There are four recognised stages of Tibetan: Archaic, Old, Classical, Medieval and Modern. Old Tibetan was used from the seventh century to translate mostly Sanskrit texts from the Mahāyāna Buddhist canon, though standardization in 816CE during the reign of King Sadnalegs gave rise to the form of the language known as Classical Tibetan.[1][2] Some medieval writers strayed from this written standard by using more colloquial phrases and words, compound words, and omitting case particles. This process continued to create the current differences between Modern Literary Tibetan and Classical Tibetan.[1]
The grammar varies greatly depending on period and geographic origin of the author.[citation needed]
Phonology
The phonology implied by Classical Tibetan orthography is very similar to the phonology of Old Tibetan.[citation needed] The following information is based on Hodge's description of Classical Tibetan.[1]
↑ ' ⟨འ⟩ is usually silent, but may be pronounced [n] when occurring as a prefix.
Prefixes are usually silent with the exception of db- when preceding a, e, or o, where it is realized as [w]. The suffixes -g and -b are devoiced to /k/ and /p/, and the suffixes -d and -s are silent.
/ɑ/, /u/, and /o/ are raised to [ɛ], u [y], o [ø~œ] before the suffixes -d /∅/, -s /∅/, -n /n/, and -l /l/. All vowels are lengthened before the -gs /∅/ suffix.[1]
Nouns
Structure of the noun phrase
Nominalizing suffixes — pa or ba and ma — are required by the noun or adjective that is to be singled out;
po or bo (masculine) and mo (feminine) are used for distinction of gender.
The plural is denoted, when required, by adding the morpheme -rnams; when the collective nature of the plurality is stressed the morpheme -dag is instead used. These two morphemes combine readily (e.g. rnams-dag'a group with several members', and dag-rnams'several groups').[3]
Cases
The classical written language has ten cases, listed below, though scholars differ in their analyses.[4] Traditional Tibetan grammarians do not distinguish case markers in this manner, but rather distribute these case morphemes (excluding -dang and -bas) into the eight cases of Sanskrit. -la, -na and -tu etc. are traditionally grouped as the la don particles, as -las and -nas are as ’byung khungs.[5]
Case markers are affixed to entire noun phrases, not to individual words (i.e. Gruppenflexion).
Pronouns
There are personal, demonstrative, interrogative and reflexive pronouns, as well as an indefinite article, which is plainly related to the numeral for "one."[6]
Personal pronouns
As an example of the pronominal system of classical Tibetan, the Milarepa rnam thar, exhibits the following personal pronouns.[7]
Verbs do not inflect for person or number. Morphologically there are up to four separate stem forms, which the Tibetan grammarians, influenced by Sanskrit grammatical terminology, call the "present" (lta-da), "past" ('das-pa), "future" (ma-'ongs-pa), and "imperative" (skul-tshigs), although the precise semantics of these stems is still controversial. The so-called future stem is not a true future, but conveys the sense of necessity or obligation.
The majority of Tibetan verbs fall into one of two categories, those that express implicitly or explicitly the involvement of an agent, marked in a sentence by the instrumental particle (kyis, etc.) and those that express an action that does not involve an agent. Tibetan grammarians refer to these categories as tha-dad-pa and tha-mi-dad-pa respectively. Although these two categories often seem to overlap with the English[citation needed] grammatical concepts of transitive and intransitive, most modern writers on Tibetan grammar have adopted the terms "voluntary" and "involuntary", based on native Tibetan descriptions.[citation needed] Most involuntary verbs lack an imperative stem.
Inflection
Many verbs exhibit stem ablaut among the four stem forms, thus a or e in the present tends to become o in the imperative byed, byas, bya, byos ('to do'), an e in the present changes to a in the past and future (len, blangs, blang, longs 'to take'); in some verbs a present in i changes to u in the other stems ('dzin, bzung, gzung, zung 'to take'). Additionally, the stems of verbs are also distinguished by the addition of various prefixes and suffixes, thus sgrub (present), bsgrubs (past), bsgrub (future), 'sgrubs (imperative). Though the final -s suffix, when used, is quite regular for the past and imperative, the specific prefixes to be used with any given verb are less predictable; while there is a clear pattern of b- for a past stem and g- for a future stem, this usage is not consistent.[8]
Meaning
present
past
future
imperative
do
བྱེད་byed
བྱས་byas
བྱ་bya
བྱོས་byos
take
ལེན་len
བླངས་blangs
བླང་blang
ལོངས་longs
take
འཛིན་'dzin
བཟུངས་bzungs
གཟུང་gzung
ཟུངས་zungs
accomplish
སྒྲུབ་sgrub
བསྒྲུབས་bsgrubs
བསྒྲུབ་bsgrub
སྒྲུབས་sgrubs
Only a limited number of verbs are capable of four changes; some cannot assume more than three, some two, and many only one. This relative deficiency is made up by the addition of auxiliaries or suffixes both in the classical language and in the modern dialects.[9]
Negation
Verbs are negated by two prepositional particles: mi and ma. Mi is used with present and future stems. The particle ma is used with the past stem; prohibitions do not employ the imperative stem, rather the present stem is negated with ma. There is also a negative stative verb med'there is not, there does not exist', the counterpart to the stative verb yod'there is, there exists'.
Honorifics
As with nouns, Tibetan also has a complex system of honorific and polite verbal forms. Thus, many verbs for everyday actions have a completely different form to express the superior status, whether actual or out of courtesy, of the agent of the action, thus lta'see', hon. gzigs; byed'do', hon. mdzad. Where a specific honorific verb stem does not exist, the same effect is brought about by compounding a standard verbal stem with an appropriate general honorific stem such as mdzad.
Beyer, Stephen (1992). The Classical Tibetan language. New York: State University of New York. Reprint 1993, (Bibliotheca Indo-Buddhica series, 116.) Delhi: Sri Satguru.
Hahn, Michael (2003). Schlüssel zum Lehrbuch der klassischen tibetischen Schriftsprache. Marburg: Indica et Tibetica Verlag.
Hill, Nathan W. (2010), "Brief overview of Tibetan Verb Morphology"(PDF), Lexicon of Tibetan Verb Stems as Reported by the Grammatical Tradition, Studia Tibetica, Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, pp.xv–xxii
Hodge, Stephen (1993). An Introduction to Classical Tibetan (Reviseded.). Warminster: Aris & Phillips. pp.vii. ISBN0856685488.
Schwieger, Peter (2006). Handbuch zur Grammatik der klassischen tibetischen Schriftsprache. Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies.
Tournadre, Nicolas (2003). Manual of Standard Tibetan (MST). Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications.
skal-bzhang 'gur-med (1992). Le clair miroir: enseignement de la grammaire Tibetaine. Translated by Stoddard, Heather; Tournadre, Nicholas. Paris: Editions Prajna.
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