The phonetic values of the Tibetan letter r in Tibeto-Chinese transcriptional texts from Dunhuang

• Main Author: Coblin, W. South
• Other Authors: University of Iowa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities; Tibetan; Tibeto-Burman
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/177730
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In Tibeto-Chinese transcriptions from Dūnhuáng, Tibetan r frequently occurs in syllable final position, where it corresponds to final -t of the traditional Qièyùn System. This use of Tibetan r in the texts has been well known for over a century and is often discussed in the literature. Much rarer and less well known is the use of r in syllable initial and medial positions. In this paper it is noted that syllable initial r- occurs exclusively in certain phrase-final particles and corresponds to Qièyùn System initial l-, while medial -r- is limited to a small number of Division II-type syllables. In these latter cases, it may indicate some sort of rhotacism.