|
|
|
|
Tangut language
|
| |
|
| |
Tangut (also Xixia or Hsi-Hsia) is an ancient northeastern Tibeto-Burman language once spoken in the Tangut Empire. By some linguists it is classified as one of the Qiangic languages, among which one also finds Qiang and rGyalrong. It is distantly related to Tibetan and Burmese, and possibly also to Chinese.
Tangut was the official language of the Tangut empire (known in Tibetan as Mi-nyag and in Chinese as Xixia ??), inhabited by the Tangut people, which obtained its independence from the Chinese Song dynasty at the beginning of the 11th century, and was annihilated by Cinggis Qaan (commonly known as Genghis Khan) in 1227.
The Tangut language has its own script, namely the Tangut script.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Tangut language' Start a new discussion about 'Tangut language' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
Tangut (also Xixia or Hsi-Hsia) is an ancient northeastern Tibeto-Burman language once spoken in the Tangut Empire. By some linguists it is classified as one of the Qiangic languages, among which one also finds Qiang and rGyalrong. It is distantly related to Tibetan and Burmese, and possibly also to Chinese.
Tangut was the official language of the Tangut empire (known in Tibetan as Mi-nyag and in Chinese as Xixia ??), inhabited by the Tangut people, which obtained its independence from the Chinese Song dynasty at the beginning of the 11th century, and was annihilated by Cinggis Qaan (commonly known as Genghis Khan) in 1227.
The Tangut language has its own script, namely the Tangut script. Occasionally, for religious documents, the Tangut language was written in Tibetan script.
Rediscovery
The latest text (a piece of Buddhist sutra) we can find written in the Tangut language dates to 1502, which means that the language was still in use three hundred years after the annihilation of the Tangut Empire.
The majority of extant Tangut texts were excavated at Khara-Khoto in 1908 by Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov, and these documents are at present preserved in the Saint Petersburg branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The collections amount to about 10,000 volumes, of mostly Buddhist texts, law codes and legal documents dating from mid-11th up to early 13th centuries. Among the Buddhist texts a number of unique compilations, not known either in Chinese or in Tibetan versions, were recently discovered. Furthermore, the Buddhist canon, the Confucian classics, and a great number of indigenous texts written in Tangut have been preserved. These other major Tangut collections, though much smaller in size, belong to the British Museum, National Library in Beijing, Library of Beijing University and other libraries.
The research of Tangut script began in the early 20th century when M. Maurisse first acquired a copy of the Tangut Lotus Sutra, which was partially researched by some unknown Chinese scholar. After the discovery of the Khara-Khoto library by P. K. Kozlov, the script was identified as that of the Tangut state of Xixia, and actual research began. Such scholars as Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov, Ishihama Juntaro, Berthold Laufer, Luo Fuchang, Luo Fucheng, and Wang Jingru have contributed to research on the Tangut language. The most significant contribution was made by the Russian scholar N. A. Nevskij (1892-1937), who compiled the first Tangut Dictionary and reconstructed the meaning of a number of Tangut grammatical particles, thus making it possible to actually read and understand Tangut texts. His scholarly achievements were published in 1960 under the title "Tangutskaya Filologia" (Tangut Philology) and the scholar was eventually awarded the Soviet Lenin State Prize for his work. The understanding of the Tangut language is far from perfect: although certain issues of morphology (Ksenia Kepping, "The Morphology of the Tangut Language", Moscow: Nauka, 1985) and grammar (Nishida Tatsuo, "Seika bun no kenkyu", etc) have been resolved, the syntax structure of Tangut remains largely unexplored.
Reconstruction
The connection between the writing and the pronunciation of the Tangut language is even more tenuous than that between Chinese writing and the modern Chinese languages. Thus although in Chinese more than 90% of the characters possess a phonetic element, this proportion is limited to about 10% in Tangut according to Sofronov. The reconstruction of Tangut pronunciation must resort to other sources.
The discovery of the Fanhan heshi zhangzhongzhu (Chinese: ??????? "Tangut-Chinese timely handy pearl"), a Tangut-Chinese bilingual glossary, permitted Ivanov (1909) and Laufer (1916) to propose initial reconstructions and to undertake the comparative study of Tangut. This glossary in effect indicates the pronunciation of each Tangut character with one or several Chinese characters, and inversely each Chinese character with one or more Tangut characters. The second source is the corpus of Tibetan transcriptions of Tangut. These data were studied for the first time by Nevsky (Nevskij) (1925).
Nonetheless, these two sources were not in themselves sufficient for a systematic reconstruction of Tangut. In effect, these transcriptions were not written with the intention of representing with precision the pronunciation of Tangut, but instead simply to help foreigners to pronounce and memorize the words of one language with the words of another which they could understand.
The third source, which constitutes the basis of the modern reconstructions, consists of monolingual Tangut dictionaries: the Wenhai, two editions of the Tongyin, the Wenhai zalei and an untitled dictionary. The record of the pronunciation in these dictionaries is made using the principle of fanqie, borrowed from the Chinese lexicographic tradition. Although these dictionaries may differ on small details (e.g. the Tongyin categorizes the characters according to syllable initial and rime without taking any account of tone), they all adopt the same system of 105 rimes. A certain number of rimes are in complementary distribution with respect to the place of articulation of the initials, e.g. rimes 10 and 11 or rimes 36 and 37, which shows that the scholars who composed these dictionaries had made a very precise phonological analysis of their language.
In distinction to the transcription in foreign languages, the Tangut fanqie makes distinctions among the rhymes in a systematic and very precise manner. Due to the fanqie, we now have a good understanding of the phonological categories of the language. Nonetheless, it is necessary to compare the phonological system of the dictionaries with the other sources in order to "fill in" the categories with a phonetic value.
N. A. Nevsky reconstructed Tangut grammar and provided the first Tangut-Chinese-English dictionary, which together with the collection of his papers was published posthumously in 1960 under the title "Tangut Philology" (Moscow: 1960). Later, substantial contribution to the research of Tangut language was done by Nishida Tatsuo , K.B. Kepping, Gong Hwang cherng, M.V. Sofronov and Li Fanwen. There are three Tangut dictionaries available: the one composed by N.A. Nevsky, the other two composed by Li Fanwen and E.I. Kychanov respectively.
There is growing a school of Tangut studies in China. Leading scholars include Shi Jinbo, Li Fanwen, Nie Hongyin, Bai Bin in mainland China, and Hwang-cherng Gong and Lin Yingjin in Taiwan. In other countries, leading scholars in the field include E. I. Kychanov and his student K. J. Solonin in Russia, Nishida Tatsuo and Arakawa Shintaro in Japan, and Ruth W. Dunnell in the USA.
Phonology
The Tangut syllable has a CVC structure and carries one of two distinctive tones, flat or rising. Following the tradition of Chinese phonological analysis the Tangut syllable is divided into initial and rhyme (i.e. the remaining syllable minus the initial).
Consonants
The consonants are divided into the following categories.
| Chinese Term | Translation | Modern Term | Arakawa | Gong |
|---|
| ???? | heavy lip | bilabials | p, ph, b, m | p, ph, b, m | | ???? | light lip | labio-dentals | f, v, w | | | ???? | tongue tip | dentals | t, th, d, n | t, th, d, n | | ???? | upper tongue | | ty', thy', dy', ny' | | | ??? | ga-like | velars | k, kh, g, ng | k, kh, g, ? | | ???? | tooth tip | dental affricates and fricatives | ts, tsh, dz, s | ts, tsh, dz, s | | ???? | true tooth | palatal affricates and fricatives | c, ch, j, sh | t?, t?h, d?, ? | | ??? | | laryngeals | ', h | ., x, ? | | ???? | flowing air | resonants | l, lh, ld, z, r, zz | l, lh, z, r, ? |
The rhyme books distinguish 105 rhyme classes. These are in turn are classified in several ways, by grade, type, and class.
Tangut rhymes occur in three types. These are seen in the tradition of Nishida, followed by both Arakawa and Gong as 'normal' ????, 'tense'????, and 'retroflex' ????. Gong leaves normal vowels unmarked, places a dot under tense vowels, and an -r after retroflex vowels. Arakawa differs only by indicating tense vowels with a final -q.
The rhyme books distinguish four vowel grades. In early phonetic reconstructions all four were separately accounted for, but it has since been realized that grades three and four are in complementary distribution depending on the initial. Consequently the reconstructions of Arakawa and Gong do not account for this distinction. Gong represents these three grades as V, iV, and jV. Arakawa accounts for them as V, iV, and V:.
In general rhyme class, corresponds to the set of all rhymes under the same rhyme type which have the same main vowel.
Gong further posits phonemic vowel length. The evidence he points to indicates that Tangut had a distinction that Chinese lacked, but does not include positive evidence that this distinction was vowel length. Consequently other researchers have remained skeptical.
Vowels
| ???? | ???? | ???? |
|---|
| close | i I u | iq eq uq | ir Ir ur | | mid | e o | eq2 oq | er or | | open | a | aq | ar | |
Bibliography
- Shintaro Arakawa. ????? 1997. "???????" [Tangut Rhyme Dictionary]. ??????? [Linguistic Research] Vol. 16: 1-153.
- _____. 1999. "????????????????" [A Study on Tangut Tones from Tibetan Transcriptions]. ??????? [Linguistic Research] Vol. 17-18: 27-44.
- _____ . 2001."?????????????????????????????????" [About the rhymes in Tangut verses: Reanalysis of Tangut rhyming poetry in San shi shu ming yan ji wen]. ??????????? [Linguistic Research of the Kyoto University] Vol. 20: 195-224.
- _____. 2003. "??????????????? - ????????????" [Tangut Fragments preserved in the University of Tokyo - The Tangut Version of the Mahaprajńaparamitopadesa]. ??????????? Vol 22: 379-390.
- Gong Hwangcherng. ??? 1999. [Tense vowels and their origin in Xixia]. «??????????????» [Collected Papers of the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica] 70.2: 531-558.
- _____. 2001. [Rime transformation and person agreement in Xixia verbs]. «??????» [Language and Linguistics] 2.1: 21-67.
- Ivanov, A. 1909. Zur kenntnis der Hsi-hsia Sprache. Izvestia Akademii nauk.
- Kepping, Ksenia B. 1971. "A category of aspect in Tangut," trans. E. Grinstead. Acta Orientalia 33: 283-294.
- _____. 1975. "Subject and object agreement in the Tangut verb". trans. J. A. Matisoff. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 2.2:219-232.
- _____. 1979. "Elements of ergativity and nominativity in Tangut." in Ergativity: towards a theory of grammatical relations, ed. Frans Plank, 263-277. London: Academic Press.
- _____. 1979. Sun' tszy v tangutskom perevode: Faksimile ksilografa. Izdanie teksta, perovod, vvedenie, kommentarii, grammaticheskii ocherk, slover' i prilozhenie (Pamiatniki pis'mennosti vostoka 49) [Sun Tsz in Tangut translation: Facsimile of xylograph. Publication of text, translation, introduction, commentary, grammatical sketch, dictionary, and appendices (Literary texts of the East 49)]. Moscow: Nauka.
- _____. 1981. "Agreement of the verb in Tangut". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 6. 1:39-48.
- _____. 1982. "Deictic motion verbs in Tangut." Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 6.2:77-82.
- _____. 1982. "Once again on the agreement of the Tangut verb." Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 7. 1:39-54.
- _____. 1989. ?????? [The structure of the Tangut language]. ??????? [Studies on the history of the nationalities of China] 2, ed. Bai Bin, Shi Jinbo, Lu Xun, and Gao Wende, 312-326. Beijing: Zhongyang Minzu Xueyuan Chubanshe.
- Kepping, Ksenia B., V. S. Kolokolov, E. I. Kychanov, and A. P. Terent'ov Katanskii. 1969. More pis'men: Faksimile tangutskikh ksilografov. Perevod s tangutskogo, vstupitel'nye stat'i i prelozheniia [Sea of characters: Facsimile of Tangut xylographs. Translation from Tangut, and intruductory articles and appendices (Literary texts of the East 16)]. Moscow: Nauka.
- Laufer, B. 1916. "The Si-hia Language, a study in Indo-Chinese Philology". T'oung Pao Vol. 17.
- Li Fanwen. 1980. ?????? [A Compilation of Xixia Studies].Ningxia: ??????? [Ningxia People's Press].
- _____. 1998. ???? [Xixia-Chinese Dictionary]. Beijing: ?????????? [Chinese Academy of Social Science Press].
- Nevsky, N.A. 1925. A brief manual of the Si-hia characters with Tibetan transcriptions. ?????????? [Research Review of the Osaka Asiatic Society].
- Sofronov, M.V. 1968. Grammatika tangutskogo jazyka [Grammar of the Tangut language]. Moscow: Nauka.
External links
|
| |
|
|
