Wiktionary talk:About Tibetan

Dedication and invocation: to Legdan & dialectical chicane

Final tshegs and shads

I've been complying with the rule about not including final tshegs and shads in page titles for Tibetan words, moving old pages and editing links.

But just now I've found at leat one recent case where Stephen is doing the opposite, at least for Dzongkha: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%E0%BD%98%E0%BD%BC%E0%BC%8B%E0%BD%98%E0%BD%BC%E0%BC%8B&diff=6165937&oldid=6163275

Is the practice the opposite for that language, is this rule no universal after all, of might Stephen merely not be aware of it? — hippietrail 03:20, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I would be surprised if Dzongkha differs, mostly because of User:CFynn's edit comment where he supports my motion. -- Prince Kassad 04:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me, but where did you find that words in Tibetan dictionaries have no tshegs? Have you ever seen a Tibetan dictionary that you decided to invent this rule? Although I don't speak Tibetan, I have seen some dictionaries in the internet and all the words in them had tshegs at the end (I am interested in Tibetan language, in theory). --Viskonsas 17:00, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

What's a tsheg? SemperBlotto 17:04, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) For example, in Sarat Chandra Das' "A Tibetan-English dictionary" from 1902 (a very comprehensive dictionary, btw), the headwords never end in tsheg. -- Prince Kassad 17:11, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems that there's no mistake to leave a word without either shad or tsheg. According to one Tibetan person I contacted, dictionaries, published by Westerners use both versions (Lithuanian Wiktionary also uses "tsheg-end" version, btw), while he suggests adding shads to the end, excluding those cases, when the word ends with ག and ང (just like the policy in bo.wiki). --Viskonsas 20:02, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: using the present tense forms of verbs as their lemma forms

@Metaknowledge, B9 hummingbird hovering, Hippietrail, Stephen G. Brown and anyone who is interested:

The current treatment of Tibetan verbs is to list them under their -pa/ba forms (substantive forms), perhaps following the practice in Jäschke. I would like to propose that we use the present tense forms of verbs as their lemma forms - in other words, ཡོད་པ (yod pa) will be moved to ཡོད (yod), and the verb sense of རིག་པ (rig pa) will be moved to རིག (rig), and the -pa/ba forms will only be defined as nouns (ming tshig). The rationales for this include:

1. It is the practice used in many Tibetan dictionaries, including:
   • Monlam Grand Tibetan Dictionary,
   • Jeffrey Hopkins' Tibetan-Sanskrit-English Dictionary,
   • Nathan Hill's A Lexicon of Tibetan Verb Stems As Reported By the Grammatical Tradition,
   • 《藏漢拉薩口語詞典》 (Tibetan-Chinese Lhasa Vernacular Dictionary),
   • Goldstein's English-Tibetan Dictionary of Modern Tibetan,
   • etc.
2. It makes etymological comparisons more straightforward, without having to mention the -pa/ba suffix.
   • i.e. འཐག ('thag) (now at འཐག་པ ('thag pa)) can be compared with Chinese 織 (OC *tjɯɡs, *tjɯɡ).
3. It also makes pronunciations easier to handle, since pronunciations of modern Tibetan forms of verbs are generally in the forms without -pa/ba.
   • An example is again འཐག་པ ('thag pa), which currently has incongruent old and modern Tibetan pronunciations.

Under this proposal, the present tenses will largely inherit the format of the current -pa/ba forms, except their Old Tibetan pronunciations will not have the final -pa/ba suffix, and the {{bo-verb}} will be modified to automatically generate the -pa/ba form to show as |head=. And the -pa/ba form will be defined as “Substantive form of ...”, under a “Noun” header, with additional glosses and senses if necessary.

Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks! Wyang (talk) 07:53, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I really would prefer this, so long as someone else moves all the entries and fixes all the links! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:13, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I will try my best to fix them if we decide to adopt this proposal. (This is probably the only time that you wish there aren't too many entries.) Wyang (talk) 08:20, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm fine with this, but I'm concerned about how someone with ཡོད་པ (yod pa) or རིག་པ (rig pa) would find the entry. —Stephen ^(Talk) 14:49, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

@Stephen G. Brown The -pa/ba forms will link to the present tense forms in etymology (perhaps via {{bo-etym-verb-Pa}}), and would have “Substantive form of ...” as their definition (achieved via a {{bo-verb-Pa}} template), so the definitions of ཡོད་པ would read:

1. substantive form of the verb ཡོད (yod): being, existing; having, possessing

In the case of རིག་པ (rig pa), it would read:

1. substantive form of the verb རིག (rig): knowing, seeing, understanding
2. intelligence, cognition, understanding, knowledge, insight, awareness
3. intellectual reasoning, logic, philosophy
4. knower, cognizer

Do you think this is a good way to link to the verb lemmas? Wyang (talk) 02:41, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

It seems good to me. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:09, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks both for the replies. I will start working on this. Wyang (talk) 03:33, 1 December 2016 (UTC)