four realizations [ɹ], [ʐ], [ɾ] and [r]. Some previous work postulates a voiceless approximant like [ɹ̥] (Dawson, 1980b; Sprigg, 1954; Tournadre & Dorje, 2003). In the current dataset, there is no clear evidence for this sound. It might be a variant of the sound /ʂ/ in certain varieties of Lhasa or Central Tibetan. The consonants , , , , , and may appear in syllable-final positions. The Classical Tibetan final is still present, but its modern pronunciation is normally realized as a nasalisation of the preceding vowel, rather than as a discrete consonant (see above). However, is not pronounced in the final position of a word except in very formal speech. Also, syllable-final and are often not clearly pronounced but realized as a lengthening of the preceding vowel. The phonemic glottal stop appears only at the end of words in the place of , , or , which were pronounced in Classical Tibetan but have since been elided. For instance, the word for Tibet itself was Bod in Classical Tibetan but is now pronounced in the Lhasa dialect.
Vowels The vowels of Lhasa Tibetan have been characterized and described in several different ways, and it continues to be a topic of ongoing research.
Tournadre and Sangda Dorje describe eight vowels in the standard language:
Vowel phonemes of Standard Tibetan FrontCentral Back Close Close-mid Open-mid Open
Three additional vowels are sometimes described as significantly distinct: or , which is normally an allophone of ; , which is normally an allophone of ; and (an unrounded, centralised, mid front vowel), which is normally an allophone of . These sounds normally occur in closed syllables; because Tibetan does not allow geminated consonants, there are cases in which one syllable ends with the same sound as the one following it. The result is that the first is pronounced as an open syllable but retains the vowel typical of a closed syllable. For instance, zhabs (foot) is pronounced and pad (borrowing from Sanskrit padma, lotus) is pronounced , but the compound word, zhabs pad (lotus-foot, government minister) is pronounced . This process can result in minimal pairs involving sounds that are otherwise allophones.
Sources vary on whether the phone (resulting from in a closed syllable) and the phone (resulting from through the i-mutation) are distinct or basically identical.