夏藏対音資料からみた西夏語の声調

Abstract

In the Tangut materials, there are Buddhist fragments with Tibetan transcriptions. I researched mainly the materials in St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies and studied the tone of Tangut. According to some Tangut phoneticians, it is said that there were two basic tones -平 level tone and 上 raising tone- in Tangut, but descriptions of the value of Tangut tones have not been shown. This study shows that syllables of level tone were transcribed as CCV in Tibetan script because C1- was added to the basic transcription CV, and that syllables of raising tone were transcribed in CV. That is to say, in Tibetan transcription, the syllables of level tone were expressed as high tone and the syllables of raising tone as low tone. Moreover, according to the meanings of the Tangut characters, I have come to the conclusion that level tone was the high-level tone and the raising tone was low-raising tone.