Tangut language
Encyclopedia
Tangut is an ancient northeastern Tibeto-Burman language once spoken in the Western Xia Dynasty, also known as the Tangut Empire. It is classified by some linguists as one of the Qiangic languages
, which also include Qiang and rGyalrong, among others. It is distantly related to Tibetan
and Burmese
, and even more distantly to Chinese
.
Tangut was one of the official languages of the Western Xia Dynasty (known in Tibetan as Mi-nyag, and in Chinese as 彌藥 mí yào), which was founded by the Tangut people and obtained its independence from the Song dynasty
at the beginning of the 11th century. The Western Xia Dynasty was annihilated when Genghis Khan
invaded in 1226.
The Tangut language has its own script, namely the Tangut script
.
The latest known text written in the Tangut language, an inscription of a Buddhist dharani
, dates to 1502, suggesting that the language was still in use nearly three hundred years after the destruction of the Tangut Empire.
, which had been partially investigated by some unknown Chinese scholar. The majority of extant Tangut texts were excavated at Khara-Khoto
in 1909 by Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov, and the script was identified as that of the Tangut state of Xixia. Such scholars as Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov
, Ishihama Juntaro (石濱純太郎), Berthold Laufer
, Luo Fuchang (羅福萇), Luo Fucheng (羅福成), and Wang Jingru (王靜如) have contributed to research on the Tangut language. The most significant contribution was made by the Russian scholar Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky
(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 Filologiya" (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 aspects of the morphology (Ksenia Kepping, "The Morphology of the Tangut Language", Moscow: Nauka, 1985) and grammar (Nishida Tatsuo
, "Seika go no kenkyū", etc.) are understood, the syntactic structure of Tangut remains largely unexplored.
The Khara-Khoto documents are at present preserved in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg
. These fortunately survived the Siege of Leningrad
, but a number of manuscripts in the possession of Nevsky at the time of his arrest by the NKVD
in 1937 went missing, and were only returned, under mysterious circumstances, to the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in October 1991. 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
, the National Library in Beijing, the Library of Beijing University and other libraries.
The discovery of the Pearl in the Palm
, 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 (文海), two editions of the Tongyin (同音), the Wenhai zalei (文海雜類) 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–Russian 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
(西田龍雄), K.B. Kepping, Gong Hwang cherng
(龔煌城), M.V. Sofronov and Li Fanwen
(李範文). There are four Tangut dictionaries available: the one composed by N.A. Nevsky, one composed by Nishida (1966), one composed by Li Fanwen (1997, revised edition 2008) and one composed by E.I. Kychanov
(2006).
There is growing a school of Tangut studies in China. Leading scholars include Shi Jinbo (史金波), Li Fanwen, Nie Hongyin (聶鴻音), Bai Bin (白濱) in mainland China, and Gong Hwang-cherng and Lin Yingjin (林英津) 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 (荒川慎太郎) in Japan, and Ruth W. Dunnell in the USA.
The rhyme books distinguish 105 rhyme classes. These are in turn are classified in several ways, by grade (等), type (環), and class (摂).
Tangut rhymes occur in three types (環). These are seen in the tradition of Nishida, followed by both Arakawa and Gong as 'normal' 普通母音, 'tense'緊候母音, and 'retroflex' 捲舌母音. 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 (等). 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 (摂), 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.
, Tangoute 西夏に関するページ
Qiangic languages
Qiangic or Kiangic, formerly known as Dzorgai, is a language group of the northeastern Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, spoken mainly in Southwestern China, including Sichuan, Tibet, and Yunnan....
, which also include Qiang and rGyalrong, among others. It is distantly related to Tibetan
Tibetan language
The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...
and Burmese
Burmese language
The Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese. Burmese is the native language of the Bamar and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as...
, and even more distantly to Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
.
Tangut was one of the official languages of the Western Xia Dynasty (known in Tibetan as Mi-nyag, and in Chinese as 彌藥 mí yào), which was founded by the Tangut people and obtained its independence from the Song dynasty
Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
at the beginning of the 11th century. The Western Xia Dynasty was annihilated when Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....
invaded in 1226.
The Tangut language has its own script, namely the Tangut script
Tangut script
The Tangut script was a logographic writing system, used for writing the extinct Tangut language of the Western Xia Dynasty. According to the latest count, 5863 Tangut characters are known, excluding variants...
.
The latest known text written in the Tangut language, an inscription of a Buddhist dharani
Dharani
A ' is a type of ritual speech similar to a mantra. The terms dharani and satheesh may be seen as synonyms, although they are normally used in distinct contexts....
, dates to 1502, suggesting that the language was still in use nearly three hundred years after the destruction of the Tangut Empire.
Rediscovery
Modern research into the Tangut languages began in the early 20th century when G. Morisse first acquired a copy of the Tangut Lotus SutraLotus Sutra
The Lotus Sūtra is one of the most popular and influential Mahāyāna sūtras, and the basis on which the Tiantai and Nichiren sects of Buddhism were established.-Title:...
, which had been partially investigated by some unknown Chinese scholar. The majority of extant Tangut texts were excavated at Khara-Khoto
Khara-Khoto
Khara-Khoto was a Tangut city in the Ejin khoshuu of Alxa League, in western Inner Mongolia, near the former Gashun Lake. It has been identified as the city of Etzina, which appears in The Travels of Marco Polo.-History:...
in 1909 by Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov, and the script was identified as that of the Tangut state of Xixia. Such scholars as Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov
Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov
Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov was a Russian Sinologist and Tangutologist. Ivanov entered Saint Petersburg University in 1897, where he studied Chinese and Manchu. After graduating in 1902 he went to China for further study for two years, and on his return in 1904 he went on a study tour of England,...
, Ishihama Juntaro (石濱純太郎), Berthold Laufer
Berthold Laufer
Berthold Laufer was a German-American anthropologist and orientalist.Laufer was born in Cologne to a Jewish family. He attended the Friedrich Wilhelms Gymnasium from 1884-1893. He continued his studies in Berlin and completed his doctorate degree at the University of Leipzig in 1897...
, Luo Fuchang (羅福萇), Luo Fucheng (羅福成), and Wang Jingru (王靜如) have contributed to research on the Tangut language. The most significant contribution was made by the Russian scholar Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky was a Russian and Soviet linguist, an expert on a number of East Asian languages. He was one of the founders of the modern study of the Tangut language of the mediaeval Xi Xia Empire, the work for which he...
(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 Filologiya" (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 aspects of the morphology (Ksenia Kepping, "The Morphology of the Tangut Language", Moscow: Nauka, 1985) and grammar (Nishida Tatsuo
Nishida Tatsuo
is a professor emeritus at Kyoto University. His work encompasses research on a variety of Tibeto-Burman languages, he made great contributions in particular to the deciphering of the Tangut Language....
, "Seika go no kenkyū", etc.) are understood, the syntactic structure of Tangut remains largely unexplored.
The Khara-Khoto documents are at present preserved in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
. These fortunately survived the Siege of Leningrad
Siege of Leningrad
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...
, but a number of manuscripts in the possession of Nevsky at the time of his arrest by the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
in 1937 went missing, and were only returned, under mysterious circumstances, to the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in October 1991. 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
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, the National Library in Beijing, the Library of Beijing University and other libraries.
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.Pearl in the Palm
The Pearl in the Palm is a bilingual glossary between the Chinese language and Tangut which transcribes the pronunciation of Chinese words into Tangut characters, and the pronunciation of Tangut characters into Chinese characters...
, 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 (文海), two editions of the Tongyin (同音), the Wenhai zalei (文海雜類) and an untitled dictionary. The record of the pronunciation in these dictionaries is made using the principle of fanqie
Fanqiè
In Chinese phonology, fanqie is a method to indicate the pronunciation of a character by using two other characters.-The Origin:...
, 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
Syllable rime
In the study of phonology in linguistics, the rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda. It is the part of the syllable used in poetic rhyme, and the part that is lengthened or stressed when a person elongates or stresses a word in speech.The rime is usually the...
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–Russian 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
Nishida Tatsuo
is a professor emeritus at Kyoto University. His work encompasses research on a variety of Tibeto-Burman languages, he made great contributions in particular to the deciphering of the Tangut Language....
(西田龍雄), K.B. Kepping, Gong Hwang cherng
Gong Hwang cherng
Gong Hwang-cherng was a Taiwan Chinese linguist who specialized in Sino-Tibetan comparative linguistics and the phonetic reconstruction of Tangut and Old Chinese. He was born 10 December 1934 at Yunlin County in Taiwan, and graduated from National Taiwan Normal University in 1958 with a degree in...
(龔煌城), M.V. Sofronov and Li Fanwen
Li Fanwen
Li Fanwen is a Chinese linguist and Tangutologist.-Biography:Li Fanwen was born in Xixiang County, Shaanxi in 1932. After leaving school, he worked for several years before going to Beijing to study Tibetan at the Central College for Nationalities, from which he graduated in 1956...
(李範文). There are four Tangut dictionaries available: the one composed by N.A. Nevsky, one composed by Nishida (1966), one composed by Li Fanwen (1997, revised edition 2008) and one composed by E.I. Kychanov
Evgenij Ivanovich Kychanov
Evgenij Ivanovich Kychanov is a Soviet and Russian orientalist, an expert on the Tangut people and their mediaeval Xi Xia Empire. He currently serves as the director of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Science in Saint Petersburg - the institution that until 2007 was...
(2006).
There is growing a school of Tangut studies in China. Leading scholars include Shi Jinbo (史金波), Li Fanwen, Nie Hongyin (聶鴻音), Bai Bin (白濱) in mainland China, and Gong Hwang-cherng and Lin Yingjin (林英津) 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 (荒川慎太郎) 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 (声母) and rhyme (韻母) (i.e. the remaining syllable minus the initial).Consonants
The consonants are divided into the following categories.| Chinese Term | Translation | Modern Term | Arakawa | Gong |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 重唇音類 | heavy lip | bilabials | p, ph, b, m | p, ph, b, m |
| 軽唇音類 | light lip | labio-dentals | f, v, w | |
| 舌頭音類 | tongue tip | dentals | t, th, d, n | t, th, d, n |
| 舌上音類 | upper tongue | ty', thy', dy', ny' | ||
| 牙音類 | ga-like | velars | k, kh, g, ng | k, kh, g, ŋ |
| 歯頭音類 | tooth tip | dental affricates and fricatives | ts, tsh, dz, s | ts, tsh, dz, s |
| 正歯音類 | true tooth | palatal affricates and fricatives | c, ch, j, sh | tɕ, tɕh, dʑ, ɕ |
| 候音類 | laryngeals | ', h | ., x, ɣ | |
| 流風音類 | flowing air | resonants | l, lh, ld, z, r, zz | l, lh, z, r, ʑ |
The rhyme books distinguish 105 rhyme classes. These are in turn are classified in several ways, by grade (等), type (環), and class (摂).
Tangut rhymes occur in three types (環). These are seen in the tradition of Nishida, followed by both Arakawa and Gong as 'normal' 普通母音, 'tense'緊候母音, and 'retroflex' 捲舌母音. 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 (等). 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 (摂), 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
| 普通母音 | 緊候母音 | 捲舌母音 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| close | i I u | iq eq uq | ir Ir ur |
| mid | e o | eq2 oq | er or |
| open | a | aq | ar |
External links
Ксения Кепинг. Последние статьи и документы. (Ksenia Kepping. Last Works and Documents.) Guillaume JacquesGuillaume Jacques
Guillaume Jacques is a French linguist of Breton descent who specializes in the study of Tibeto-Burman languages, in particular Old Chinese, Tangut and Tibetan...
, Tangoute 西夏に関するページ