 to present a little bit my, it's not really even work, my work in progress, before such, before an audience with such an erudition, which I can only dream of. And so today, as you know, I have been working on the problem of grades in Tangled for a moment. And so today I'll just pick up where I left off back in Hamburg where, because I didn't treat the thing about the grade two. And so today I'll talk about it and I'll talk a little bit. I'll be also talking a little bit about Chinese also. So I call the, I call He Xi, late middle Chinese, the Chinese dialect that is spoken by Tangles and the Chinese dialect that the Tangled learn, or learn Chinese from. So let's start with some basic information. So the most interesting to me category, a phonological category in Tangled is the start of grades. So usually, by usually I mean by Guangcheng, usually we reconstruct three grades for a Tangled by on the basis of a conjunction of rhyme ordering in dictionaries. So in dictionaries like the one have all these C characters and we have other lexicographic materials that present the exactly the same order of rhyme, of rhyme categories. So it's something that is very much agreed upon by the Tangled phonologists themselves. And the other thing is the Tangled Chinese transcription evidence. There is a slight asymmetry between the Chinese to Tangled side and the Tangled to Chinese side, but for the grade problem it's okay. So as an example, we take the rhymes R34, R34 to R37. And we see that, so the first rhyme in this group transcribes almost only Chinese syllables in the Chinese grade one. And the second rhyme in this group, 35, transcribes only Chinese characters of the grade two. And the remaining two rhymes, 36 and 37, more or less indiscriminately transcribes Chinese grade three and four. In fact, these two are in near complimentary distribution. And if we look really hard at the near part, we see that they are usually artificial and we can, for most of these groups like this, we can make a case for real complimentary distribution. So I agree with Gong Huang Cheng in reconstructing only three grades. So the traditional reconstruction of the value of the grade is made by Sophronov. Basically as a mirror image of the Chinese reconstruction at his day. So he considered the grade thing, basically a thing of medius. So the first grade has no medius. The second grade has some kind of weak yard. And the third grade has some kind of strong yard. This is carried over a vera, a verben by Gong Huang Cheng. So you have the Niesgega slaggy yard represented by a volcanic E in Gong Huang Cheng's reconstruction. And the stronger yard represented by real yard. This creates the problem that it's very difficult to pronounce EA and EA. What's the difference between EA and EA? I can pronounce a lot of things, but this one is a little bit difficult. So Gong Huang Cheng made a decision to, he basically invented an aliphany where in grade three the vowel is slightly raised. So you have EA and EA, what is pronounceable, a little bit pronounceable, but sadly it is not supported by the transcription evidence. So my favorite example is just the basic mantra in Mahayana Buddhism, and if we look at the usual reconstruction, we have clearly it doesn't work and it needs to be updated. And well, I have the whose part to consider the updating basically done. At the moment, let's start with a little bit context. So a tengut, it is known already at the time of Wolfenden and Wang Xinru, that tengut is a Changi language, closely related to languages like Chang, to Minyak, to Garongic languages, but at this time those languages are not very well described. So basically in order to be able to do the nice kind of comparison you need really, do great dictionaries of those languages and you like with thousands of words before you can really get to something. So now with Guillaume Jacques, who has worked for more than a decade on Japook, he has a very great dictionary of Japook and he has looked for all the possible coordinates and he found some 300 of them. So now we have something very solid to work on, which is the cognates between tengut and Japook Garong. So based on comparison with Japook Garong, which I will not explain today, I happily and gladly redo the presentation I have done in Hamburg and elsewhere if you want it. And so basically what I suggest is that there is a phonological distinction of uberlarization, so between uberlarized vowels, which are pronounced like ba, ba, and non-uberlarized plain vowels, which are pronounced ba, ba. So the distinction between grade one and grade three, which were reconstructed before as ba versus bia, is now reconstructed as ba versus ba. This distinction of uberlarization triggers an aliphony for the velar, so basically the yayin initials, between ga and ga. It is very clear that grade two is uberlarized as grade one, but we don't know what the thing distinguishes grade two from grade one. So for now I'll write an r for grade two and we'll have a look in detail. So where does the uberlarization in Garong come from? Well, the first origin is what I call the primary uberlarization. It must be reconstructed back to proto-changik and it has some correspondences within my other silence a bit in languages, but it's too early to say anything serious about it. However, if we just look at changik languages, this thing is quite clear. So for example, for past long, it's ba uberlarized in Tangut and in zhubu garong, the language I'm working on, is dazwu, dazwu with a uberlarized vowel which I call emphatic vowel. And we have the same thing in Minyang, the language which shares the name of Tangut, it's ba ba. So for wolo, it's uberlarized in Tangut and it's emphatic in zhubu, et cetera, et cetera. We also have what... So this is the primary uberlarization which is inherited from proto-changik. We also have secondary uberlarization, so basically the root wasn't uberlarized at the stage of proto-changik, but now there are other things which went to the syllable and which makes it uberlarized. So for example, if we have a uberlar, if we have a uberlar called emphatic, so for example to we, which is ta in zhubu, ta-ha, ta-ha, there's the re and this re goes to the syllable and so we have not la, but la, la. For snake, it is the same qo, but in the first position. So basically we should have a pu or something for snake, but it's qo and this ra, this uberlar element goes on to the syllable and makes it pu, pu. And not only uberlar, but velar elements, basically velar codus and em, which I hypothesized as having turned into some kind of nazarized wu, then to this he. And these also make secondary uberlarizations. So what do we find here? We find the ubiquitous pattern, the basic conspiracy in the historical knowledge of Tangud, which Mark Miyake describes as compression. I have changed his definition a little bit and for me what is compression? Compression is that materials, phonological or phonetic materials around the syllables. So for example the codus or pre-initials or even some kind of minor syllables they all went to the main part of the syllable and become some kind of pan-syllabic feature which works for the syllable as a whole. That is for example how we usually explain the origin of retroflexes in Tangud. So you have pre-initial R or codon R which just extends to the syllable as a whole and itself it has disappeared. So this is the compression and so the uberlarization in Tangud fits very well into this great picture of compression. So we have left the second, the grade 2 and explained it has something to do with R so I will write it as R in capital letters but what is it? First we will look at this transcription evidence for this great R. So for the Chinese transcription there isn't much to be said. First it transcribes grade 2 second it transcribes grade 3 with Zhuangzu shengmu so with retroflex fricative or africate as an initial. The Tibetan transcription is more interesting I think it's for the Han B and Han D and I write where we have the vowel R in the second grade 2 transcribed as R. So for example this character which is Ba is transcribed as nbar and you never find the first find the grade 1 syllable in comparable circumstances transcribed with an R. Well that's all we have got for the transcription materials it's quite hard to interpret. It's more interesting to consider the etymological origins of the grade 2 capital R. So the first origin of the grade 2 capital R is unilabilization plus medial R. So for example if you have qa without the R in Japook you will have qa in grade 1 in Tangud but in fact because there is an R it's qaq, it's qaq so the R is reflected as the grade 2 also for vowel it's zimbr and it is duly reflected as with this capital R for white. Here the unilabilization is not primary but comes from the code N. However because there is the R so code N brings unilabilization and unilabilization plus medial R brings grade 2. The same medial R a non-ilabilized context just disappears. So for example this is a word which is shared by almost every Changi language so it's quite useful. Ungru which means Sanyu with Tonton and there is an R but it has disappeared because it's not unilabilized. So the same thing for clear water which is angri and just gi. There is no difference between gi and gri. So that was the first origin for grade 2 in Tangut. Now things get more interesting. Here we have the R which has a uvular initial with the vowels e, e and u. So basically if any of you speak a language with uvular it's very difficult to pronounce bi. It's almost impossible to do q with a normal e. So there is always some kind of intervening transitional element between uvular initial and high vowel and however in Tangut this thing is categorized as the same thing as the other origins of grade 2. That is why I think that in Miyake's hypothesis that 104 and 204 are grade 2 rhymes and not grade 1 rhymes is correct because basically you have other initials in 1 and 201 but you have almost only uvular initials in 104 and 204. So the R thing here is some kind of transitional element which has a low vowel in one of the guaranteed languages which is a variety of cross gaps spoken in wouzi. We have the same thing. So for difficult which is un ta you have narei. However a normal word with a in japook is just reflected as e in cross gap and grade 3 e in Tangut. jvi and narei. And why we have this narei is because it's difficult to say narei. And you don't pay very much attention it becomes narei. The last original for the grade 2 in Tangut is retroflex initials. I think I don't have the time to explain it clearly here. So I've just declared by fiat that the shivalence the Tangut initials are pronounced retroflex before a uvular rise. So what does it say? It means that because shivalence are only compatible with grade 2 but not grade 1 it means that the capital R is some kind of transitional element between a retroflex sound and a vowel and any vowel. So for those of you who would love to look at a little bit at the argument I leave it here. And let's go to the summing up. So in order to recapitulate the evidence about the capital R so what does the capital R feel like? First there is some kind of throttleness or backness because it's only in uvular rise context and it's a transitional vowel between a uvular and a high or a front vowel. So it must be something like R or O or A or something like that. That's our first intuition. The second intuition is that the sound has an R-like character so otherwise it's impossible to explain the R in the Tibetan transcription and it would be difficult to explain also the origins in R and with retroflexes. However we also know that it's not a real R so first we have the medial R in Tibetan and it's never transcribed as a medial R in Tibetan. Also it's in the... how do you call it? In the mantras if there is a word like pra and it will never be and you never find a grade 2 character used to transcribe pra in fact you have very few grade 2 characters in mantras basically it's used to transcribe the long vowel R and nothing else and thirdly if it's really R it's impossible to explain why it becomes grade grade it's not okay grade becomes grade that's okay grade becomes grade it's strange. So what do I feel about it? Well I think that it's the I call it the R-I in hypothesis because I think it isn't... it isn't R-I. So phonologically I would call it a pharyngeal and phonetically it's the vocalic correspondent of R-I which is the A and very pharyngealized. So for example white is pronounced difficult is pronounced grade grade and to cross the river is pronounced da da that's what I think and why do I think so? Well first it satisfies the the throttiness because you can't get really you can't get more throtty than R-I it's almost the most throtty consonant available and it also counts for the R-like character this subject is curiously little treated in the literature but if you ask anybody who works on Caucasian languages or on Arabic and you ask them what do they think the for example in American English in Mandarin Chinese you have this kind of erotic vowels and they will tell you that they are not erotic the principle acoustic and articulatory in those vowels is the pharyngeal construction and we find everywhere this kind of affinity between roticness and pharyngeal construction for example in the Chinese transcript of Arabic if you have an R-I then it's rendered with one of the erotic vowels in Chinese and that's my theory about that's my current theory about the grade 2 in Tangut and let's just project it back to He Xi late middle Chinese well it means that a grade 2 has some kind of RTR quality and it has a pharyngeal medium so my hypothesis is that the iron hypothesis is not only true for Tangut but it also works at least for He Xi late middle Chinese now the question is this is this grade 2 iron in He Xi Chinese influence or a Kou Yibo or anything like that by Tangut or it's more widespread in Chinese and in fact the Tangut is influenced by the Chinese well on the nature of grade 2 in Chinese basically we have two theories the A theory and the E theory the A theory is almost correct because if you look at modern dialects and if you look at all kinds of information it's clearly something like A however how do you get from Ra how do you get from Ra to A it's very difficult on the other hand if we use this iron hypothesis and so if Chinese grade 2 is characterized by a strong pharyngealization then it's very natural to have the vowel A which is in fact the pharyngealized counterpart of A associated with grade 2 the other thing is that we have this association between retroflex initials and A in Tangut and it's also very predictable to Chinese because not only in similar Chinese but also in the early Northern Mandarin contemporary to He Xin Mei Dong to He Xin Mei Dong Chinese we have the same thing so we have the whenever you have a retroflex or africate in grade 3 syllables it is classified together with grade 2 so not only original grade 2 is grade 2 but in late Middle Chinese or in early Mandarin or in fact in most kind of Chinese retroflex plus everything gives grade 2 and we still have some modern reflection of this in that it's from standard Mandarin to sign of Vietnamese every time if you the original retroflexes cause a lowering of the vowel I just put Cantonese here but it works for any other for most other languages as well so I have argued for A in the true nature of grade 2 in Tangut and I projected it into Chinese but it's not in fact it turns out that it's not dialect of Chinese but very common the only thing it gives us is that the Tangut treatment we will arise into this kind of vowel from Chinese why do I say it? because in modern because in modern Changi language you never find this treatment this particular treatment it's either preserved or lost without any trace or become some kind of real celibacy or it or it triggers the particular Tibetan sound change which brings gr to zh so for example for the for the word signing you have gr in north of the ma in Beikutang north of the ma which is the celibacy treatment and we have the Tibetan treatment in zh in southern of the ma and this if you look at the dialect map the treatment are really scattered so it means that in most of the warheim in most of the warheim of Changi the middle r is preserved to a very very late date so the most plausible scenario is that Chinese all kinds of Chinese always had some kind of wine for gr to and Tangud has has developed under the influence under the influence from Chinese so we're in our final slide can we speak about I got interested in the in the iron question first because I thought I thought it will bring bring to some very clear area of things so Hexi Chinese is influenced by Tangud and Tangud is influenced by Hexi Chinese however well I think Tangud is very strongly reshaped by Hexi Chinese however Hexi Chinese is just some very generic kind of north western Chinese even if the strange thing is that is this the only thing the only way we can know anything about Hexi Middle Chinese is by Tangud transcriptions and if we just read the if we just listen to Tangud speaking very heavily Tangud accent with the Chinese it just sounds like normal Chinese without any Tangud accent it means that Tangud is so much reshaped by Chinese so that the phonological systems are almost completely compatible you have the same kind of thing for example in where you have monogonic languages with phonologies so those people if they speak Chinese they just speak it like normal Chinese etc however we also know that for example for the compression for all kinds of compression the dialect the Tibetan dialect used to transcribe the Tangud have shared the same sound changes so I think we have a typical situation which I call the Ottoman Balkan situation you have the Balkan where Balkan languages coexist in some kind of in some kind of packs of America and they influence each other and they are all influenced by Turkish but Turkish is barely influenced by Balkan languages and I think we have the same thing so Tangud and local Tibetan influence each other they are all influenced by Chinese but Chinese is not very much influenced by Tangud and that's all I have to say thank you very much