Aspirated and Unaspirated Voiceless Consonants in Old Tibetan

Abstract

Although Tibetan orthography distinguishes aspirated and unaspirated voiceless consonants, various authors have viewed this distinction as not phonemic. An examination of the unaspirated voiceless initials in the Old Tibetan Inscriptions, together with unaspirated voiceless consonants in several Tibetan dialects confirms that aspiration was either not phonemic in Old Tibetan, or only just emerging as a distinction due to loan words. The data examined also affords evidence for the nature of the phonetic word in Old Tibetan.