Grammatical and lexical variation of Standard Tibetan between the region of Lhasa and the Tibetan diaspora
Abstrakt
In this paper, I deal with two variants of Standard Tibetan: Lhasa Tibetan, which is mainly spoken in and around Lhasa in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and Diaspora Tibetan, spoken since the second half of the 20th century in the diaspora. The aim is to demonstrate language variation and to explain reasons for this variation.
The reasons are of several types: geographic, dialectal, social, political. The paper further aims to discuss the linguistic environment in the diaspora as originally that of mixed dialects and Diaspora Tibetan as an example of dialect levelling.
Although the Lhasa and Diaspora variants of Standard Tibetan are very similar, one can find various minor differences in the grammar and numerous lexical differences. Dissimilarities in the grammar will be illustrated by the use of different variants of case particles, by different verb stems of a verb, or by different forms of epistemic verb endings.
Lexical dissimilarities are of two types: differences in loanwords (mainly from Chinese and English) and differences in the use of words of Tibetan origin, such as personal pronouns, nouns, or verbs. The second type of lexical dissimilarity is the main focus of this paper.