Latin h- and Tibetan འ ḥ
Year: 2025
Type: article
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.
Source: Language and Linguistics 語言暨語言學
Author: Nathan W. Hill
Institutions: Trinity College Dublin, SOAS University of London
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4413440701