Article published In: Language and Linguistics
Vol. 26:4 (2025) ► pp.622–631
Latin h- and Tibetan འ ḥ
A reply to Schuessler
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
Published online: 22 August 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00247.hil
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00247.hil
Abstract
This article critiques Axel Schuessler’s recent proposal on the development of *w- in Sino-Tibetan and its
reflexes in Old Chinese and Tibetan. Focusing on the Tibetan letter འ ḥ, Hill argues against Schuessler’s characterization of it as a purely diacritic or
erratically used letter, instead presenting historical phonological evidence that it originally represented the phoneme /ɣ/ with
predictable allophonic variation. Drawing parallels with the behavior of letters like Latin “h” and Tibetan ད d-, the article defends a rational and
phonemic basis for the orthographic choices of the Tibetan script’s creators. It also introduces overlooked or more recent
scholarship supporting this view and critiques Schuessler’s failure to incorporate such evidence into his analysis.
Keywords: Tibetan phonology, orthography, historical phonology, Axel Schuessler
References (18)
Bialek, Joanna. 2023. Old
Literary Tibetan: A comprehensive grammatical description based on the Old Tibetan
Annals. Marburg: Philipps-Universität Marburg. (Habilitationsschrift.)
Coblin, W. South. 1994. A compendium of phonetics in
Northwest Chinese. Berkeley: Project on Linguistic Analysis, University of California.
. 2002. On certain functions of
’a-chung in early Tibetan transcriptional texts. Linguistics of the
Tibeto-Burman
Area 25(2). 169–184.
. 2006. Two notes on Táng-time
Tibetan transcriptions of Chinese. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman
Area 29(2). 135–138.
Gong, Xun. 2016. Prenasalized
reflex of Old Tibetan <ld-> and related clusters in Central Tibetan. Cahiers de
Linguistique Asie
Orientale 45(2). 127–147.
Hill, Nathan W. 2005. Once more on the letter
འ. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman
Area 28(2). 111–141.
2009. Tibetan <ḥ-> as a plain
initial and its place in Old Tibetan Phonology. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman
Area 32(1): 115–140.
2010. An overview of Old Tibetan
synchronic phonology. Transactions of the Philological
Society 108(2). 110–125.
Hill, Nathan. 2013. Relative
ordering of Tibetan sound changes affecting laterals. Language and
Linguistics 14(1). 193–209.
Hill, Nathan W. 2019a. The historical phonology of Tibetan,
Burmese, and Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2019b. The derivation of the Tibetan
present prefix g- from ḥ-. Acta Orientalia Academiae
Scientiarum
Hungaricae 72(3). 325–332.
2022. Worin besteht der Unterschied
zwischen Präskription und Superskription in der tibetischen
Orthographie? In Cüppers, Christoph & Everding, Karl-Heinz & Schwieger, Peter (eds.), A
life in Tibetan studies: Festschrift for Dieter Schuh at the occasion of his 80th
birthday, 313–333. Lumbini: Lumbini International Research Institute.
Jäschke, Heinrich August. 1881. A Tibetan-English dictionary: With
special reference to the prevailing
dialects. London: The Secretary of State for India in Council.
Preiswerk, Thomas. 2014. Die
Phonologie des Alttibetischen auf Grund der chinesischen Beamtennamen im chinesisch-tibetischen Abkommen von 822 n.
Chr. Zentralasiatische
Studien 431. 7–158.
Róna-Tas, András. 1966. Tibeto-Mongolica:
The Tibetan loanwords of Mongour and the development of the Archaic Tibetan dialects (Indo-Iranian
Monographs 7). The Hague: Mouton.
Róna-Tas, András. 1985. Wiener
Vorlesungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte
Tibets. Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien.
Schuessler, Axel. 2024. Sino-Tibetan
*w in Tibetan and Old Chinese. Language and
Linguistics 25(1). 80–122.