Talk:Modern Lhasa Tibetan grammar

Article cleanup (and invitation to join in)
Like others I am sure, I am alarmed and filled with concern for the plight of the Tibetan people which recent protests inside and outside Tibet have brought to the world's attention. Probably this is something that cannot be directly said within the text of a Wikipedia article but I would just like to explain that because of this concern I have felt moved to do something to support Tibetan culture at this time, and as a linguist who has contributed substantially to some other language articles (most particularly grammar articles) on Wikipedia, I thought I could help be attempting to improve this Tibetan grammar article. Since I am not knowledgeable about the Tibetan language I can't help to correct substance at this point but I thought I could still contribute by cleaning up the expository aspects, style and so on, which is what I shall try to do. I invite anyone else interested to join me in this, whether simply as part of your usual Wikipedia activity or as a constructive expression of solidarity.

If I think any of my amendments need comment or justification I will append my notes here. Alan --A R King (talk) 20:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * To start with, I am removing the first part of the sentence "The grammar of Tibetan differs greatly from that of European as well as Chinese languages in that it is an ergative language" (in the introduction) and also the mention of European languages in this sentence lower down: "The difference between Tibetan and European languages is that when the suffixes are attached to the noun, the noun remains the same and the suffix changes form." In case somebody wonders why, I offer the following justification. First of all, I don't think it is a good idea, stylistically and in terms of how to present information in this kind of article, to stress comparisons with other languages whether European, Chinese or whatever; it's clearer and more to the point just to characterise the language under discussion. Secondly, the statements I refer to are also factually incorrect. Basque is a European language, yet both of the features being referred to by these sentences are true of it: it is an ergative language and "the noun remains the same and the suffix changes form". --A R King (talk) 20:21, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I have a doubt about the ablative case as described in the article. The text says that this case expresses "direction towards the noun". I have respected that formulation in my cleanup because I am not a Tibetan scholar so I cannot say, but that is certainly not what one expects an ablative case to mean. Rather it is the sense one would expect to attach to an allative case, not an ablative one.


 * I also notice a discrepancy between this account of the Tibetan cases, which are said to be six in number, and the description in the main Tibetan language article, where the cases are numbered as eight. One of the cases there listed is called allative (whereas in this grammar article "allative" is not on the list of cases). I do understand that different grammatical descriptions of a language need not give the same number of cases if they analyse them differently, but here there may be something that needs putting in order. --A R King (talk) 21:04, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Personal pronouns: I suggest a table would be appropriate and helpful here if well designed. It ought to be done by someone who is familiar with the language to avoid making mistakes, so I will refrain for now and wait to see if someone else would like to do it. --A R King (talk) 21:17, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Demonstrative pronouns: Referring to the demonstratives, the article says: "Whether they appear as adjectives or as pronouns they come after the noun..." That doesn't seem to make too much sense... Can we be enlightened? --A R King (talk) 21:21, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The paragraphs about volitional/non-volitional and transitive/intransitive are both lame as they stand at present, because nothing at all is said in the article about how (or even whether!) these categories are expressed or reflected in the language, the categories are only briefly characterised ("a volitional verb is this, a non-volitional one is that"). Why do we need to know this? --A R King (talk) 21:39, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Finally there is a notable imbalance between the attention paid to the copulas and other issues (including verbs). In fact, the section on verbs only consists of the two short paragraphs on verb classes mentioned in my preceding point here, and there is no substantial discussion of how Tibetan verbs actually work at all (the Tibetan language article is actually more informative).


 * I think the next step would probably be to see what (including the verb stuff) in the grammar section of the language article can be fitted into the grammar article. I may or may not be able to offer more help with this (my time is limited, sorry). Anyone else fancy a go? Cheers, Alan --A R King (talk) 21:47, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

PS
If you think this initiative is a good idea, please join in and/or spread the word to your friends and suggest they do the same. All the best, Alan --A R King (talk) 21:54, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I liked your suggestions. They are very helpful.

From my learning of Tibetan, or at least this dialect, there are only six nominal cases. You are correct that I defined the Ablative case incorrectly, it should have been "movement away from" and it will be changed. I also apologise for my lack of detail when it comes to, well, most things. I'm aiming at correcting that mistake by writing up everything I know first, before putting it up on Wikipedia. So, unfortunately, very few changes made by me personally will occur for some time.

Thanks for the input. I hope to improve the article greatly using it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikim3 (talk • contribs) 16:42, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

What is Tibetan
This article is about Modern Standard Tibetan, and appears to be based on Tournadre's textbook. I think it should consequently give IPA transcriptions rather than or in addition to the Wylie transliteration. Also I am going to move the article to 'Modern Standard Tibetan Grammar'. The Grammar of Shigatse includes different personal pronouns, as does that of Amdo, etc. etc. Ideally it would be nice to have articles on each of these. Tibetologist (talk) 20:54, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I chose to use the Wylie tranliterations for the possibility that some people may not have been able view the script. I might update a page on the tibetan script to show how to derive Modern Standard Tibetan pronunciation from the script as well, but I may start using IPA transcriptions too -- Wikim3 (talk) 13:16, 5 July 2008

If Wylie is to be used it would be more in keeping with convention to use <> rather than []. Brackets are traditionally used for phonetic transcriptions, slashes // for phonemic ones, and <> for orthographic transliterations. Tibetologist (talk) 15:05, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Request for descriptive clarification
regarding The Oblique suffix fulfils two the case functions, should this read "... fulfills two of the case functions", or "... fulfills the two case functions" ?

postnote: my interest in this article is in researching the inflections of Tibetan lexicon. I'm a very small part of an initiative to revive the Tibetan section of Wiktionary.org.

Ste3ve H (talk) 21:14, 11 July 2010 (UTC)


 * It depends on what means by 'case'. I suggest reading this discussion

http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/5633/1/Hill_2004_compte_rendu.pdf Tibetologist (talk) 14:25, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Reliance on Tournadre
This article follows Tournadre's analysis so closely that it verges on plagarism. Especially worrisome is that this debt is unacknowledged. To name a few small examples, what is here spelled yod red, is spelled yog red or yo'o red or yod pa red by others. Also, Tournadre's red bzhag I have seen as red zhag in other works. Tibetologist (talk) 21:22, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Revamp commentary & copula chart
I've recently revamped the look of this entry. I changed very little content, sticking mostly to presentation (tables, outlines, wikilinks, punctuation, etc.). There's still a lot to add!

1. While reviewing the layout, I noticed a typo an the example for the Associative case. The Tibetan example formerly had བུ་དང་བུ་མོ་ཚོར་ལག་རྟགས་ སྤྲད་པ་རེད། which would be transliterated . The transliteration indicated , so I changed the Tibetan script accordingly. Though I can read Tibetan letters, I don't know the language. I'm unsure whether the typo was actually in Tibetan or in transliteration, but changed the Tibetan because I assume the person transliterating might more accurately read and write English. I could be wrong; Tibetan speakers please confirm.

2. For the example under the Existential-Assertive copula: ཐུབ་བསྟན་ ཨགས་འདིར་ ཡོད་རེད། "Thubthän is here," I was unable to translate . Do the two words together mean "here"? I left the cell under the description of blank. If anyone knows this word's function, please add it.


 * It should be lags rather than ags, an obvious typo. lags, is lin -san in Japanese. Tibetologist (talk) 08:51, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

3. Given the multiplicity of copula forms, I'd like to insert a copula chart. However, data for the last cell – Existential-Egophoric negative (as in: "[I think] This tea isn't any good") – appears to be missing. I've put an asterisk in its place. As I don't speak Tibetan, I'm not sure what form it takes. If someone else thinks thinks this would be helpful in understanding the copula, whoever is able please complete the chart and put it above the copula discussion.


 * {| class="wikitable"

!  ||   || Affirmative || Negative !rowspan="3" valign="top"| Essential copula !rowspan="3" valign="top"| Existential copula
 * Assertive: || རེད་ || མ་རེད་ 
 * Revelatory: || རེད་བཞག་  || རེད་མི་འདུག་ 
 * Egophoric: || ཡིན་ || མིན་
 * Egophoric: || ཡིན་ || མིན་
 * Egophoric: || ཡིན་ || མིན་
 * Assertive: || ཡོད་རེད་  || ཡོད་མ་རེད་ 
 * Testimonial: || འདུག་ <'dug> || ཡོད་མ་རེད་ 
 * Egophoric: || ཡིན་ || *
 * }
 * Egophoric: || ཡིན་ || *
 * }


 * Incidentally, N Tournadre now prefers 'factual' to 'assertive' particularly in English. Tibetologist (talk) 08:51, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

JFHJr (㊟) 21:24, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Glossing
the glossing used in all examples on this page is unhelpful and hard to follow. the example text is split by hyphens syllable by syllable and the glossing is done on what might be morpheme to morpheme level although it is impossible to say. the lack of correspondence is obvious in that many examples do not have the same number of separated syllables as they do indicated morphemes. do these examples come directly from a peer reviewed study? if so does that paper have a reason for doing this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArmoredFarmer (talk • contribs) 03:34, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

American style quotation marks
Not very important, but this page has the most ridiculous usage of quotation marks I've ever seen.

"of."

"on," "in,"

"here," "there," "over there."

But yeah, this is 'the rule.' Exarchus (talk) 14:08, 10 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I see that the Wikipedia 'Manual of Style' actually prescribes the 'logical quotation' style in all articles. So I'll edit the article. Exarchus (talk) 15:16, 10 May 2023 (UTC)