Ancient Tibetan Language Studies (7-11 A.d.),

This dissertation is an effort to serve three goals:The primary goal of this dissertation is to provide a comprehensive study on the habitat and the origins of its inhabitants of the Tibetan plateau from pre-historical time.The second goal is to utilize both diachronic and synchronic perspectives to provide a general historical exploration of all aspects of the Old Tibetan language from approximately the seventh to eleventh centuries CE.The final goal is to compare phonological aspects of the Tibetan language with those of other languages, in an attempt to better understanding of the phonological system of early Old Tibetan.In my research, I have primarily consulted the following sources:1) Extant Old Tibetan documents, books, wooden slips, and bronze or stone tablets dating from approximately the seventh to eleventh centuries CE2) Extant old bilingual materials, especially Chinese-transcribed Tibetan documents or Tibetan-transcribed Chinese documents (for example, the Dunhuang manuscripts).3) Linguistic data from the Easternmost and Westernmost Tibetan dialects of Modem Tibetan.4) Some relevant archaeological data.5) Some related works mostly in Tibetan.This dissertation consists of five chapters:Chapter one shows the habitat and inhabitants of the Tibetan plateau from pre-historical time. Chapter two discusses the origin of the Tibetan word "bod2(Tibet/Tibetan)","yi ge"(syllable'), and the differentiation between "bod skad""bod yig" and "bod kyi yig gzugs". In this chapter, I also focus on several key consonants,"ca, cha, ja, zha, sha," conducting a comparative study among the dialects spoken in Balti, Ladakhi, Co ne, Zung 'phan and rgyal thang. It is hoped that this chapter will lay out a foundation to reconstruct the development of the proto-Tibetan and occurrences of these dialects branching off at the early stage based on the materials listed above. A solid reconstruction of proto-Tibetan and its sound laws is a necessary step in determining which modern dialects mostly closely resemble the dialects from the time when the Tibetan script was first created. I have also examined the grammatical categories of nouns, sentences, genders, particles, case systems, and functional symbols with the aforementioned source materials.Chapter three is concerned with the imperial Tibetan script. An attempt is made to identify the close relationship between Indian and Tibetan scripts by comparing a certain letters from this early period.Chapter four is an overview of how ancient verbal philology was transmitted between India, Zhangzhung and Tibet. It also looks into the imperial efforts in overseeing translation projects and standardizing terminology.Chapter five is an analysis of the lexicon, syntax, and grammar of the Tibetan language. In the end I, provide my own humble opinion on the so-called Sino-Tibetan language family debates.