AHP 45: REVIEW: TIBETAN LITERARY GENRES, TEXTS, AND TEXT TYPES

Abstract

Following the quantitative tradition of sociolinguistic research pioneered by such scholars as William Labov, Walt Wolfram, and Penelope Eckert, Reynolds presents a detailed, coherent analysis of the social parameters behind a specific on-going sound change, the merger of syllable final bilabial nasal (m) with aveolar coronal nasal (n), in one small farming community in Qinghai Province. His is certainly not the first such study on Tibetan sound change. It is also not the first study to investigate the merger of (m) into (n), which is a prominent feature of so-called "farmer" dialects of Amdo Tibetan (Hua 2005). ...