Essentials of Modern Literary Tibetan

Essentials of Modern Literary Tibetan
Author: Melvyn C. Goldstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 1991-09-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780520911840

"Half of the words are read by implication." This Tibetan saying explains the main difficulty Westerners face in learning to read Tibetan fluently. This book will allow beginners to understand the logic of Tibetan grammar and syntax through graded readings and narrative explanations. The large glossary, which is indexed by page, will serve as an invaluable reference grammar for readers of Tibetan at all levels. The reading course includes a wide range of modern literary styles from literature, history, current affairs, newspapers, and even communist political essays.

A Grammar of Purik Tibetan

A Grammar of Purik Tibetan
Author: Marius Zemp
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 993
Release: 2018-05-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004366318

In A Grammar of Purik Tibetan, Marius Zemp offers a comprehensive description of the phonologically archaic Tibetan variety spoken in Kargil, the capital of a region called Purik, situated in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, India. This book contains the most thorough and insightful description of the verbal system of a Tibetic language yet written and will be particularly relevant for scholars studying evidentiality. It also includes highly valuable discussions of a syntactically and pragmatically well-defined class of ideophones which Zemp calls “dramatizers” and of prosody – topics which are too often neglected in language descriptions. Finally, this book goes beyond what others have done in that Purik data are used to elucidate our understanding of Classical Tibetan and its origins.

The Classical Tibetan Language

The Classical Tibetan Language
Author: Stephan V. Beyer
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 534
Release: 1992-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780791410998

Among Asian languages, Tibetan is second only to Chinese in the depth of its historical record, with texts dating back as far as the eighth and ninth centuries, written in an alphabetic script that preserves the contemporaneous phonological features of the language. The Classical Tibetan Language is the first comprehensive description of the Tibetan language and is distinctive in that it treats the classical Tibetan language on its own terms rather than by means of descriptive categories appropriate to other languages, as has traditionally been the case. Beyer presents the language as a medium of literary expression with great range, power, subtlety, and humor, not as an abstract object. He also deals comprehensively with a wide variety of linguistic phenomena as they are actually encountered in the classical texts, with numerous examples of idioms, common locutions, translation devices, neologisms, and dialectal variations.

A Grammar of Tshangla

A Grammar of Tshangla
Author: Erik E. Andvik
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2010
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004178279

"A Grammar of Tshangla" is the first major linguistic description of Tshangla, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Bhutan, northeast India, and southwest China. Written from a functional-typological perspective, it contains a wealth of illustrative examples both from elicited data and from spontaneously generated texts. It is a truly comprehensive description, including sections on phonology, lexicon, morphophonemics, morphosyntactic structure, clause-concatenating constructions, as well as discourse-pragmatic features. The volume will be of interest to language students, and to linguists and ethnographic scholars seeking to understand the Bhutanese and South Asian linguistic situation. The large amount of raw language data presented here make this "Grammar of Tshangla" an indispensable tool for students of Tibeto-Burman comparative linguistics and morphosyntactic theory in general.

Tibetan Language, Literature and Grammar

Tibetan Language, Literature and Grammar
Author: Sangye Tandar Naga
Publisher: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9380359713

This book has been compiled to familarise and acquaint English readers with the Tibetan words and phrases that are found in Tibetan characters or transliterations while reading Tibetan manuscripts. Also this work is intended to help the Tibetans and non-Tibetans who will study Tibetan Grammar. This book is divided into 3 parts, The first part introduces the basic structures of Tibetan language consisting of vowels, consonants, superscribed and subscribed letters and prefixes and suffixes. The second part consists of a collection of articles on Tibetan literature published in the Tibet Journal Series. The third part consists of translations of the three treatises on Tibetan Grammar.

A Tibetan Grammar

A Tibetan Grammar
Author: Bénédicte Vilgrain
Publisher: Serie d Ecriture
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Tibetan language
ISBN: 9781936194223

Originally published in French as separate chapters named for the letter being discussed. Written in a mix of prose and poetry to reflect the writing style Thonmi Sambhota, the founder of Tibetan grammar.

A Textbook in Classical Tibetan

A Textbook in Classical Tibetan
Author: Joanna Bialek
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2022-03-21
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1000543501

A Textbook in Classical Tibetan is the first comprehensive course book in the Classical Tibetan language written in English. The textbook describes the grammar of pre-16th-century Classical Tibetan works for beginners and students of intermediate level. It is intended to cover the most essential topics that can be mastered within two semesters of an academic class. Classical Tibetan is a written Middle Tibetan language that has been in use in Tibet from the 9th century. Until the early 20th century it served all purposes, from administrative, to medical, to religious. Nowadays Classical Tibetan remains an important part of religious identity and services for communities also outside of cultural Tibet, foremost in India, Nepal, and Bhutan, but also elsewhere, most importantly in Europe, North America and Australia. The main body of the textbook consists of an introduction to the Tibetan script, eighteen lessons, and a reading section. Each lesson elucidates several grammatical topics which are followed by an exercise and a word list. The chapter readings contain four supplementary readings. In addition to the main parts of the textbook, a brief introduction to Tibetic languages provides linguistic context for the language taught in the textbook, whereas the chapter Translations of Exercises and Readings contains translations and explanatory notes to the exercises provided at the end of each lesson, as well as to the readings. A Textbook in Classical Tibetan is essential reading for both undergraduate and graduate students without any knowledge of Classical Tibetan, but also for those who would like to deepen their experience of the language by reading annotated excerpts from well-known pieces of Tibetan literature.