Tangut language


Tangut is an ancient northeastern Tibeto-Burman language once spoken in the Western Xia, also known as the Tangut Empire. It is classified by some linguists as a Qiangic language, which includes the Northern and Southern Qiang languages and the Rgyalrong languages, among others.
Tangut was one of the official languages of the Western Xia, 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 were annihilated when Genghis Khan invaded in 1226.
The Tangut language has its own script, the Tangut script.
The latest known text written in the Tangut language, the Tangut dharani pillars, dates to 1502, suggesting that the language was still in use nearly three hundred years after the destruction of the Tangut people.

Rediscovery

Modern research into the Tangut languages began in the late 19th century and early 20th century when S. W. Bushell, Gabriel Devéria, and Georges Morisse separately published decipherments of a number of Tangut characters found on Western Xia coins, in a Chinese-Tangut bilingual inscription on a stele at Wuwei, Gansu, and in a copy of the Tangut translation of the Lotus Sutra.
The majority of extant Tangut texts were excavated at Khara-Khoto in 1909 by Pyotr Kozlov, and the script was identified as that of the Tangut state of Xixia. Such scholars as Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov, Ishihama Juntaro, Berthold Laufer, Luo Fuchang, Luo Fucheng, and Wang Jingru have contributed to research on the Tangut language. The most significant contribution was made by the Russian scholar Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky, 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 posthumously in 1960 under the title "Tangutskaya Filologiya" and the scholar was eventually awarded the Soviet Lenin Prize for his work. The understanding of the Tangut language is far from perfect: although certain aspects of the morphology and grammar 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 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 returned, under mysterious circumstances, to the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts only 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 Chinese 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 Library, 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 varieties. 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.
The discovery of the Pearl in the Palm, a Tangut-Chinese bilingual glossary, permitted Ivanov and Laufer 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 .
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, two editions of the Tongyin, the Wenhai zalei and an untitled dictionary. The record of the pronunciation in these dictionaries is made using the principle of fǎnqiè, borrowed from the Chinese lexicographic tradition. Although these dictionaries may differ on small details , 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 fǎnqiè, 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. Later, substantial contribution to the research of Tangut language was done by Tatsuo Nishida, Ksenia Kepping, Gong Hwang-cherng, M.V. Sofronov and Li Fanwen. Marc Miyake has published on Tangut phonology and diachronics. There are four Tangut dictionaries available: the one composed by N.A. Nevsky, one composed by Nishida, one composed by Li Fanwen and one composed by Yevgeny Kychanov.
There is growing a school of Tangut studies in China. Leading scholars include Shi Jinbo, Li Fanwen, Nie Hongyin, Bai Bin in mainland China, and Gong Hwang-cherng and Lin Ying-chin in Taiwan. In other countries, leading scholars in the field include Yevgeny Kychanov and his student K. J. Solonin in Russia, Nishida Tatsuo and Shintarō Arakawa in Japan, and Ruth W. Dunnell in the United States.

Phonology

The Tangut syllable has a CV 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 and rhyme .

Consonants

The consonants are divided into the following categories:
Chinese TermTranslationModern TermArakawaGongMiyake
重唇音類heavy lipbilabialsp, ph, b, mp, ph, b, mp, ph, b, m
輕唇音類light liplabio-dentalsf, v, wv
舌頭音類tongue tipapicals t, th, d, nt, th, d, nt, th, d, n
舌上音類tongue surfacelaminals ty', thy', dy', ny'tʂ tʂh dʐ ʂ
牙音類molarvelarsk, kh, g, ngk, kh, g, ŋk, kh, g, ŋ
齒頭音類incisor tipdental affricates and fricativests, tsh, dz, sts, tsh, dz, sts, tsh, dz, s
正齒音類incisor properpalatal affricates and fricativesc, ch, j, shtɕ, tɕh, dʑ, ɕ
喉音類throatlaryngeals', h., x, ɣʔ, x, ɣ
流風音類flowing airresonantsl, lh, ld, z, r, zzl, lh, z, r, ʑɫ, ɬ, z, ʐ, r

The rhyme books distinguish 105 rhyme classes, which are, in turn, classified in several ways:/grade, type, and class.
Tangut rhymes occur in three types. They are seen in the tradition of Nishida, followed by both Arakawa and Gong as 'normal', 'tense', and 'retroflex'. Gong leaves normal vowels unmarked and 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. 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, corresponds to the set of all rhymes under the same rhyme type which have the same main vowel.
Gong further posits phonemic vowel length and points to evidence that indicates that Tangut had a distinction that Chinese lacked. There is no certainty that the distinction was vowel length and so other researchers have remained skeptical.

Vowels

Miyake reconstructs the vowels differently. In his reconstruction, the 95 vowels of Tangut formed from a six-vowel system in Pre-Tangut because of preinitial loss.
Pre-Tangut
vowel		Class 1Class 2Class 3Class 4
*uəuoɨuiu
*uəəuooɨuuiuu
*u
*uəụɨụiụ
*uəuʳiuʳ
*iəiɪɨii
*iəəiɪɪɨiiii
*iəĩɨĩĩ
*iəịɨịị
*iəiʳɪʳɨiʳiʳ
*iəəiʳɪɪʳɨiiʳiiʳ
*aaæɨaia
*aaaææɨaaiaa
*aãæ̃ɨãiã
*aạɨạiạ
*aaʳæʳɨaʳiaʳ
*aaaʳɨaaʳiaaʳ
*a
*əəʌɨəiə
*əəəɨəəiəə
*əə̣ɨə̣iə̣
*əəʳʌʳɨəʳiəʳ
*əɨəəʳiəəʳ
*eeɛɨeie
*eeeɛɨeeiee
*eẽɛ̃ɨẽiẽ
*eɛ̣̃ɨẹ̃iẹ̃
*eɛ̣ɨẹiẹ
*eeʳɛʳɨeʳieʳ
*ik
  • ek
  • uk
ewɛwɨewiew
*ik
  • ek
  • uk
    		• ɨiwiw
    *ik
  • ek
  • uk
    		• eʳwiʳw
    *ooɔɨoio
    *owɨo
    *oooɔɔɨooioo
    *oõɔ̃ɨõiõ
    *oɔ̃ɔ̃ɨõõiõõ
    *oọɔ̣ɨọiọ
    *ooʳɔʳɨoʳioʳ
    *oooʳiooʳ
    *oõʳiõʳ
    The classes here is related to those of Chinese rime tables.

    Footnotes