Tibetan as a dominant Sprachbund language: its interactions with neighboring languages

Abstract

The Amdo plateau is well-known as a language convergence area (Dwyer 1995, Slater 2003, Janhunen 2004). But what kind of influence has Tibetan had on the languages of that region? What cultural contacts have facilitated or hindered convergence? This paper presents an over- view of contacts between varieties of Tibetan and the languages of western China and Chinese Turkestan, and then focuses on the Amdo Sprachbund as a site of intensive contact with Mongo- lic, Turkic and Sinitic. Typically as a superstrate language, Tibetan has contributed to creoliza- tion processes in the many unrelated local languages, and even in northwestern Mandarin. In ad- dition to phonological and lexical convergence, many of these languages —Monguor, Baonan, Santa, Wutun, Kangjia and Salar— show evidence of syntactic-semantic convergence. Most of these non-dominant languages now have a modified Tibetan evidential system. Cultural convergence is also evident in kinship relations, lifecycle practices, and oral folklore. Most of the above non-Tibetan groups, for example, tell varieties of the Gesar epic. The paper explores the extent to which cultural convergence facilitated linguistic convergence, and illustrates the degree to which Tibetan linguistic and cultural practices are embedded in these non-Tibetan languages and cultures.