Old Tibetan Annals: A Comprehensive Text Grammar. Part II

• Applicant: Dr. Joanna Bialek
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics ; Asian Studies
• Term: from 2016 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 324476415

The planned research project addresses one of the most underrepresented fields in Tibetan Studies and particularly in Tibetan linguistics, namely the grammar of the oldest documented Tibetan language and one of the oldest documented Tibeto-Burman languages in general, the so-called Old Tibetan (7th - 10th century). The proposed research project is deemed to be the first step in filling this gap in the documentation of written Tibetan languages. The primary goal of the research project is to provide the first thorough grammatical and lexicological description of an Old Tibetan text, i.e. the Old Tibetan Annals I (OTA-I; PT 1288 & ITJ 750). The project “Old Tibetan Annals: A Comprehensive Text Grammar. Part II” builds upon the first project. Its main objective is to elaborate on elements of the OT grammar (concerning, in particular, syntax and discourse) that require a new thorough examination in view of the proposed reconstruction of the verb morphology and semantics.As a secondary objective of the proposed research the results of the lexicological analyses of the vocabulary of the OTA-I & II are planned to be published as an open access online dictionary. In addition, a morphosyntactic annotation of the text of the OTA-I, as well as a new translation of the OTA-I & II (Or.8212/187) are to be included.The research project is based on a combination of various methodological approaches, mainly from philology, typological studies, as well as historical linguistics. The philological analysis will concentrate on the very text of the OTA-I, whereas for the linguistic examination a text corpus of OT documents available to date shall additionally be made use of. It is hoped that the project creates a foundation on which deepened historical linguistic analyses of Tibetan but also other Tibeto-Burman languages could be based in the future. Its results are considered of particular importance for the study of the later phases of language development, especially for dialectology. The planned text grammar will likewise enhance our understanding of grammaticalisation processes and lexical changes that occurred between Old Tibetan and the modern languages.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants