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Article published In: Language and Linguistics
Vol. 27:2 (2026) ► pp.175–227

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Proto-Tibetic *mbras ‘1grain; 2rice’

Comparative reconstruction and dialect subgrouping

ORCiD logo with link | Trinity College Dublin
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

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Published online: 26 February 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00255.bia
Abstract
This article proposes a new historical subgrouping of Old Tibetan dialects. It demonstrates that Tibetan dialects started to differentiate in late pre-historical times, shortly before the script introduction. The emergence of the first dialects is shown to have resulted from the military expansion of the Tibetan Empire. The reconstruction of the dialect formation supplements earlier insights by studying modern equivalents of Old Literary Tibetan ɣbras, the Proto-Tibetic form of which has been reconstructed as *mbras. In addition, comparing its cognates in other presumably closely related languages permitted the reconstruction of *mras to Proto-Bodic and, tentatively, *mrats to Proto-Trans-Himalayan.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Reconstruction of historical dialects: Note on methodology
    • Typographical conventions
  • 3.ɣbras in Old Literary Tibetan
  • 4.Equivalents of OLT ɣbras in modern Tibetan dialects
    • 4.1Ancient Old Tibetan dialect group
      • 4.1.1AOT-NE *mbras
    • 4.2Early Old Tibetan dialect groups
      • 4.2.1EOT-NW *bras
      • 4.2.2EOT-S *bras
    • 4.3Middle Old Tibetan dialect group
      • 4.3.1MOT-NE *mbras
    • 4.4Late Old Tibetan dialect groups
      • 4.4.1LOT-SW *brɛː
      • 4.4.2 LOT-E *ɖʐeː
      • 4.4.3LOT-N *bas
      • 4.4.4LOT-S *bjas
      • 4.4.5LOT-C *ɖʐas
    • 4.5Early Middle Tibetan dialect groups
      • 4.5.1EMT-W *ɖʐa̠s
      • 4.5.2EMT-E *nɖʐɛ̄ː
  • 5.Proto-Tibetic *mbras
  • 6.Cognates and Proto-Bodic *mras
  • 7.Previous hypotheses
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • List of abbreviations
  • References
References (134)
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