PROF Nathan Hill nh36@soas.ac.uk
Professor Tibetan&Historical Linguistics
Multiple Origins of Tibetan o
Hill, Nathan W.
Authors
Abstract
Widespread agreement prevails that Tibetan o is the result of the merger of several distinct sounds in proto-Tibeto-Burman. Here I attempt to reconcile Matisoff and Gong’s presentations of the origins of Written Tibetan o, making fuller use of
philological evidence than Matisoff and taking advantage of a more recent version of Old Chinese than Gong. A number of sound laws are proposed to explain the relevant vowel correspondences among Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese.
Citation
Hill, N. W. (2011). Multiple Origins of Tibetan o. Language and linguistics (Taipei), 12(3), 707-721
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Publication Date | Jan 1, 2011 |
Deposit Date | Jul 30, 2011 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 11, 2025 |
Journal | Language and linguistics = 語言暨語言學 |
Print ISSN | 1606-822X |
Electronic ISSN | 2309-5067 |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 12 |
Issue | 3 |
Pages | 707-721 |
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The Roots of Old Chinese. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sagart, Laurent. 2006. Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction (By James A. Matisoff). Diachronica 23:1:206-223. Sagart, Laurent. 2008. Reply to Matisoff on the Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction. Diachronica 25.1:153-155. Sagart, Laurent, and William H. Baxer. 2009. Reconstructing Old Chinese uvulars in the Baxter-Sagart system (version 0.99). Cahiers de Linguistique – Asie Orientale 38.2:221-244. Schroeter, Frederic Christian Gotthelf. 1826. A Dictionary of the Bhotanta or Boutan Language. Serampore: n.p. Simon, Walter. 1964. Tibetan lexicography and etymological research. Transactions of the Philological Society 63.1:85-107. Wun, Maung. 1975. Development of the Burmese language in the medieval period. Ōsaka Gaikokugo Daigaku Gakuhō 36:63-119. Yabu, Shirō. 1982. Atsigo Kiso Goishū [Classified Dictionary of the Atsi or Zaiwa Language (Sadon Dialect) with Atsi, Japanese and English Indexes]. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. (In Japanese) Yanson, Rudolf. 1990. Вопросы фонологии древнебирманского языка. Voprosy fonologii drevnebirmanskogo jazyka [Issues in the Phonology of Old Burmese]. Moscow: Nauk. (In Russian) Zeisler, Bettina. 2002. The development of temporal coding in Tibetan: suggestions for a functional internal reconstruction (1): unexpected use of the ‘imperative’ stem in Old Tibetan and Themchen (Amdo Tibetan). Tibet, Past and Present, ed. by Henk Blezer, 441-453. Leiden: Brill. |
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