Tibetan Speakers Research Articles

Scope assignment in Quantifier-Negation sentences in Tibetan as a heritage language in China

Quantifier-Negation sentences allow an inverse scope reading in Tibetan but not in Chinese. This difference can be attributed to the underlying syntactic difference: the negation word can be raised at Logical Form in Tibetan but not in Chinese. This study investigated whether Chinese-dominant Tibetan heritage speakers know such difference. We conducted a sentence–picture matching truth value judgment task with 28 Chinese-dominant Tibetan heritage speakers, 25 baseline Tibetan speakers and 31 baseline Chinese speakers. Our baseline data first confirmed the difference between Tibetan and Chinese: the inverse scope reading is allowed in Tibetan but prohibited in Chinese. Our heritage participants’ data showed a divergence: one group of heritage speakers allow the inverse scope reading in both Tibetan and Chinese while another group prohibit it in both languages. There is a third group of heritage speakers who are aware of the difference between Tibetan and Chinese. Our findings suggest that while it is possible for heritage speakers to attain nativelike knowledge of an interface phenomenon that differs in their two languages, they may also be subject to crosslinguistic influence and adopt one of two opposite strategies. Both strategies can minimize syntactic differences between their two grammars so an economy of syntactic representations in their repository of grammars can be achieved.

“Besides the Bread, Everyone Speaks Tibetan”: A Portrait of the Tibetan Occupational Link to Farmers Markets in New York City

This paper explores farmers markets as significant sites of employment, language use, and cultural expression for Tibetan speakers living in New York City. Farmers markets serve as a labor niche for the large Tibetan speaking migrant community in the city, yet this niche has been largely unnamed in discussions of Himalayan New York and in discussions of immigrant labor patterns in general. Guided by ethnographic research and first-hand interviews, this paper seeks to investigate the occupational link between farmers markets and Tibetan speakers in NYC – how this niche developed and is sustained, how employee values and the employment environment inform and aid this connection, and how Tibetan language and tradition manifest within the farmers market sphere. Ultimately, this paper conceptualizes farmers markets as spaces of community beyond labor. A seemingly simple employment pattern is in fact an extensive microcosm of Tibetan community spanning five boroughs and over fifty farmers markets, aiding linguistic and cultural preservation as well as exchange for Tibetan speakers across New York City.

A qualitative study of perspectives on access to tuberculosis health services in Xigaze, China

BackgroundTuberculosis (TB) is a major global health threat and the leading infectious disease cause of death worldwide. Access to and retention in TB care remains a challenge for patients, particularly those living in rural and remote settings. This qualitative study explored barriers and facilitators to accessing and maintaining contact with TB care services in communities in Xigaze (Shigatse) prefecture, Xizang Autonomous Region (Tibet Autonomous Region), China from the perspective of persons impacted by TB.MethodsWe conduced in-depth interviews with 23 participants impacted by TB in four rural districts in Xigaze prefecture, Xizang Autonomous Region, China between April 2019 and November 2020. Interviews were conducted in Tibetan and Mandarin, transcribed in Mandarin and translated into English. Transcripts were checked against recordings by native Tibetan and Mandarin speakers. QSR NVivo12 software was used for framework analysis guided by an access to care conceptual framework by Levesque et al.ResultsOverall patients reported low awareness of and an indifferent attitude towards TB, although all reported understanding the need to adhere to treatment. Participants reported complex pathways to care, often requiring visits to multiple healthcare facilities. Some participants reported visiting traditional Tibetan medicine (TTM) providers. Participants reported various barriers to accessing care including challenges physically reaching care, out-of-pocket payments for tests, diagnostics and transport. Barriers to maintaining care included medication side effects and worry about treatment effectiveness. Enablers to accessing care identified included knowledge or past experience with TB, integrated models of TTM and western care, supportive village doctors who conducted home visits, free TB treatment and other subsidies, as well as having family support with care and social support as barriers and facilitators to maintaining treatment.ConclusionsWe identified barriers and facilitators to accessing services in rural communities in Xigaze from the perspective of persons impacted by TB. Challenges include complex pathways to care, travel distances, wait times and low awareness. Tuberculosis care in the region could be strengthened by ongoing culturally tailored educational campaigns to increase awareness, partnerships with TTM providers, providing comprehensive treatment subsidies and strengthening the role of family members in comprehensive TB care.Graphic abstract

The Crafting Memory of the Self. Reflections on Tibetan Diary-Keeping

ABSTRACT This paper aims at offering an overview of diary-keeping practices in the Tibetan literary and historical milieus by describing the origin and evolution of the genre conventionally known as nyinto (nyin tho) or nyindep (nyin deb). The factual nature and didactic function of traditional forms of diaries will be compared to the use of the diary format as a narrative tool in modern Tibetan literature, especially in short stories and novels. The second part of the paper presents as a case-study the nyindep of a Khampa trader. The peculiarities of the diary allow for reflection on the hybrid nature of genre, suspended as it is between fact and fiction. The final section of the paper engages with some of the developments undergone by diary writing practices among Tibetan language speakers, presenting extracts from a discussion on the features of the genre as hosted in one of the many popular Tibetan social network platforms.

English Stress Gaining by resident Speakers of tibetan

Past reviews demonstrate that language contrasts cause comparing impacts on Second Language Acquisition. In view of the Corpus of Chinese, English, and Tibetan talked by Tibetan Speakers (CETTS), this review led English anxiety generation and discernment explores and break down the English anxiety obtaining by local speakers of Tibetan, to see if stretch position and syllable structures will influence their anxiety securing. By investigating 2, 176 creations and 4, 352 observation reaction by 17 subjects, and additionally receiving ANoVA examination and Mann-Whitney U test, this review discovers that: (1) The Tibetan gathering has a lower precision rate in English anxiety generation and discernment tests; in addition, not at all like Americans, local Tibetan speakers don't utilize the scope of F0 to acknowledge English anxiety. (2) Stress position influences push creation by the Tibetan gathering, however applies no impact to stress generation by the American gathering, and stress observation by both gatherings. (3) The tonal conveyance manage of Tibetan does not influence the obtaining of English anxiety. (4) Schwa has no factual effect in precision rate, yet can abbreviate the subjects’ reaction time. Such discoveries will give observational information to more compelling educating of English to minority gatherings. List Terms: creation and observation, English anxiety procurement, push position, syllable structure.

Becoming Bilingual in School and Home in Tibetan Areas of China: Stories of Struggle YiXi LaMuCuo

Reviewed by: Becoming Bilingual in School and Home in Tibetan Areas of China: Stories of Struggle YiXi LaMuCuo Norbert Francis (bio) YiXi LaMuCuo. Becoming Bilingual in School and Home in Tibetan Areas of China: Stories of Struggle. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019. 183 pp. Paperback $119.99, isbn 978-3-030-14667-2. This study from the Tibetan communities of China is a welcome contribution to the field of language learning and language loss, considering the scarcity of information in recent years coming out of these same communities on the relevant questions. Precisely, what concerned observers have today are many questions. Following a survey of previous work internationally and of basic concepts in the study of bilingualism, the chapters present a series of five indepth interviews recorded by the author on-site. The participants document their experience from three of the principal stages of bilingual contact between Tibetan and Chinese: ∘ the early post-1949 government policy that promoted the Tibetan language along with a generation of native speaking cadre to administer the newly incorporated region; ∘ reaction against Tibetan language promotion beginning in 1959, to be taken up again during the ferocious suppression through the years of the Cultural Revolution; and ∘ a period of relative opening, beginning in 1977. The central concept that is developed throughout the chapters is the distinction between additive and subtractive bilingualism. Interested readers should consult the study on a parallel language research problem in East Asia that addresses this key concept. For Hokkien (Southern Min), subtractive, or Replacing Language, bilingualism already characterizes its subordinate relationship with Mandarin Chinese. The critical age bracket for language [End Page 56] erosion, according to the Hokkien study, is the elementary school-age population.1 The additive-subtractive distinction is closely related to the two language education options for learners: záng wéi zhu 藏為主 and hàn wéi zhu 漢為主, respectively, Tibetan-medium and Chinese-medium of instruction. A current debate in Tibetan-Chinese bilingual education specifically turns on how the increasing shift toward the Chinese-medium option is being implemented; that in its progressively Chinese-biased implementation, school programs appear to be leaning toward the subtractive outcome for Tibetan. Over time, the option of Tibetan-medium instruction appears to have been transitioning to instruction of Tibetan as a school subject, with its concomitant reduction in hours of instruction, learning materials and effective teaching methodology.2 Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge, as professor YiXi would concur, that it is too early to make a definitive assessment of actual student learning outcomes regarding school-related Tibetan language proficiency, for example in the domain of literacy. There is simply not enough pertinent information on student achievement available that can broadly inform this research problem. Based on current research models and descriptive accounts of language contact in the Tibetan region (including now the interview text samples of chapters 4–6), two logical possibilities on the related question of linguistic competence3 can be considered: (1). that language shift toward modern standard Chinese has not advanced to any significant degree, individual cases aside; and that family-based native-speaker competence in Tibetan communities (including urban centers) remains fundamentally intact in the school-age population. (2). a minority of young bilinguals, in daily contact with monolingual speakers of Chinese and electronic media, has shifted toward dominance in Chinese accompanied by a measurable erosion of competence in Tibetan (i.e., Replacement Language development). Given the deficit of reliable and confirmed empirical data, neither scenario can yet be discounted. In fact, a careful reading of chapters 4–6, correlated with partial results from recent linguistic/ethnographic surveys does not allow us to exclude either (1) or (2) at this time. The distribution of Tibetan speakers over an immense geographical expanse, divided among numerous dialects, both linguistically close and distant, and variants not mutually intelligible, complicates enormously the fieldwork evaluation of verifiable cases of outright erosion (shift of the speech community to Chinese), convergence between dialects or variants, bilingual mixing and preservation. An interesting analysis of the interview material focuses on spontaneous alternation, switching between Tibetan and Chinese, by participants. A number of features of this kind of bilingual speech present themselves for further study: [End Page 57...

Visualized correction of English monophthongs for Tibetan speakers

Visualized correction of English monophthongs for Tibetan speakers

Distinguishing human ethnic groups by means of sequences from Helicobacter pylori: lessons from Ladakh.

The history of mankind remains one of the most challenging fields of study. However, the emergence of anatomically modern humans has been so recent that only a few genetically informative polymorphisms have accumulated. Here, we show that DNA sequences from Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that colonizes the stomachs of most humans and is usually transmitted within families, can distinguish between closely related human populations and are superior in this respect to classical human genetic markers. H. pylori from Buddhists and Muslims, the two major ethnic communities in Ladakh (India), differ in their population-genetic structure. Moreover, the prokaryotic diversity is consistent with the Buddhists having arisen from an introgression of Tibetan speakers into an ancient Ladakhi population. H. pylori from Muslims contain a much stronger ancestral Ladakhi component, except for several isolates with an Indo-European signature, probably reflecting genetic flux from the Near East. These signatures in H. pylori sequences are congruent with the recent history of population movements in Ladakh, whereas similar signatures in human microsatellites or mtDNA were only marginally significant. H. pylori sequence analysis has the potential to become an important tool for unraveling short-term genetic changes in human populations.