Vollmann Ralf. Descriptions of Tibetan ergativity: a historiographical account

Graz: Leykam, 2008. — 345 p. — (Grazer vergleichende Arbeiten 21).The Tibetan language, a member of the (genetic) Sino-Tibetan language family, has traditionally been described as a monosyllabic (cf. Adelung 1806: 68), isolating or analytical language. 'Monosyllabicity' seems to be a category which is difficult to define or to find – it is therefore outdated in contemporary linguistics, but sometimes used in more traditional descriptions. On the one hand, a traditional Tibetan analysis of written text usually gives explanations
or a meaning for each syllable. On the other hand, most words in Tibetan are bisyllabic, some are polysyllabic, either from a process of compounding or of derivation, the latter mostly with the 'particles' or 'suffixes' pa, ma, po, mo ('nominalizers', henceforth NS). These affixes/particles can get lost again from an already formed word in further word formation processes (Vollmann 2006). Compounding and (other) derivations are further sources for bior plurisyllabic words. Finally, loan words are often plurisyllabic.