Blumenthal, James

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Book review of \u27A Tibetan Verb Lexicon: Verbs, Classes, and Syntactic Frames\u27 by Paul Hackett

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Himalaya, the Journal of theAssociation for Nepal andHimalayan StudiesVolume 24Number 1 Himalaya; The Journal of the Associationfor Nepal and Himalayan Studies No. 1 & 2Article 212004Book review of 'A Tibetan Verb Lexicon: Verbs,Classes, and Syntactic Frames' by Paul HackettJames BlumenthalFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalayaThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by theDigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@MacalesterCollege. It has been accepted for inclusion in Himalaya, the Journal of theAssociation for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorizedadministrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For moreinformation, please contact scholarpub@macalester.edu.Recommended CitationBlumenthal, James (2004) "Book review of 'A Tibetan Verb Lexicon: Verbs, Classes, and Syntactic Frames' by Paul Hackett," Himalaya,the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: Vol. 24: No. 1, Article 21.Available at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol24/iss1/21117ARTICLE TITLE/AuthorBOOKS, REVIEWS, REJOINDERS:RTICLE TITLE/ UTHORBOOKS, REVIEWS, R JOINDERSPaul Hackett’s A Tibetan Verb Lexicon:Verbs, Classes and Syntactic Frames is a welcomed new addition to the relative paucity of available materials for the study of the literary Tibetan language.1 Both the introductory overview of Tibetan verb usage and the detailed and exhaustive lexicon will be found to be quite useful for both linguists and students of literary Tibetan.The ﬁrst part of the book, the Introduction, is comprised of a rather technical and sophisticated analysis of Tibetan syntax as it relates to verb usage, where he presumes at least an elementary familiar-ity with basic terms and concepts in syntax. The book takes Joe Wilson’s Translating Buddhism From Tibetan as its grounding and point of departure for more extensive discussions of general verb usage including the various verb classes, their relation-ships to cases, verbal collocations and other related topics. His analysis of the subtleties and nuances of Tibetan verb usage is often insightful and quite useful. Hackett writes, “The premise of this lexi-con…is that this set of properties built around the predicate-argument structure (or subcategorization frame) of a verb yields a classiﬁcatory scheme from which a student may infer the complete structure of a sentence based primarily on the terminal verb and number and type of accompanying arguments (4).” In this respect, given the limited scope of the Introduction, the author is quite successful in dem-onstrating a general lack of ambiguity in Tibetan syntax that is so often presumed to be present by beginning students of the language.As Hackett argues, literary Tibetan has main-tained a remarkable degree of grammatical consis-tency over the course of 1,200 years. Thus a resource like this is invaluable for nearly the full spectrum of writings in Tibetan since the eighth century, when Tibetans adopted a Kashmiri Sanskrit script to the sounds of their spoken language and began their lit-erary enterprise.2 At the time, the written language was used mostly for the translation of Indian Bud-dhist texts into Tibetan, but the types and genres of writing in Tibetan have grown extensively since that time.Part II is the detailed lexicon and is really the heart of the book. It includes entries for nearly seven hundred verbs. Entries are alphabetized according to their present tense and include past, future and imperative forms. Since such a large percentage of Tibetan literature of various genres pertains to Bud-dhism and makes extensive use of Buddhist termi-nology inherited from Sanskrit, a large percentage of the entries also include the Sanskrit equivalents of the terms. This is followed by English translation equivalents. Though there is still a lack of consen-sus on the translation of many Tibetan and Sanskrit technical terms within Buddhist Studies, I found Hackett’s lexicon to be quite satisfying in that he utilizes standard equivalents when they exist and of-fers a variety of possibilities when there is either no consensus on the English or the Tibetan term itself has multiple senses or meanings. Perhaps the aspect that will be found to be most welcomed by students of Tibetan is that nearly every entry includes at least one example of its usage in a Tibetan phrase or sen-tence with a detailed parsing of the syntactical parts of that phrase or sentence. The third part of the book is an index of all the verbs found in the lexicon in Part II.Hackett’s A Tibetan Verb Lexicon is a much-needed new contribution to the general body of materials for the study of the Literary Tibetan language. Students, linguists, and translators will all ﬁnd this detailed treatment of Tibetan verb usage and particularly the A TIBETAN VERB LEXICON: VERBS, CLASSES, AND SYNTACTIC FRAMESPAUL HACKETTREVIEWED BY JAMES BLUMENTHALA Tibetan Verb Lexicon: Verbs, Classes, and Syntactic FramesPaul HackettIthaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2003.  Pp. xiv + 209.118 HIMALAYA  XXIV (1-2) 2004BOOKS, REVIEWS, REJOINDERS:lexicon itself to be an invaluable resource for many years to come. Sophisticated work on the Tibetan language is long overdue and Hackett should be congratulated for this valu-able offering.James Blumenthal is an Associate Professor of Buddhist Philosophy at Oregon State University. He is the author of The Ornament of the Middle Way: A Study of the Madhyamaka Thought of Santa-raksita. Blumenthal translated Nagarjuna’s Sixty Stanzas of Rea-soning from the Tibetan for His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the occasion of his teaching on the text in Los Angeles in 2004.  ENDNOTES1 Modern colloquial Tibetan ought to be considered distinct from literary Tibetan in that case markers, particles, verbal usage, and verbal conjugation are often quite different.2 Two exceptions noted by the author are oral texts “written” by illiterate authors and pre-standard Tibetan texts such as those discovered among the collections at Tun-huang.Monks debating, Lhasa PHOTO: MICHELE MCNEIL118 HIMALAYA  XXIV (1-2) 2004

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Book review of \u27A Tibetan Verb Lexicon: Verbs, Classes, and Syntactic Frames\u27 by Paul Hackett

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