Tibetan *-as > -os

Himalayan Linguistics, 2020

The paper presents the first complete reconstruction of the Old Tibetan (OT) verb morphology and semantics. Old Tibetan had a productive verb inflection with meaningful inflectional affixes b-, g-, ɣ-, d-, -d, and -s. The distribution of the prefixes was asymmetric and closely related to transitivity of a verb. Verbs of highest transitivity formed four distinct stems, whereas intransitive verbs inflected for one or two stems only. Grammatical voice is the only category that can explain the disproportion in the markings of transitive and intransitive verbs. Because the basic opposition was that between active and passive voice, intransitive verbs could only form active forms, whereas both active and passive forms were available for the majority of transitive verbs. In addition, both groups of verbs inflected for aspect, distinguishing between perfective and imperfective aspect. The OT inflectional system seems to have been a local innovation, only marginally related to verb morphology of other Trans-Himalayan languages.

Crossing Boundaries. Tibetan Studies Unlimited, 2021

Language and Linguistics, 2022

Errata: I no longer believe that the uvular initial is voiced in /ɢo/ 'be peeled', and it should rather be transcribed with the voiceless uvular stop /q/, i.e., /qo/. This is also true for /ɢre/ 'collapse (vi)', which now should be transcribed as /qre/. Thus, these verb stems should be removed from the evidence in favor of voiceless to voiced directionality. However, this does not have a bearing on the main evidence and conclusion of this paper, which still are a voiceless to voiced and transitive to intransitive directionality. This paper offers new evidence from Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs to address the question of directionality in valency-changing derivations in Sino-Tibetan. Examining Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs causative and anticausative verb stem pairs adds to the evidence that in Proto-Sino-Tibetan a number of intransitive stems are derived from transitive stems, in some cases as the result of *N-prefixation, and in other cases from voicing alternation independent of *N-prefixation. In addition, the proto-sigmatic prefix (*s-) does not cause devoicing in Stau, Geshiza, and Khroskyabs, but rather often undergoes voicing assimilation, and has more than just a causativization function. Furthermore, by looking at Gyalrong, Minyag, Tangut, Middle Chinese, and Old Chinese we emphasize that there is no synchronic evidence to support devoicing induced by *s-, nor is there historical evidence to support the claim that *s-caused devoicing in Proto-Gyalrongic, and even genetically deeper stages.

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland (Third Series), 25 (1), 2015

Recognizing the parallelism between the conjugation of a verb such as √lug 'pour' (pres. ldug, past blugs, fut. blug, imp. lhugs 'pour' and a verb such as √kru 'wash' (ḥkhrud, bkrus, bkru, khrus), Li Fang-Kuei suggests deriving the present stem ldug from a reconstruction *ḥlug (1933: 149). In this sub-case of Conrady's law, the change of *ḥl to ld- may be analyzed into the following changes: *ḥl > *ḥdl > *ḥld > ld (cf. Conrady 1896: 59, Li 1933: 149, Hill 2011: 446-447, Hill 2013: 193-195). This sound change obscures the synchronic relationship between verb forms beginning with ld- and other present formations, and the resultant synchronic opacity gives rise to analogical forms (e.g. the alternate present blug). Consequently, the dictionaries present a certain level of confusion about the paradigms of lateral initial verbs.

Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 26: 45-56., 1993

Transactions of the Philological Society, 2014

A recent paper on the prehistory of the Tibetan verbal system by Guillaume Jacques (2012), in keeping with many previous authorities, presents Tibetan verbs as occurring in pairs, with a voiced intransitive and a voice-alternating transitive member. However, as noticed by Uray, Tibetan verbs occur in triplets with no relationship between voicing and transitivity.

Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 163, 2013

Biicherbesprechungen 289 NATHAN HILL: A Lexicon of Tibetan Verb Stems as Reported by the Grammatical Tradition. Miinchen: Kommission fur Zentral-und Ostasiatische Studien, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften 2010. xxxiv, 349 S. (Studia Tibetica V.) ISBN 978 -3-7696-1004-8. € 58,-. The present book is, after HACKETT's Tibetan Verb Lexicon, another attempt to gather known information about Tibetan verbs in one reference work. The compilation is primarily based on nine lexicological works, the list of which is given under "Abbreviations" (p. xxiii) and includes A KYA YONS 'DZIN DBYANS CAN DGA' BA'I BLO GROS Rtags kyi 'jug pa'i dka' gnas bdag gian dan bya byed las gsum gyi khyad par iib tu phye ba iiun gsa! 'phrul gyi Ide mig, Rnam dbye brgya (sic!) dan na (sic!) bya bye (sic!) las sogs kyi khyad par mdo tsam brjod pa dka ' gnadgsal ba'i me !on, NAG DBAN BSTAN DAR LHA RAMS PASum cu pa dan rtags 'jug gi don go sla bar bsdus pa'i biad pa skalldan yid kyi pa dam (sic!) 'byed pa'i snail pa'i (sic!) mdod (sic!) bya ba, BLO BZAN TSHUL KHRIMS RGYA MTSHO Bya byed /as gsum dus gsum dan bcas dper brjod, S.C. DAs A Tibetan English Dictionary with Sanskrit Synonyms (CD), 'jiGS MED NAM MKHA'I RDO RJE Bod kyi sprod brda dus gsum sku/ tshig [bii yi-jB] re'u mig 'dzad med rig pa'i mdzod chen, D. W. KHARTO Thumi dgongs gter (DK), BsAM GTAN Dag yig gsar bsgrigs (DS), and ZHANG YISUN Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo (TC).

Evidential Systems of Tibetan Languages, Ed. by Hill, Nathan W. / Gawne, Lauren

This contribution presents the emergence of some Lhasa Tibetan evidentials from Middle Tibetan deictic motion verbs. More specifically, it traces the origin of the ‘receptive egophoric’ and ‘sensorial’ past tense markers byung and song from the Middle Tibetan verbs byung ‘to come forth, to occur’ and song ‘to go’. Hongladarom (1995) also mentions the origin of these evidentials, but without providing philological details of the these verbs as they are used throughout Tibet’s literary history. I fill this gap by presenting three verbal systems that display discrete stages in this evolution: Middle Tibetan (a 15th century biography), Modern Literary Tibetan (2 genres, newspapers and tales), and Lhasa Tibetan. Although Modern Literary Tibetan is not diachronically intermediate between Middle Tibetan and Standard Colloquial Tibetan, its generic conservatism allows it to be used as such.