Tibetan Grammar - verbs - notes

WORK IN PROGRESS: the grammar articles are being edited for wiki publication. During editing, the content might be incomplete, out of sequence or even misleading. - (particular this sections is still in change - the introduction sections are all new - since the 'collection of points on Tibetan grammar' are now available outside of a class room context the background information to some of their points need to be written down, and this is still a work in progress)

Articles on Tibetan Grammar

1. Introduction

2. Formation of the Tibetan Syllable

3. Formation of the Tibetan Word

4. First case: ming tsam

5. agentive particle

6. Connective Particle

7. La don particles

8. La don particles—Notes

9. Originative case

10. Verbs

11. Verbs—Notes

12. Syntactic particles

by Stefan J. E.

Verbs—Notes

This is written to explain the simplified way of classifying transitive and intransitive (1.1) and it points to the problems and inconsistencies coming with it (1.2). In 1.2 valency is introduced to map out Tibetan verbs, which might be not have been necessary as such, but seemed a nice way to do so and in its course introduces verbs that will be seen again in 1.4. "'verbs and their cases', considerations and conclusion".

In 1.4 the approach to explain the way Tibetan verb function will be that of the "three thematic relations: Theme, Location, and Agent " by Scott DeLancey as explained in his "Figure and Ground in Argument Structure" (LSA Summer Institute, UC Santa Barbara, 2001, Lecture 3). Unfortunately I only came across this work recently when reading through different articles trying to find a nice way to treat the troublesome "verbs with la don". If this approach would have been used (and the grammar collection changed accordingly) then there would be no inconsistencies in the first place. While it is a consideration to still do so, we first like to wait for more feedback on the grammar wiki as such and to hear what other people think about the different ways of treating Tibetan verbs.

One way of changing the categories of Tibetan verbs that is under discussion is to use "agentive transitive", "agentive intransitive" and "nominative intransitive". The patient with la don would 'disappear' and the system would not only be still simple enough to be easily comprehensible for the beginner learner but also descriptive and consistent.

How the categories of 'transitive' and 'intransitive' are used here

In order to categorize Tibetan verbs according to their grammar the categories of 'transitive' and 'intransitive' will be used. The way it will be determined if a verb should be labeled 'transitive' or 'intransitive' will not entirely match the general rule for these categories.

Generally:

• Intransitive: Not passing over to an object; expressing an action or state that is limited to the agent or subject.
• Transitive: Passing over to an object; expressing an action which is not limited to the agent or subject.

This section contains Tibetan script. Without proper Tibetan rendering support configured, you may see other symbols instead of Tibetan script.

The categorization will be in regard to the presence of an agent in the agentive case. In a number of cases this will lead to differences in regard to their English counterparts.

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