CLASSICAL TIBETAN MOD.1
- Academic year
- 2019/2020 Syllabus of previous years
- Official course title
- LINGUA TIBETANA MOD.1
- Course code
- LT0103 (AF:246756 AR:138018)
- Modality
- On campus classes
- ECTS credits
- 6
- Degree level
- Bachelor's Degree Programme
- Educational sector code
- L-OR/18
- Period
- 1st Semester
- Course year
- 3
- Where
- VENEZIA
- Moodle
- Go to Moodle page
Contribution of the course to the overall degree programme goals
Course objectives and learning outcomes: introduction to the phonology and the main grammatical and syntactical structures of Tibetan language. By the end of the course, students will be able to read, translate and understand easy literary texts.
This teaching aims to lay the foundations of more elaborated readings of the second semester. Reading Buddhist texts in Tibetan also facilitates a better understanding of important philosophical sources of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism.
Expected learning outcomes
1) Show evidence of a familiarity with the required sufficient knowledge of Tibetan scripts ( principally dbu can formal style) phonology, morphology and syntax to read and translate easy classical Tibetan texts.
2) Demonstrate a facility in critical thinking and reasoning by applying these skills to the analysis of literary sources and to translation problems and issues.
4) Employ basic research skills to access and critically evaluate information that bears on linguistic and literary topics from scholarly sources, vocabularies, including digitalised sources, specialised websites and social networking website for academics.
Pre-requirements
Contents
1.1 Consonants and vowels
1.2. Subscribed letters
1.3 Super-scribed letters
1.4 Prefixes
1.5 Subfixes
1.6 Spelling
1.7 Punctuation
2)Scientific transliteration of Tibetan scripts
3) Introduction to the key features of Tibetan grammar:
3.1 The Linguistic topology S O V
3.2 Personal Pronouns
3.3 Demonstrative Pronouns
3.4 Genitive particles
3.5 Instrumental particles
3.6 Ergative
3.7 Verbal Stems; negation; direct and Indirect objects of verbs
3.8 Locative particles
3.9 Conjunctive particles
3.10 Final particles: Interrogative particles and statements
3.11 Concessive particles
3.12 Possessive particles
3.13 Semi-final particles
4)Guided analysis and translation of selected easy Tibetan classical texts of different literary genres.
Referral texts
S. Hodge An Introduction to Classical Tibetan, Aris and Philips, , Warminster, 1990
Craig Preston, How to Read Classical Tibetan volume I: A Summary of the General Path, Ithaca, NY, 2003
b) Additional dictionaries:
1) Chandra-Das, Sarat. (reprint 1975). Tibetan-English Dictionary. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Electronic version available on-line.
2) Dictionary on-line:
2.1 “Ranjung yes he dharma dictionary” available at this link: http://rywiki.tsadra.org/index.php/Main_Page
2.2 “The Tibetan and Himalayan Library dictionaries” available at this link http://www.thlib.org/reference/
c) Useful websites:
“Tibetan and Himalayan Library": www. thlib.org
“Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines": http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/collections/journals/ret/nonjavascript.php
d) Supplementary materials (grammar summary, hand-writing templates ) will be provided during the course.
Assessment methods
The intermediate and the final exams will be both written and oral.
1) The written exam consists in:
a) Transliteration of Tibetan scripts and handwriting exercises
b) Grammar exercises
c) Translation of simple sentences or brief passages of selected easy classical texts
2) Oral exam: students will be asked to read, analyse and translate excerpts of Tibetan texts covered during the course.
IMPORTANT: Extraordinary procedures for online exams due to the current COVID-19 emergency
The intermediate and final exams will be oral. During this semester the exams will be conducted remotely on Google meet as explained in the guidelines.
Type of exam
Teaching methods
Practical exercises and guided translation of Tibetan texts.
In order to better contextualise the literary sources translated during the course, additional material on historical, literary, religious-philosophical topics will be shared on the e-leaning platform available at the moodle.unive.it
Teaching language
Further information
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals
This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development