Lhasa Tibetan


Lhasa Tibetan or Standard Tibetan is a standardized dialect of Tibetan spoken by the people of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. It is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
In the traditional "three-branched" classification of the Tibetic languages, the Lhasa dialect belongs to the Central Tibetan branch. In terms of mutual intelligibility, speakers of Khams Tibetan are able to communicate at a basic level with Lhasa Tibetan, while Amdo speakers cannot. Both Lhasa Tibetan and Khams Tibetan evolved to become tonal and do not preserve the word-initial consonant clusters, which makes them very far from Classical Tibetan, especially when compared to the more conservative Amdo Tibetan.

Registers

Like many languages, Lhasa Tibetan has a variety of language registers:
  • ཕལ་སྐད། : the vernacular speech.
  • ཞེ་ས། : the formal spoken style, particularly prominent in Lhasa.
  • ཡིག་སྐད། : the written literary style; may include ཆོས་སྐད below.
  • ཆོས་སྐད། : the literary style in which the scriptures and other classical works are written.

    Grammar

Syntax and word order

Tibetan is an ergative language, with what can loosely be termed subject–object–verb word order. Grammatical constituents broadly have head-final word order:
  • adjectives generally follow nouns in Tibetan, unless the two are linked by a genitive particle
  • objects and adverbs precede the verb, as do adjectives in copular clauses
  • a noun marked with the genitive case precedes the noun which it modifies
  • demonstratives and numerals follow the noun they modify.

    Nouns and pronouns

Tibetan nouns do not possess grammatical gender, although this may be marked lexically, nor do they inflect for number. However, definite human nouns may take a plural marker.
Tibetan has been described as having six cases: absolutive, agentive, genitive, ablative, associative and oblique. These are generally marked by particles, which are attached to entire noun phrases, rather than individual nouns. These suffixes may vary in form based on the final sound of the root.
Personal pronouns are inflected for number, showing singular, dual and plural forms. They can have between one and three registers.
The Standard Tibetan language distinguishes three levels of demonstrative: proximal "this", medial "that", and distal "that over there ". These can also take case suffixes.

Verbs

Verbs in Tibetan always come at the end of the clause. Verbs do not show agreement in person, number or gender in Tibetan. There is also no voice distinction between active and passive; Tibetan verbs are neutral with regard to voice.
Tibetan verbs can be divided into classes based on volition and valency. The volition of the verb has a major effect on its morphology and syntax. Volitional verbs have imperative forms, whilst non-volitional verbs do not: compare "Look!" with the non-existent * "*See!". Additionally, only volitional verbs can take the egophoric copula.
Verbs in Tibetan can be split into monovalent and divalent verbs; some may also act as both, such as "break". This interacts with the volition of the verb to condition which nouns take the ergative case and which must take the absolutive, remaining unmarked. Nonetheless, distinction in transitivity is orthogonal to volition; both the volitional and non-volitional classes contain transitive as well as intransitive verbs.
The aspect of the verb affects which verbal suffixes and which final auxiliary copulae are attached. Morphologically, verbs in the unaccomplished aspect are marked by the suffix or its other forms, identical to the genitive case for nouns, whereas accomplished aspect verbs do not use this suffix. Each can be broken down into two subcategories: under the unaccomplished aspect, future and progressive/general; under the accomplished aspect, perfect and aorist or simple perfective.
Evidentiality is a well-known feature of Tibetan verb morphology, gaining much scholarly attention, and contributing substantially to the understanding of evidentiality across languages. The evidentials in Standard Tibetan interact with aspect in a system marked by final copulae, with the following resultant modalities being a feature of Standard Tibetan, as classified by Nicolas Tournadre:
  • Assertive
  • Allocentric intentional egophoric
  • Allocentric intentional egophoric/Imminent danger
  • Experiential egophoric
  • Habitual/Generic assertive
  • Inferential
  • Intentional egophoric
  • Intentional/Habitual egophoric
  • Receptive egophoric
  • Testimonial

    Numerals

Unlike many other languages of East Asia such as Burmese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese, there are no numeral auxiliaries or measure words used in counting in Tibetan. However, words expressive of a collective or integral are often used after the tens, sometimes after a smaller number.
In scientific and astrological works, the numerals, as in Vedic Sanskrit, are expressed by symbolical words.
The written numerals are a variant of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, forming a base-10 positional counting system that is attested early on in Classical Tibetan texts.
Tibetan Numerals
Devanagari numerals०१२३४५६७८९
Bengali numerals০১২৩৪৫৬৭৮৯
Arabic numerals0123456789

Tibetan makes use of a special connector particle for the units above each multiple of ten. Between 100 and 199, the connective dang, literally "and", is used after the hundred portion. Above saya million, the numbers are treated as nouns and thus have their multiples following the word.
The numbers 1, 2, 3 and 10 change spelling when combined with other numerals, reflecting a change in pronunciation in combination.
Written
Tibetan		Wylie transliterationArabic
numerals		Written
Tibetan		Wylie transliterationArabic
numerals		Written
Tibetan		Wylie transliterationArabic
numerals
gcig1nyi shu tsa gcig21bzhi bgya400
gnyis2nyi shu rtsa gnyis22lnga bgya500
gsum3nyi shu rtsa gsum23drug bgya600
bzhi4nyi shu rtsa bzhi24bdun bgya700
lnga5nyi shu rtsa lnga25brgyad bgya800
drug6nyi shu rtsa drug26dgu bgya900
bdun7nyi shu rtsa bdun27chig stong1000
brgyad8nyi shu rtsa brgyad28khri 10,000
dgu9nyi shu rtsa dgu29
bcu10sum cu30sum cu so gcig31
bcu gcig11bzhi bcu40bzhi bcu zhe gcig41
bcu gnyis12lnga bcu50lnga bcu nga gcig51
bcu gsum13drug cu60drug cu re gcig61
bcu bzhi14bdun cu70bdun cu don gcig71
bco lnga15brgyad cu80brgyad cu gya gcig81
bcu drug16dgu bcu90dgu bcu go gcig91
bcu bdun17bgya100bgya dang gcig101
bco brgyad18bgya dang lnga bcu150
bcu dgu19nyis bgya200
nyi shu20sum bgya300
'bum 100,000
sa ya 1,000,000
bye ba 10,000,000
dung phyur 100,000,000
ther 'bum 1,000,000,000

Ordinal numbers are formed by adding a suffix to the cardinal number, , with the exception of the ordinal number "first", which has its own lexeme, .