Lexicography in Motion: A History of the Tibetan Verb

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At one point or another, most language users rely on dictionaries as authoritative source of lexicographical information. The first recorded dictionaries date back to Sumerian times (3rd millennium BCE) compiled in the course of the linguistic convergence ('Sprachbund') between Akkadian and Sumerian. Since then, dictionaries have played a key role in intercultural communication and advanced scientific research across languages and nation states. Modern-day lexicography still serves these goals, but its methods have changed beyond recognition. Card catalogues have given way to databases and digital resources that offer access to a much larger pool of linguistic data. Today, practically all lexicographers deploy text corpora and corpus querying tools, both to sharpen the empirical base of definitions and to provide contextual examples for the end user. We propose to take advantage of these developments to create a corpus-based diachronic lexicon of Tibetan verbs.Verbs play a central role in most sentences. Knowledge of the meaning of a verb leads to the arguments it requires and to the semantic roles the arguments, in turn, assume. Our lexicon draws on these links. It will allow the user to infer the complete structure of a sentence, based primarily on the terminal verb and the type of accompanying arguments. Furthermore, it charts the morphological and semantic changes of the verbs from the earliest records of Tibetan in the 8th century CE to contemporary times. Each verb is tracked to its earlier occurrence in the Old Tibetan material within the corpus and then compared with its applications in Classical and Modern Tibetan. Some of the existing dictionaries contain sporadic diachronic information, but this is never analysed or juxtaposed with other data. We propose to identify, examine and contextualise the diachronic evidence in a systematic fashion in order to obtain a better grasp of the evolution of the Tibetan language overall.Corpus resources and processing tools constitute indispensable components in modern lexicography. For Tibetan, some of these tools are now available. 'Tibetan in Digital Communication' produced a large corpus of Tibetan language material, with part-of-speech-tagging, spanning Old, Classical and Modern Tibetan. For the lexicon, we mine its content by running a series of automated queries drawing on Natural Language Processing (NLP) software. At first, we create an internal workflow tool. This allows us to categorise, both systematically and comprehensively, all the Tibetan verbs within the corpus. The different forms of the verbs are then grouped together in discrete entries; we analyse in depth verbal stems that display semantic ambiguity, repeated change or morphological irregularity. In parallel, we identify and label the arguments connected with each verb. We use this data, individually and cumulatively, to generate the citations and definitions for the lexicon.The verb lexicon will become an indispensable asset for students and scholars alike, working on any one of the many facets of Tibetan culture, past and present. Outside academia, through its modern component, the lexicon improves access to Tibet-related content in the political and economic sphere. Development aid, humanitarian assistance, medical provisions and educational support are best delivered in conversation with the recipients. These conversations must be conducted in Tibetan. Very few Tibetans are fluent in English and most do not wish to communicate in Chinese. The software we create also advances the creation of new digital tools for Tibetan speakers. The IT sector is reluctant to invest in the language of a people that holds little political or economical influence. Its speakers are excluded from the vast resources of the web. Key to such technologies is the availability of a Basic Language Resource Kit (BLARK). The lexicon and predicate software bring us one step closer to the completion of a BLARK for Tibetan.