CLASSIC TIBETAN MOD.1

Classical Tibetan is offered among the language courses of the Bachelor’s Degree in Language, Culture and Society of Asia and Mediterranean Africa (LICSAAM). This courses aims to provide the students with the required linguistic and philological skills applied to the study of classical Tibetan.
Course objectives and learning outcomes: introduction to the phonology and the main grammatical and syntactical structures of Tibetan language. By the end of the course, students will be able to read, translate and understand easy literary texts.
This teaching aims to lay the foundations of more elaborated readings of the second semester. Reading Buddhist texts in Tibetan also facilitates a better understanding of important philosophical sources of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism.

Learning outcomes:
1) Show evidence of a familiarity with the required sufficient knowledge of Tibetan scripts ( principally dbu can formal style) phonology, morphology and syntax to read and translate easy classical Tibetan texts.
2) Demonstrate a facility in critical thinking and reasoning by applying these skills to the analysis of literary sources and to translation problems and issues.
4) Employ basic research skills to access and critically evaluate information that bears on linguistic and literary topics from scholarly sources, vocabularies, including digitalised sources, specialised websites and social networking website for academics.

No preliminar knowledge required. A basic knowledge of English is helpful for the purpose of consulting additional reference sources, such as grammar books and dictionaries.

1)Introduction to the phonology and morphology:
1.1 Consonants and vowels
1.2. Subscribed letters
1.3 Super-scribed letters
1.4 Prefixes
1.5 Subfixes
1.6 Spelling
1.7 Punctuation

2)Scientific transliteration of Tibetan scripts

3) Introduction to the key features of Tibetan grammar:
3.1 The Linguistic topology S O V
3.2 Personal Pronouns
3.3 Demonstrative Pronouns
3.4 Genitive particles
3.5 Instrumental particles
3.6 Ergative
3.7 Verbal Stems; negation; direct and Indirect objects of verbs
3.8 Locative particles
3.9 Conjunctive particles
3.10 Final particles: Interrogative particles and statements
3.11 Concessive particles
3.12 Possessive particles
3.13 Semi-final particles

4)Guided analysis and translation of selected easy Tibetan classical texts of different literary genres.

a) Required readings:
S. Hodge An Introduction to Classical Tibetan, Aris and Philips, , Warminster, 1990
Craig Preston, How to Read Classical Tibetan volume I: A Summary of the General Path, Ithaca, NY, 2003

b) Additional dictionaries:
1) Chandra-Das, Sarat. (reprint 1975). Tibetan-English Dictionary. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Electronic version available on-line.
2) Dictionary on-line:
2.1 “Ranjung yes he dharma dictionary” available at this link: http://rywiki.tsadra.org/index.php/Main_Page
2.2 “The Tibetan and Himalayan Library dictionaries” available at this link http://www.thlib.org/reference/

c) Useful websites:
“Tibetan and Himalayan Library": www. thlib.org
“Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines": http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/collections/journals/ret/nonjavascript.php

d) Supplementary materials (grammar summary, hand-writing templates ) will be provided during the course.

Students will be encouraged to partecipate actively during the lessons mainly through reading and translation exercises in order to evaluate the general level of understanding.
The intermediate and the final exams will be both written and oral.
1) The written exam consists in:
a) Transliteration of Tibetan scripts and handwriting exercises
b) Grammar exercises
c) Translation of simple sentences or brief passages of selected easy classical texts
2) Oral exam: students will be asked to read, analyse and translate excerpts of Tibetan texts covered during the course.

Frontal lessons with power point presentations.
Practical exercises and guided translation of Tibetan texts.
In order to better contextualise the literary sources translated during the course, additional material on historical, literary, religious-philosophical topics will be shared on the e-leaning platform available at the moodle.unive.it

Italian

Regular attendance during classes is strongly recommended.

written and oral