Videos and lectures – tibetanlanguage.school

Videos and lectures on Trans-Himalayan (a.k.a. Sino-Tibetan) linguistics, with a focus on Tibetan languages.

Most of the lectures on this page were originally made or hosted by Dr. Nathan W. Hill of the University of London’s School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS). Dr. Hill’s contribution to open-access Trans-Himalayan linguistics is unparalleled, with 255 of his papers and books available for free on his Academia.edu profile and 149 videos on his YouTube channel (date of access: May 6, 2023).

If there are any lectures you think should be included on this page but aren’t, please contact me.

On this page:

Note: the “Miscellaneous” videos will be most accessible to non-specialists.

Introductory videos

These videos introduce the language families of the Himalayas.

Sino-Tibetan languages: Introduction and Historical Perspective, by Nathan W. Hill (2020)

Himalayan populations, by Prof. George van Driem (2020)

Historical linguistics

Note: If you are new to historical linguistics, I recommend watching Journey into the axiom of exceptionlessness and then Analogy and Sound Change before watching the other videos in this section.

Journey to the axiom of exceptionlessness, by Nathan W. Hill (2023)

Analogy and Sound Change, by Nathan W. Hill (2023)

Old Tibetan and its pre-history, by Nathan W. Hill (2021)

Current research themes in Sino-Tibetan comparative linguistics, by Nathan W. Hill (2020)

Outstanding problems in Sino-Tibetan comparison, by Nathan W. Hill (2021)

Methods in Sino-Tibetan comparative linguistics: the danger of word families, by Nathan W. Hill (2020)

Morphosemantics of the Proto-Tibeto-Burman *a- Prefix: glottal and nasal complications, by James A. Matisoff (2018)

Linking Tamangic verbs with Tibetan paradigms, by Lingzi Zhuang (2019)

Tibetan minority languages

Note: I am using the term “Tibetan minority languages” to refer to the non-Tibetic languages spoken in Tibet. These languages are not descended from Old Tibetan.

The nDrapa language, by Shirai Satoko (2022)

The Brag-bar dialect of Situ Rgyalrong, by Zhang Shuya (2021)

The Rma language, by Nate Sims (2021)

Identifying Tibetic Subgroups: A Case in Khrochu (Sichuan), by Jackson T.-S. Sun (2018)

Technology and linguistics

Methods in Sino-Tibetan linguistics: possibilities of new technologies, by Nathan W. Hill (2020)

Using Artificial Intelligence for Language Documentation, by Rolando A. Coto Solano (2023)

Data management strategies at the Buddhist Digital Resource Center, by Jeff Wallman and Élie Roux (2017)

Applying Natural Language Processing to Buddhist textual criticism, by Nathan W. Hill (2021)

Making computers actually useful to historical linguists, by Xun Gong (2020)

Asian etymology: achieving faster progress and more secure results, by Nathan W. Hill (2020)

Introducing Persephone-ELAN, by Christopher Cox (2019)

Grapheme-to-phoneme conversion using finite state transducers, by Sandy Ritchie (2019)

Miscellaneous

A preliminary “mix-ology” of messy Tibetan verb paradigms, by Lingzi Zhuang (2023)

Language Oppression in China: What Does it Look Like?, by Gerald Roche (2021)

Making and granting requests in the Old Tibetan Ramayana, by Nathan W. Hill (2023)

A Tibetan passive voice construction, by Nathan W. Hill (2022)

The Old Tibetan chos and gtsug lag as Terms of Political Ideology, by Dr. Zhu Lishuang (2020)

Why does Tibetan stack its letters?, by Nathan W. Hill (2020)

Language Attitudes and Identity in the Tibetan Dharamsala Diaspora, by Jeff Izzard (2016)