On Characters of Tibetan Writing System Alphabetic characters, pronunciations, ISO
Author: Jiang Di
Translators: Ding Zhibin, Li Maoli
ISBN: 978-1-84464-412-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-84464-413-1
Hardback-317
April 2017 English £80 $130 €100
Description:
The Tibetan Writing has a 1300 year history and is widely disseminated and used. On Characters of Tibetan Writing System is a book specifically focusing on Tibetan text symbols, involving research in related fields like features of the characters, their structural features and application properties. The subtitle of this book is ‘Alphabetic characters, pronunciations, ISO codes, sorting sequences, picture symbols, and transliterations’. In other words, the study of Tibetan characters must involve the study of their properties such as origin, forms, pronunciation, function and structure as well as their application properties like word frequency, code, sort and transferring. This research work constitutes a guidebook for those seeking knowledge about Tibetan characters.
Content:
Chapter 1 The Origin and Nature of Tibetan Writing System
1.1 Conjecture of the Origin of Tibetan Writing System
1.2 Nature of Tibetan Writing System
1.3 Tibetan Font
Chapter 2 Structural and Statistical Characteristics of Tibetan Writing System
2.1 Tibetan Characters and Tibetan Word Structures
2.2 Tibetan Graphs: Consonant Characters
2.3 Tibetan Glyphs: Vowel Characters
2.4 Structures of Tibetan Spelling and Their Frequencies
2.5 Statistical Characteristics of Tibetan Dictionaries
Chapter 3 Types of Tibetan Characters and Their Functions
3.1 Classification of Tibetan Text Characters: Graph and Picture
3.2 Accounts for Classification of Tibetan Text Symbols and Functions
3.3 Classification of Tibetan Non-text Symbols and Accounts of Significance
Chapter 4 Tibetan Latin Transliteration Scheme
4.1 Aim and Scope of Tibetan Latin Transliteration
4.2 Comparison among Different Schemes of Tibetan Latin Transliteration
4.3 Systematic and Practising Principles of Tibetan Latin Transliteration
4.4 Whole Scheme of Tibetan Latin Transliteration
4.5 Some Rules of Text Transliteration and Returning Rules to the Origin
Chapter 5 A Sorting Order for Tibetan Characters and Its Algorithm
5.1 History of Sorting Orders in Tibetan Dictionaries
5.2 Inconsistency in Sorting Orders among Tibetan Dictionaries
5.3 Word Constructing Orders and Grades of Distinctive Constitutions
5.4 Tibetan Character Sequence and Their Assignment with Values
5.5 Mathematical Sorting Model for Tibetan E-Dictionary
5.6 Algorithm of Tibetan Sorting Order and Charts
Chapter 6 Tibetan Alphabetic Characters
Including Consonant Characters, Vowel Characters, etc.
Chapter 7 Tibetan Non-alphabetic Characters
Including Diacritical Marks, Numeral Symbols and Punctuations
Chapter 8 Tibetan Graphical Symbols
Including Traditional Tibetan Textual Symbols, Honorific Symbols for Appellation, Promoting Symbols for Cantillation, Calendared Symbols, Astrological Symbols, and Ornamental Symbols, etc.
Appendices
References
Author and Translators:
Dr. Jiang Di is professor and director of the Lab of Phonetics and Computational Linguistics of Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. As an expert in Tibetan language and computational linguistics, he also shares the vice-president of Chinese Linguistics Society of Minority Languages, a member of the council of Chinese Information Processing Society of China and a member of the National Standardization Technical Committee. He is the editor of the editorial board in Journal of Chinese Information Processing of Chinese Academy of Science and in Minority Languages of China of Chinese Academy of Social Science and etc. Granted as the guest Professor of Southwest University for Nationality and the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Shanghai Normal University, he focuses mainly on Sino-Tibetan linguistics, modern Tibetan grammar and computational linguistics, and has published works and articles widely on phonetics, morphology, syntax, historical linguistics, evolutionary linguistics, computational linguistics.
Dr. Ding Zhibin is professor at Jishou University, a visiting scholar at University of Aberdeen, UK (2015), whose research interest is applied linguistics. He has been granted 5 provincial, ministerial and national scientific research projects, and has published more than 10 academic articles and books.
Dr. Li Maoli is associate professor at Jishou University, whose research interest is language evolution. She has been granted a couple of provincial scientific research projects, and participated several ministerial-level and national projects. She has a keen interest in translating academic materials and has published 10 academic articles.