Evidence for dialectal diversity in Imperial Times, and linguistic criteria for determining the provenance of Old Tibetan texts

Iwao, K., Nishida, A., Dotson, B. (eds.) 2026. Old Tibetan Studies in Honor of Tsuguhito Takeuchi and Helga Uebach, Proceedings of the Panel Old Tibetan Studies VII, Prague 2022 ILCAA

This paper investigates linguistic characteristics of modern Tibetan
dialects from two different regions, and discusses evidence for the same
traits in Old Tibetan (OT). Classical Tibetan (ClT) has a number of
verbs with a present stem in ʾG- [ŋG-] and a past stem in bK- [pK-], but
the past stems are different for labial initials: their initial ph- lacks the
b- [p-] prefix which all other initials have, and is aspirated instead (ph-).
In a vast area of modern dialects from Tsang to Ladakh, however, the
same stems are shown in the Comparative Dictionary of Tibetan
Dialects (CDTD) to have an unaspirated initial p-. What is more, this
same p- occurs already in the Chronicle and a few other OT texts, and
I propose here that it may be interpreted as suggesting that these texts
originate from the center of the Empire.
In Amdo, by contrast, the same verb initials appear to have been
pronounced as ph- already in Imperial Times. This aspirated
pronunciation predominated in OT texts from Dunhuang (most of
which are from the first half of the ninth century), and it became the
only possible spelling in ClT. And while present and past stems for non-
labial initials continued to be marked by ŋG- and pK-, imperfective
stems with labial initials are regularly found to have initial m-ph-
instead of the expected m-b-. That is, a nasal prefix came to distinguish
present (m-ph-) from past (ph-) stems with labial initials, and for many
other initials likewise (i.e. present N-Kh- vs. past Kh-, but also ʾchi
[ntɕʰi] < *n-ɕi die’). The fact that nasal prefixed present stems are
among modern dialects found only in Amdo (and northern Kham)
makes it appear likely then that OT texts in which such present stems
occur also originate from that region, and that ClT was also strongly
influenced by the variety spoken there in Imperial Times.