Classical Tibetan

Classical Tibetan is a liturgical language of Tibetan Buddhism that dates from the 9th century. It particularly refers to the language of early canonical texts translated from other languages, especially Sanskrit. It is one of the handful of 'living' classical languages along with Arabic, Ge'ez, and New Persian, though it meaningfully differs from Modern [Lhasa Tibetan grammar|Modern Standard Tibetan].

History

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 during the reign of King Sadnalegs gave rise to the form of the language known as Classical Tibetan. 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.
The grammar varies greatly depending on period and geographic origin of the author.

Phonology

The phonology implied by Classical Tibetan orthography is very similar to the phonology of Old Tibetan. The following information is based on Hodge's description of Classical Tibetan.

Consonants

Prefixes are usually silent with the exception of db- when preceding a, e, or o, where it is realized as . The suffixes -g and -b are devoiced to /k/ and /p/, and the suffixes -d and -s are silent.

Vowels

/ɑ/, /u/, and /o/ are raised to , u , o before the suffixes -d /∅/, -s /∅/, -n /n/, and -l /l/. All vowels are lengthened before the -gs /∅/ suffix.

Nouns

Structure of the noun phrase

Nominalizing suffixes — or and — are required by the noun or adjective that is to be singled out;

or and are used for distinction of gender.

The plural is denoted, when required, by adding the morpheme ; when the collective nature of the plurality is stressed the morpheme is instead used. These two morphemes combine readily.

Cases

The classical written language has ten cases, listed below, though scholars differ in their analyses. Traditional Tibetan grammarians do not distinguish case markers in this manner, but rather distribute these case morphemes 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.
Case markers are affixed to entire noun phrases, not to individual words.

Pronouns

There are personal, demonstrative, interrogative and reflexive pronouns, as well as an indefinite article, which is plainly related to the numeral for "one."

Personal pronouns

As an example of the pronominal system of classical Tibetan, the, exhibits the following personal pronouns.

Person	Singular	Plural
First person	ང་	ངེད་
First + Second		རང་རེ་
Second person	ཁྱོད་	ཁྱེད་
Third person	ཁོ་	ཁོང་

The plural can be used as a polite singular.

Verbs

s 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", "past", "future", and "imperative", 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 and those that express an action that does not involve an agent. Tibetan grammarians refer to these categories as and respectively. Although these two categories often seem to overlap with the English grammatical concepts of transitive and intransitive, most modern writers on Tibetan grammar have adopted the terms "voluntary" and "involuntary", based on native Tibetan descriptions. Most involuntary verbs lack an imperative stem.

Inflection

Many verbs exhibit stem ablaut among the four stem forms, thus or in the present tends to become in the imperative,,, , an in the present changes to in the past and future ; in some verbs a present in changes to in the other stems. Additionally, the stems of verbs are also distinguished by the addition of various prefixes and suffixes, thus , , , '. Though the final 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 for a past stem and for a future stem, this usage is not consistent.

Meaning	present	past	future	imperative
do	བྱེད་	བྱས་	བྱ་	བྱོས་
take	ལེན་	བླངས་	བླང་	ལོངས་
take	འཛིན་	བཟུངས་	གཟུང་	ཟུངས་
accomplish	སྒྲུབ་	བསྒྲུབས་	བསྒྲུབ་	སྒྲུབས་

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.

Negation

Verbs are negated by two prepositional particles: and. is used with present and future stems. The particle is used with the past stem; prohibitions do not employ the imperative stem, rather the present stem is negated with. There is also a negative stative verb , the counterpart to the stative verb .

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 , hon. ; , hon.. 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.