Tangut (also Xixia) is the ancient northerneastern Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the Tangut Empire. By some linguists it is classified as belonging to the Qiangic languages. It is only distantly related to Tibetan and Burmese, and possibly also to Chinese.

Among the Qiangic languages one also notably finds Qiang and Rgyalrong.

This is the ancient official language of the Tangut empire (known in Tibetan as Mi-nyag and in Chinese as Xixia 西夏) which obtained its independence from the Chinese Song dynasty at the beginning of the 11th century, and was annihilated by Činggis Qaɣan (commonly known as Gengis Khan) in 1227.

The Tangut script, which Sofronov (1968) considered with reason to be one of the most complex in the history of humanity, was created by a decree of the emperor Li Yuanhao (李元昊) in 1038. The invention of the script was bestowed on Yeli Renrong (野利仁榮), a scholar close to the imperial family. After the destruction of the empire, the writing did not completely disappear, and it was used at least until the end of the 15th century.

Script

The Tangut script, introduced in 1036, was a siniform based loosely on the Chinese method of writing. The script is presumed to have been designed by "The Teacher, Iri" under the supervision of the Emperor of the Tangut state, Li Yuanhao. It consisted of approximately 6,600 logographic characters built from radicals, in much the same way as they are in the Chinese script. Occasionally, for religious documents, the Tangut language was written in Tibetan script.

Reconstruction

The majority of Tangut texts were excavated at Khara-Khoto in 1906 by Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov, and these documents are at present preserved in the Saint Petersburg branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academmy of Sciences. The collections amounts to about 10,000 volumes, of mostly Buddhist texts, law codes and legal documents dating from mid-11th up to early 13th centuries. Among the Buddhist texts a number of unique compilations, not known neither in Chinese nor in Tibetan versions were recently discovered. Furthermore, the Buddhist canon, the Confucian classics, and a great number of indigenous texts written in Tangut have been preserved. These other major Tangut collections, though much smaller in size, belong to the British Museum, National Library in Beijing, Library of Beijing University and other libraries.

The research of Tangut script began as early as early 20th century when M. Maurisse first acquired a copy of Tangut "Lotus sutra", which was partially researched by some unknown Chinese scholar. After the discovery of Khara-Khoto library by P. K. Kozlov the script was identified as the one belonging to the Tangut state of Xixia, and actual research had began. Such scholars as A. I. Ivanov, Ishihama Juntaro, B. Laufer, Luo Fuchang, Luo Fucheng, Wang Jingru contributed into the research of the Tangut language.

The connection between the writing and the pronunciation of the Tangut language is even more tenuous than that between Chinese writing and the modern Chinese languages. Thus although on Chinese more than 90% of the characters possess a phonetic element, this proportion is limited to about 10% in Tangut according to Sofronov. The reconstruction of Tangut pronunciation must resort to other sources.

The discovery of the Fanhan heshi zhangzhongzhu 番漢合時掌中珠, a Tangut-Chinese bilingual glossary, permitted Ivanov (1909) and à Laufer (1916) to propose initial reconstructions and to study the comparative study of Tangut. This glossary in effect indicates the pronunciation of each Tangut character with one or several Chinese characters, and inversely each Chinese character with one or more Tangut characters. The second source is the corpus of Tibetan transcriptions of Tangut. These data were studied for the first time by Nevsky (1925).

Nonetheless, these two sources were not in themselves sufficient for a systematic reconstruction of Tangut. In effect, these transcriptions were not written with the intention of representing with precision the pronunciation of Tangut, but instead simply to help foreigners to pronounce and memorize the words of one language with the words of another which they could understand.

The third source, which constitutes the basis of the modern reconstructions, consist of monolingual Tangut dictionaries: the Wenhai 文海, two editions of the Tongyin 同音, the Wenhai zalei 文海雜類 and an untitled dictionary. The record of the pronunciation in these dictionaries is made using the principle of fanqie 反切, borrowed from the Chinese lexicographic tradition. Although these dictionaries may differ on small details (e.g. the Tongyin categorizes the characters according to syllable initial and rhyme without taking any account of tone), they all adopt the same system of 105 rhymes. A certain number or rhymes are in complementary distribution with respect to the place of articulation of the initials, e.g. rhymes 10 and 11 or rhymes 36 and 37, which shows that the scholars who composed these dictionaries had made a very precise phonological analysis of their language.

In distinction to the transcription in foreign languages, the Tangut fanqie make distinctions among the rhymes in a systematic and very precise manner. Due to the fanqie, we now have a good understanding of the phonological categories of the language. Nonetheless, it is necessary to compare the phonological system of the dictionaries with the other sources in order to "fill in" the categories with a phonetic value.

The biggest achievement in the field belongs to N. A. Nevskij, who managed to reconstruct Tangut grammar and provide the first Tangut-Chinese-English dictionary, which together with the collection of his papers was published posthumously in 1960 under the title "Tangut Philology" (Moscow: 1960). Later, substantial contribution to the research of Tangut language was done by Nishida Tatsuo, K.B. Kepping, Gong Huangcheng, M.V. Sofronov, Li Fanwen. As of now, there are three TAngut dictionaries available: one original one composed by N.A. Nevskij, the one composed by Li Fanwen and E.I. Kychanov. Apparently, the dictionary by N.A. Nevskij still remains the most valuable one.

As of now, there is growing a school of Tangut studies in China (main scholars: Shi Jinbo, Li Fanwen, Nie Hongyin, Bai Bin, Chen Binying). In other countries Tangut studies are less popular: the leading Russian scholar in the field E. I. Kychanov has but one student (K. J. Solonin), Nishida Tatsuo and Arakawa Shintaro in Japan, Ruth Dunnell in the USA.

See also

• Qiangic languages
• Tangut
• Tangut Empire

Bibliography

Shintaro ARAKAWA. (荒川 慎太郎). "西夏語通韻字典" ("Tangut Rhyme Dictionary"). 『言語学研究』 Linguistic Research Vol. 16 (1997): 1-153.

_____ "夏藏対音資料からみた西夏語の声調 ("A Study on Tangut Tones from Tibetan Transcriptions") 『言語学研究』 (Linguistic Research) Vol. 17-18 (1999): 27-44.

Gong Hwangcherng (龚煌城) 1999. 西夏语的紧元音及其起源 ("Xixia tense vowels and their origin") ，中央研究院历史语言 研究所集刊. (Collected Papers of the Historical Linguistics Center of the Central Research Institute) 70.2: 531-558

_____ 2001. 西夏语动词的人称呼应音韵转换("Rime transformation and person agreement in Xixia verbs")，语言暨语言学(Language and Linguistics). 2.1: 21-67

Ivanov, A. 1909 Zur kenntnis der Hsi-hsia Sprache, Izvestia Akademii nauk

Kepping, Ksenia B. 1971. "A category of aspect in Tangut," trans. E. Grinstead. Acta Orientalia 33:283-294.

_____. 1975. "Subject and object agreement in the Tangut verb". trans. J. A. Matisoff. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 2.2:219-232.

_____. 1979. "Elements of ergativity and nominativity in Tangut." in Ergativity: towards a theory of grammatical relations, ed. Frans Plank, 263-277. London: Academic Press.

_____. 1979. Sun' tszy v tangutskom perevode: Faksimile ksilografa. Izdanie teksta, perovod, vvedenie, kommentarii, grammaticheskii ocherk, slover' i prilozhenie (Pamiatniki pis'mennosti vostoka 49) Tsz in Tangut translation: Facsimile of wood-engravings. Publication of text, translation, introduction, commentary, grammatical sketch, dictionary, and appendices (Literary texts of the East 49). Moscow, Nauka, 579p.

_____. 1981. "Agreement of the verb in Tangut." Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 6. 1:39-48.

_____. 1982. "Deictic motion verbs in Tangut." Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 6.2:77-82.

_____. 1982. "Once again on the agreement of the Tangut verb." Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 7. 1:39-54.

_____. 1989. 西夏语的结构 de jiegou (The structure of the Tangut language). 中国民族史研究minzu shi yanjiu (Studies on the history of the nationalities of China) 2, ed. Bai Bin, Shi Jinbo, Lu Xun, and Gao Wende, 312-326. Beijing: 中央民族学院出版社 Minzu Xueyuan Chubanshe. Central Institute of Nationalities Press.

Kepping, Ksenia B., V. S. Kolokolov, E. I. Kychanov, and A. P. Terent'ov Katanskii. 1969. More pis'men: Faksimile tangutskikh ksilografov. Perevod s tangutskogo, vstupitel'nye stat'i i prelozheniia of characters: Facsimile of Tangut wood-engravings. Translation from Tangut, and intruductory articles and appendices (Literary texts of the East 16). Moscow: Nauka 108 plates, 217p.

Laufer, B. 1916. "The Si-hia Language, a study in Indo-chinese Philology." T'oung Pao. Vol. 17

Li Fanwen (李范文) 1980. 西夏研究论集，宁夏人民出版社 A Compilation of Xixia research. Ningxia People's Press.

_____. 1998. 夏汉词典，中国社会科学院出版社 Xixia-Chinese Dictionary. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press.

Nevsky, A. 1925 A brief manual of the Si-hia characters with Tibetan transcriptions. Osaka.

Sofronov, M.V. (Софронов М. В). 1968 Грамматика тангутского языка (Tangut grammar), Moscow : Nauka

External links

• Kepping, Ksenia. Last Works and Documents.^*
• Omniglot page with sample Tangut text
• | Data on Tangut with sample texts(in French)

Idioma tangut | Tangoute | 西夏文字 | 西夏文