Name for the Western Rgyalrong languages

[Jesse Gates]

Hi all,

Thank you Guillaume for opening up this discussion. I’m very pleased to see this discussion underway and grateful to be apart of this collaborative process. I especially appreciate the input of Lhundrop Tunzhi as a native speaker of the language. 

At the node below rGyalrongic for this group of languages (so excluding all the “rGyalrong” languages) I prefer the term Western rGyalrongic (see my MA thesis for why I introduce this term instead of Western rGyalrong). This replaces the term Horpa-Shangzhai, Ergong, and Western rGyalrong (note there is no ‘ic’, as this was Lin Xiangrong’s term for what he thought was one synchronic language). It also is consistent with the hypothesis that were are dealing with a diachronic clade beneath rGyalrongic consisting of possibly 6 synchronic languages/dialect groups (1. Lavrung, 2. Nyagrong Minyag, 3. sTau/Stau/rTau/Rtau, 4. Geshista, 5. Jiaju/Bawang, and 6. Stosde).

For the nodes below Western rGyalrongic I think Tre-Hor is fine. Tre-Hor should be clearly understood not as a synchronic language name, but as a diachronic clade which includes 4 synchronic languages/dialect groups (sTau/Stau/rTau/Rtau, Geshista, Jiaju/Bawang, and Stosde). 

Below Tre-Hor, for the language spoken in Daofu, I favor sTau or Stau for the following 2 reasons. 

1. It is the most phonetically transparent, Roman/Latin transliteration of the most commonly known autoglossonym. Of course, sTau/Stau is primarily a loconym, so people from Renda County in Luhuo and people in Bianer County in Danba may object. Lhundrop Tunzhi would certainly know if people in Renda would object to stauske as a glossonym. My most current hypothesis is that there is a language division that comes between the rest of sTau and Geshitsa, but Bianer belongs to both, which also creates dialect continuum. There is also a language division between Geshitsa and Jiaju/Bawang. We also need to decide on language names for these two (Geshitsa and Jiaju/Bawang).

Like Hiroyuki, I have not come in contact with the pronunciation [stɔwu]. The speakers in Gexi, Mazi, Daofu Town, Geqia, as well in Dangling all pronounce their autoglossonym as [stæuske], [stæwuske], [stauske], etc. Huang Bufan and S. Wang also transcribe similarly. The previously named townships represent the majority of the people that speak this language. My colleagues and I have interviewed nearly 100 speakers from these townships and [stæuske] or one of its allophones, is the consistent choice of autoglossonym. rəsɲəske comes from the word (as pronounced by my Rilong consultant) [rəsɲilonba], [lonba] of course is valley, and [rəsɲi] is an alternative loconym for the valley that runs along the Xianshui River, so the Daofu valley. I am still working on the etymology, but that’s all I have for now. However, my consultant told me that she would never say [rəsɲiske]. 

2. Although the proper Tibetan spelling is rTau, sTau is easy to “derive” from the Tibetan spelling. Most Tibetans pronounce it as [tawu] or similarly. There are many herders in the grasslands that also pronounce it as [stawu]. Conversely, many Tibetans that I have talked to, some living inside Daofu and others not, have spelled rTau as sTau!


This all said, I’m interested in what Guilluame proposes as a collaborative paper on the language names for this group. As Hiroyuki has mentioned, we need to do more anthropological survey of of onomastic identity. I am training my language consultant to collect some of this kind of information by the way of questionnaires. I also have well over 100 of these questionnaires filled out for Danba and Daofu already. 

Best regards,
Jesse 

On Nov 18, 2013, at 8:01 PM, Guillaume Jacques <rgyalrongskad at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> Dear all,
> 
> Lhundrop, however, doesn't like this term, because it actually
> designates a very specific area, namely the third 区 of the County of
> Brag-mgo. (However, I couldn't find which townships correspond to the
> third 区.) Furthermore, according to Lhundrop, the language spoken in
> this specific area is Kham Tibetan. So it would be even less
> appropriate than Rtau, because at least many people in Rtau county
> speak Rtau.
>  
> I may be mistaken here, but according to the bod rgya tshigmdzod chenmo, Tre.hor is defined as "Khams byang rgyud Rong.pa.tsha nas Rta'u bar gyi yul" "The area between Rtau and Rongpatsha in northern Khams", which is obviously larger than a sub-district of Brag.mgo. Maybe what Lhundrop refers to is Tre.bo. I believe that Tre Hor is the abbreviation of Tre.bo and Hor.pa.
> 
> Tre.Hor certainly includes areas where Khams Tibetan is spoken, and I fully agree that this term is not perfect. Let us take time to evaluate all possibilities.
> 
> Concerning "Yar sgo", does this name actually exist in your language and how is it pronunced? Could the spelling rather be something like "Yar sgang" (just a guess)? 
> 
> Guillaume
> 
> 
> -- 
> Guillaume Jacques
> CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO
> http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques
> http://himalco.hypotheses.org/
> http://panchr.hypotheses.org/
> 
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