<History> History of the Tibetan Language

Abstract

This paper surveys the historical development of the Tibetan language. This language has two different styles, literary and colloquial, the former of which is documented from the 7th century AD. The founder of the Tibetan Empire Srong tsen sgam po hastened to establish the official language and its orthography. Old Literary Tibetan gradually gained literature in many genres, such as annals, law, contracts, and divination. Old Literary Tibetan was used as a lingua franca by neighboring non-native speakers (Han and Khotanese, for instance) by the 9th century AD. Literary Tibetan has developed both in orthography and syntax. The complex syllable structure was simplified in colloquial Tibetan, which is reflexed in orthographic change. In syntax, the auxiliary verb yin newly emerged and came to function to reflect the speaker's judgment. Literary Tibetan grew more stable by introducing the linguistic change of the colloquial style that occurred in Central Tibet since the 12th century AD, when Old Literary Tibetan was re-established as Classical Tibetan. In colloquial Tibetan, the simplification of syllable structure caused tonogenesis probably around the 10th century AD, and the distinction between myi and mi was lost. At the same time, the morphological structure of the colloquial language has changed from synthetic to analytic. After the 11th century, the loss of consonantal codas (-d, -n, -l, -s) caused vowel changes in the Lhasa dialect. In Early Modern Colloquial Tibetan, the auxiliary verb red was introduced from the Amdo dialect and diffused into Central Tibet. This type of linguistic change induced the influence of the Early Modern Literary style. On the whole, there are many common features attested from the Old Tibetan to Modern Tibetan dialects, which are quite distinct from other Himalayan languages, and after the Old Tibetan Empire was established, the Tibetan language rapidly diffused over the entire Tibetan territory with the Tibetan Empire's abrupt extension, after which the Tibetan dialects evolved. This is what I call the "Big Bang hypothesis."