Project B11:
Semantic roles, case relations, and cross-clausal reference in Tibetan

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Publications of the staff members

  • Hill, Nathan W. (2004): "Compte Rendu: Paul G. Hackett. A Tibetan Verb Lexicon. Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2003", Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines 78-98.

  • Hill, Nathan W. (2005): "The verb 'bri 'to write' in Old Tibetan", Ajia Afurika Gengo Bunka Kenkyuu / Journal of Asian and African Studies Number 68: 177-182.
  • Hill, Nathan W. (2005): "Once more on the letter va". Linguistics on the Tibeto-Burman Area 28: 107-137.
  • Hill, Nathan W. (2006): "Tibetan vwa ‘fox’ and the sound change Tibeto-Burman *wa > Tibetan o." Linguistics on the Tibeto-Burman Area 29: 75-90.
  • Hill, Nathan W. (2006): "The Old Tibetan chronicle—chapter I."; Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines 10: 89-101.
  • Hill, Nathan W. (2007a): "Personalpronomina in der Lebensbeschreibung des Mi la ras pa, Kapitel III." Zentralasiatische Studien, 36: 277-287.

  • Hill, Nathan W. (2007b): "Aspirated and Unaspirated Voiceless Consonants in Old Tibetan." Language and Linguistics 8: 471-493.
  • Hill, N.W. und Toby Fee (2008): "Love poems of the sixth Dalai Lama. (1, 2, 4, 25, 34, 36, 50, and 52.)" The Harvard Advocate, Winter: 80-91.



  • Uebach, Helga and Bettina Zeisler (2008): "rJe-blas, pha-los and Other Compounds with Suffix -s in Old Tibetan Texts." In: Brigitte Huber, Marianne Volkart und Paul Widmer (Hrsg.) Chomolangma, Demawend und Kasbek. Festschrift für Roland Bielmeier zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, Band I: Chomolangma. Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies: 309-334.

  • Wagner, Andreas and Bettina Zeisler (2004): "A syntactically annotated corpus of Tibetan." Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, Lisboa, May 2004.


  • Zeisler, Bettina (2001): "The development of temporal coding in Tibetan: some suggestions for a functional internal reconstruction. Part II: The original semantics of the 'past stem' of controlled action verbs and the re-organisation of the Proto-Tibetan verb system. ZAS 31: 169-216.

  • Zeisler, Bettina. (2002): "The development of temporal coding in Tibetan: some suggestions for a functional internal reconstruction. (1): Unexpected use of the 'imperative' stem in Old Tibetan and Themchen (Amdo Tibetan)." In: Henk Blezer (ed.), Tibet, Past and Present. PIATS 2000: Tibetan studies: Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Leiden 2000. (Brills Tibetan Studies Library, 2/1.) Leiden etc.: Brill: 441-453.

  • Zeisler, Bettina (2004a): Relative Tense and aspectual values in Tibetan languages. A comparative study. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs, 150. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, xxi, 984 pp.

  • Zeisler, Bettina (2004b): "An annotation of what is not there: Empty arguments and cross-clausal reference in spoken and written Tibetan texts." Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories, Tübingen, December 2004.

  • Zeisler, Bettina (2005a): "On the position of Ladakhi and Balti in the Tibetan language family." In: John Bray (ed.), Ladakhi histories: local and regional perspectives. Brill's Tibetan Studies Library, 9. Brill, Leiden etc.: 41-64.

  • Zeisler, Bettina (2005b): "A Tibetan Verb Lexicon: Verbs, Classes, and Syntactic Frames, Paul G. Hackett. Ithaca: Snow Lion Publication, 2003. xiv + 209 pages. On the utility of the Tibetan grammatical tradition." The Tibet Journal 30.2: 69-92.

  • Zeisler, Bettina (2006a): "The Tibetan understanding of karman: Some problems of Tibetan case marking." In: Christopher I. Beckwith (ed.), Medieval Tibeto-Burman languages II, PIATS 2003: Tibetan studies: Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Oxford 2003. Brills Tibetan Studies Library, 10. Brill, Leiden etc.: 57-101.

  • Zeisler, Bettina (2006b): "Why Ladakhi must not be written - Being part of the Great Tradition: another kind of global thinking." In: Anju Saxena and Lars Borin (eds.), Lesser-Known Languages of South Asia. Status and Policies, Case Studies and Applications of Information Technology. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs, 175. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter: 175-191.

  • Zeisler, Bettina (2007a): "Dialekt und Erzählungen von Themchen. Sprachwissenschaftliche Beschreibung
    eines Nomadendialektes aus Nord-Amdo. By Felix Haller. (Beiträge zur tibetischen Erzählforschung, herausgegeben von Dieter Schuh 14). Bonn: VGH Wissenschaftsverlag 2004. ISBN 3-88280-065-8. 442 pages."
    Review. Himalayan Linguistics Review 4. 2007. 1-10.

  • Zeisler, Bettina (2007b): "Case patterns and pattern variation in Ladakhi: a field report." In: Bielmeier, Roland and Felix Haller (eds.), Linguistics of the Himalayas and beyond. (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs, 196.) Mouton de Gruyter: 399-425.

  • Zeisler, Bettina (2007c): "On the position of Ladakhi and Balti in the Tibetan language family." In: John Bray and Nawang Tsering Shakspo (eds.) Recent research on Ladakh 2007. Leh: J & K Academy for Art, Culture & Science, International Association for Ladakh Studies: 27-33. [Abbreviated version of 2005a; containing an English summary of Róna-Tas (1985: 183-303) "On the development of the Tibetan script."]

  • Zeisler, Bettina (2008): "'Wenn du deine Mühle gemahlen hast, womit mahlst du dann dein Mehl?' –  Idiomatische Wendungen im Ladakischen." In: Brigitte Huber, Marianne Volkart und Paul Widmer (Hrsg.) Chomolangma, Demawend und Kasbek. Festschrift für Roland Bielmeier zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, Band I: Chomolangma. Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies: 359-388.
  • Zeisler, Bettina (to appear, a): "Reducing phonetical complexity and grammatical opaqueness: Old Tibetan as a lingua franca and the development of the modern Tibetan dialects." In: Enoch O. Aboh and Norval Smith (eds.) Complex processes in new languages.

  • Zeisler, Bettina (to appear, b): "Kenhat, the dialects of Upper Ladakh and Zanskar." In: Mark Turin (ed.) Selected papers of the 11th Himalayan Languages Symposium, held at Chulalongkorn University Bangkok, Thailand, 6-9 December 2005. Brill.
  • Zeisler, Bettina (to appear, c): "Mainstream linguistics for minor(ity) languages? Or: What is it like to speak Ladakhi?"
  • Zeisler, Bettina (to appear, d): Ethnic diversity, language contact, and the old Tibetan lingua franca: early Tibetan history and the development of the modern Tibetan languages. (Asiatische Forschungen.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Works under preparation:

  • Müller-Witte, Frank: Handlungsrichtung des tibetischen Verbs. Die Kategorien bdag und gzhan bei dPa'-ris sangs-rgyas und Dor-zhi gdong-drug und ihre Relevanz für das Verständnis tibetischer Texte. Dissertation, Universität Tübingen.

  • Zeisler, Bettina: "For love of the word: a new translation of Pt 1287, the Old Tibetan Chronicle, chapter I." (download preliminary pdf version).
  • Zeisler, Bettina: "mindra mindra (incomparably different): Property ascription and expressions for difference (and comparison) in Ladakhi Tibetan."
  • Zeisler, Bettina: West Tibetan verbal morphology and the reconstruction of the proto-language: the Shafer hypothesis revisited.

Layout: Christoph Singer. Responsible for the content and contact: B. Zeisler. Last modified: 26.12.2008