Table Of ContentUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Santa Barbara
A Grammar of Dongwang Tibetan
A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
in Linguistics
by
Ellen Lynn Bartee
Committee in charge:
Professor Carol Genetti, Chair
Professor Sandra A. Thompson
Professor Bernard Comrie
Professor Krisadawan Hongladarom
September 2007
UMI Number: 3283776
UMI Microform3283776
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The dissertation of Ellen Lynn Bartee is approved.
_____________________________________________
Sandra A. Thompson
_____________________________________________
Bernard Comrie
_____________________________________________
Krisadawan Hongladarom
_____________________________________________
Carol Genetti, Committee Chair
July 2007
A Grammar of Dongwang Tibetan
Copyright © 2007
by
Ellen Lynn Bartee
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
From my first trip to Dongwang in 2002 to the final completion of this
dissertation in 2007, many people have befriended, housed, and helped me along the
way. To all these people, I extend my thanks.
I would like to thank the people of Pongding for welcoming me and my family
into their village. Thanks to Tashi Tsering who first told me about Dongwang and
who introduced me to his family in Pongding. Big thanks are due to Tashi's family for
allowing us to stay in their house whenever we were there. Longchu, Danzen
Chumpi, Danzen Norbu, and Hushing put up with our oddities and took us into their
home with great ease. Thanks to Yishi Droma, Tashi Norbu, Losang Chutso and
Chundzom for their friendship and help.
Special thanks are due to my committee members: Carol Genetti, Sandy
Thompson, Bernard Comrie, and Krisadawan Hongladarom. The difficulty of writing
this dissertation far exceeded my expectations, as did the commitment and rigor my
committee invested to see it to completion. They read countless drafts and made
extensive comments throughout that resulted in a much higher quality work than
would have existed without their insights. Special thanks to my Chair, Carol Genetti,
who applied herself to this project with all the enthusiasm, professionalism and
expertise that characterizes all her endeavors.
Big thanks to Ken Hugoniot who spent many hours proofreading and editing this
whole dissertation several times over.
iv
Filing this dissertation from China would have been impossible without the help I
received from Karen Barteld and Mary Rae Staton. Mary Rae, linguistic department
secretary extraordinaire, fielded many emails and filed forms on my behalf efficiently
and cheerfully.
To Ken and Isabelle—who make having more free time meaningful—now we
have time for a long hike!
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VITA OF ELLEN LYNN BARTEE
July, 2007
EDUCATION
June, 1986 Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics, Simpson College, San Francisco,
California
June, 1987 TESOL Certificate, San Jose State University, San Jose, California
June, 1995 Master of Arts in Linguistics, University of Texas, Arlington, Texas
September, 2007 Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics, University of California, Santa
Barbara, (expected)
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Languages:
Mandarin Chinese, Lhasa Tibetan, Literary Tibetan, Khams Tibetan
Topic areas:
Morphology, syntax, discourse, grammaticization, language contact, field
methodology
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Research Assistant, Panasonic Speech Technology Lab (Worked with a group on Speech
Recognition and Speech Production software), 2000-01
Teaching Assistant, UC Santa Barbara, Linguistics Department (Introduction to
Linguistics, Language and Gender, Syntax, Historical Linguistics), 1998-2001;
Teaching Assistant, University of Oregon, (Syntax and Semantics), 1995, Summer
Lecturer, University of Oregon, Linguistics Department (Language and Culture
Acquisition), 1996, Summer
Lecturer in China (English as a Second Language): Center for Tibetan Studies, Beijing,
1991-92; University of Tibet, Lhasa 1988-89; Hengyang Teacher's College,
Hunan, 1987-88.
FIELD RESEARCH
Yunnan, CHINA. Cooperation between SIL and Yunnan Provincial Language
Commission to conduct research on Tibetan dialects in Yunnan, 2004-present.
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Dongwang Tibetan, Yunnan, CHINA. One year researching a dialect of Khams Tibetan,
sponsored by Fulbright, 2002-03
Lhasa, Tibet, CHINA. Various trips to collect discourse data, 1991-1998
PUBLICATIONS
2000 With Nyima Droma. A Beginning Textbook of Lhasa Tibetan. Beijing: National
Press for Tibetan Studies.
PAPERS PRESENTED
Preliminary report on Dongwang Phonology. Tibetan Workshop. UCSB, January, 2003
'The role of animacy in the verbal morphology of Dongwang Tibetan'. Paper presented
at The 11th Himalayan Languages Symposium and Workshop on Old Tibetan and
Tibetan Dialectology. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, December 6-
9, 2005
'Relative Clauses in Dongwang Tibetan'. Paper presented at the 10th International
Symposium on Language Typology and Structure in Minority Languages of China.
Lijiang, Yunnan, PRC. September 24-25, 2006.
vii
ABSTRACT
A Grammar of Dongwang Tibetan
by
Ellen Lynn Bartee
This dissertation is a description of Dongwang Tibetan. It is based on personal
biographies, narratives and procedural texts, as well as on elicited material.
Dongwang is a Southern Khams Tibetan dialect spoken in Shangri-la County, Diqing
Prefecture, Yunnan. There are about 6,000 speakers of Dongwang who live in fifty-
seven villages that are scattered on the steep hillsides along both sides of the
Dongwang River.
After an introductory chapter, a synchronic and diachronic description of the
phonology is given. The synchronic section examines the segments, syllable canon
and tone of Dongwang. The diachronic section focuses on comparing older forms of
Tibetan, as reflected in Written Tibetan, with Dongwang speech in order to highlight
the historical origins and development of Dongwang forms.
Word classes including nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are
described in Chapters Three through Six. Special attention is given to how new nouns
are inducted into Dongwang and the various morphological processes required to do
viii
so. The semantic and pragmatic categories that typify verbs are described in Chapter
Four with special attention given to categories of control, transitivity and intention.
Two types of adjectives are described in Chapter Six as well as the semantic
categories that adjectives depict.
Constituent order and nominal morphology is discussed in Chapter Eight, in
which the morphosyntactic organization of core arguments is described along with
other casemarking clitics. Chapters Nine and Ten describe the verb phrase, focusing
on pre-verbal and post-verbal elements and issues of grammaticization which typify
the secondary verbs in Dongwang. Intention, evidentiality, and validationality are
some of the issues contained in the discussion of final auxiliaries.
Chapter Eleven describes simple clause types in Dongwang and Chapter Twelve
discusses combinations of clauses such as relative clauses, complement clauses and
clause chains.
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