[Rgyalrong] Question about orthography

[Jesse P. Gates]

Dear Yulha,

I too (along with native speakers) have been struggling to find answers for
an orthographic representation using the Tibetan script for Stau, a sister
language to your beautiful Khroskyabs.

I think འ་ is a good choice for non-bilabial preinitials (nd, nt, ntʰ, ŋg,
ŋk, ŋkʰ, etc.) and for bilabial preintials before labials. We have chosen
to use མ་ as the bilabial nasal preinitial before non-labials (m- is a
distinctive preinitial phoneme in Stau and Khroskyabs). This choice is
phonological and sociolinguistic (following Tibetan). I think these
sociolinguistic factors need to be considered; because of the large number
of loanwords from Tibetan in Stau and Khroskyabs, and since Tibetan is a
dominant language, and many speakers learn Tibetan spelling rules.

For ʁ/χ, we could use just one grapheme to represent this phoneme, since in
Stau, like Khroskyabs, we have voicing assimilation depending on the
initial consonant. However, I have decided to follow Sakya Pandita's Law,
which is ག་ before accutes (palatals and dentals) and ད་ before graves
(labials and velars), again because of sociolinguistic reasons; since the
large number of Tibetan loanwords obey this, but also because it works
phonologically. This then provides an interesting solution for ɣ/x: we can
reverse Sakya Pandita's Law and so that when ག་ occurs before graves it is ɣ/x
and when it occurs before accutes it is ʁ/χ. The same goes for  ད་: when
occurring before accutes it is ɣ/x, and before graves it is ʁ/χ. This
doesn't entirely solve the whole problem in terms of sociolinguistic
acceptability; for example, while *ʁdi *'erroneous' would be written གདི་
and abides by Tibetan spelling rule, *ɣdi* 'flat' would be written དདི་,
which breaks Tibetan spelling rules. Fortunately, we don't have ɣ- before
velars, so we can avoid something like གགུ་ for *ɣgə.

v/f can simply be represented with བ་. This follows the voicing
assimilation rule and is satisfactory sociolinguistically for the most
part, but there are some collocation clashes for Tibetan spelling rules.

s/z can simply be represented with ས་. There are still some problems for
this with Stau because there are minimal pairs with nasal initials and
palatal approximate initials. We can discuss this further if you like.

I'm not sure about l/ɬ, because we don't have this in Stau as a phonemic
preinitial. I guess if you are in the spirit of breaking spelling rules,
then why not ལ་.

So as you can see, and to answer your question, I think you should just
represent a single phoneme as a single phoneme (the "underlying form"). You
are going to have a hard enough time finding acceptable spellings just for
that.

I'm interested in your decisions; it will help in making decisions with the
Stau community since these two languages have so much overlap. We really
need to sit down over some butter tea and hammer this out at some point.

--
Best regards,


*Jesse P. Gates, PhD*Nankai University, School of Literature 南开大学文学院
https://nankai.academia.edu/JesseGates

On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 4:49 PM Yu Lha <abayina at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
>
> I have been working on an orthography for my mother tongue Khroskyabs and
> I ran into a difficulty regarding the ‘depth’ of orthography, meaning the
> level of linguistic structure to represent orthographically.  I have been
> consulting with Yunfan and I am hoping to get your insights on this.
>
>
> The orthography is based on Tibetan alphabets which the speakers are
> already familiar with. The question that I ran into is whether or not to
> reflect allophonic contrasts with different graphemes.
>
>
> There are both pros and cons for either way. With my priority being
> language revitalization with high learnability, I am even thinking about
> combining both systems to maximize the sound-spelling transparency while
> simplifying some allophones with existing Tibetan preintials.
>
>
> The allophonic variation cases:
>
> pre-initial allophonic nasal: mb, mpʰ, mp, nd, nt, ntʰ, ŋg, ŋk, ŋkʰ  (For
> this contrast, I decided to use འ)
>
> Other pre-initial cases: <ʁ χ> , <ɣ x>, <v f>, <l ɬ>,  <s z>
>
>
> Any suggestions on how to represent the distinction between surface and
> underlying forms orthographically is appreciated.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Yulha
>
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