Old Tibetan refers to the earliest attested form of Tibetan language , reflected in documents from the adoption of writing by the Tibetan Empire in the mid-7th century to the early 9th century. In 816 CE, during the reign of Tibetan King Sadnalegs , literary Tibetan underwent comprehensive standardization, resulting in Classical Tibetan .
15-518: The Tibetan Annals or Old Tibetan Annals ( OTA ) are composed of two manuscripts written in Old Tibetan language found in the early 20th century in the "hidden library" in the Mogao Grottoes near Dunhuang in northwestern Gansu province, Western China , which is believed to have been sealed in the 11th century CE. They form Tibet's earliest extant history. The two manuscripts are known as
30-575: A powerful empire. They also provide a valuable way of checking and dating events mentioned in later Tibetan and Chinese historical records. Neither the Annals nor the Chronicle make any mention of Buddhism in the reign of Songtsen Gampo. Old Tibetan Old Tibetan is characterised by many features that are lost in Classical Tibetan, including my- rather than m- before the vowels -i- and -e- ,
45-537: Is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ b ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is b . The voiced bilabial stop occurs in English, and it is the sound denoted by the letter ⟨b⟩ in o b ey [oʊˈbeɪ] . [REDACTED] Features of the voiced bilabial stop: Symbols to
60-504: Is also held at the British Library. This version is much shorter and covers the years 743–765 with some gaps. An enormous number of early manuscripts in a variety of languages were collected by A. Stein and P. Pelliot at the famous sealed-up Library Cave (no. 17) of the Mogao Grottoes and sent back to London and Paris respectively. Among these Dunhuang manuscripts , The Tibetan Annals (or "Tibet’s First History") were found along with
75-419: Is written ⟨k⟩ before /l̥/ . Palatalization /Cʲ/ was phonemically distinct from the onset cluster /Cj/ . This produces a contrast between གཡ ⟨g.y⟩ /ɡj/ and གྱ ⟨gy⟩ /ɡʲ/ , demonstrated by the minimal pair གཡང་ g.yaṅ "sheep" and གྱང་ gyaṅ "also, and". The sounds written with the palatal letters ཅ c, ཇ j, ཉ ny, ཞ zh, and ཤ sh were palatalized counterparts of
90-560: The " Old Tibetan Chronicle ", which was probably compiled between 800 and 840 CE. The Annals begin with a very brief account of the early events of the reign of Songtsen Gampo , the first Tibetan Emperor. From the time the Chinese Princess Wencheng arrived in 643 CE until Songtsen Gampo's death in 650 it is possible to accurately date the entries. It then gives a dated, year-by-year précis of important events from 650 to 764 CE. For example, in 763 CE, Tibetan soldiers captured
105-627: The "civil" and "military" versions of the Annals. The "civil" version is designated IOL Tib J 750 in the British Library in London and Pelliot tibétain 1288 in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; both are originally from the same original roll, 4.34 metres long and 0.258 metres wide. The "civil" version covers the years 650–748 with some gaps. The "military" version is designated Or.8212/187 and
120-578: The Chinese capital of Chang'an for fifteen days when the ruling Tang dynasty was recovering from the An Lushan Rebellion . Of course, annals continued to be recorded after this date but, unfortunately, only one or two other minor fragments have survived. The Tibetan cyclic system dates are in much-faded red ink. These accounts, generally accepted as sober court records, provide a priceless view of Tibet in its early phase of expansion and establishment as
135-538: The Classical future and imperative stems. Old Tibetan has three first person singular pronouns ང ་ ṅa , བདག ་ bdag , and ཁོ་བོ ་ kho-bo , and three first-person plural pronouns ངེད ་ nged , བདག་ཅག ་ bdag-cag , and འོ་སྐོལ་ 'o-skol . The second person pronouns include two singulars ཁྱོད་ khyod and ཁྱོ(ན)་འདའ་ khyo(n) -'da' and a plural ཁྱེད་ khyed . Voiced bilabial plosive The voiced bilabial plosive or stop
150-461: The cluster sts- which simplifies to s- in Classical Tibetan, and a reverse form of the "i" vowel letter ( gi-gu ). Aspiration was not phonemic and many words were written indiscriminately with consonants from the aspirated or unaspirated series. Most consonants could be palatalized, and the palatal series from the Tibetan script represents palatalized coronals. The sound conventionally transcribed with
165-497: The eight cases of Sanskrit . Old Tibetan transitive verbs were inflected for up to four stems, while intransitive verbs only had one or two stems. In the active voice , there was an imperfective stem and a perfective stem, corresponding to the Classical Tibetan present and past stems respectively. Transitive verbs also may have two passive voice stems, a dynamic stem and stative stem. These two stems in turn correspond to
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#1732855217152180-505: The letter འ ( Wylie : 'a) was a voiced velar fricative, while the voiceless rhotic and lateral are written with digraphs ཧྲ ⟨hr⟩ and ལྷ ⟨lh⟩ . The following table is based on Hill's analysis of Old Tibetan: In Old Tibetan, the glide / w / occurred as a medial, but not as an initial. The Written Tibetan letter ཝ w was originally a digraph representing two Old Tibetan consonants ɦw . In Old Tibetan, syllables can be quite complex with up to three consonants in
195-686: The onset, two glides, and two coda consonants. This structure can be represented as (C 1 C 2 )C 3 (G 1 G 2 )V(C 4 C 5 ) , with all positions except C 3 and V optional. This allows for complicated syllables like བསྒྲིགས bsgrigs "arranged" and འདྲྭ 'drwa "web", for which the pronunciations [βzɡriks] and [ɣdrʷa] can be reconstructed. A voicing contrast only exists in slot C 3 and spreads to C 1 and C 2 so སྒོ sgo "door" would be realized as [zɡo] while སྐུ sku "body" would be [sku] . Final consonants are always voiceless e.g. འཛིནད་ 'dzind [ɣd͡zint] and གཟུགས་ gzugs [ gzuks ]. The phoneme / b / in C 1
210-682: The phonemic sounds ཙ ts, ཛ dz, ན n, ཟ z, and ས s. Case markers are affixed to entire noun phrases, not to individual words (i.e. Gruppenflexion ). Old Tibetan distinguishes the same ten cases as Classical Tibetan : However, whereas the locative, allative, and terminative gradually fell together in Classical Tibetan (and are referred to the indigenous grammatical tradition as the la don bdun ), in Old Tibetan these three cases are clearly distinguished. Traditional Tibetan grammarians do not distinguish case markers in this manner, but rather distribute these case morphemes (excluding -dang and -bas ) into
225-716: Was likely realized as [ ɸ ] (or [ β ] when C 3 is voiced) e.g. བསྒྲེ bsgre [βzɡre] and བརྩིས brtsis [ɸrtˢis] . The features of palatalization / i̯ / [Cʲ] and labialization / w / [Cʷ] can be considered separate phonemes, realized as glides in G 1 and G 2 respectively. Only certain consonants are permitted in some syllable slots, as summarized below: In C 2 position, / d / and / ɡ / are in complementary distribution: /ɡ/ appears before / t / , / ts / , /d/ , / n / , / s / , / z / , / l / , and / l̥ / in C 3 , while /d/ appears before / k / , /ɡ/ , / ŋ / , / p / , / b / , and / m / in C 3 . Additionally, /ɡ/
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