LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS 14.1:193-209, 2013 2013-0-014-001-000248-1 Relative Ordering of Tibetan Sound Changes Affecting Laterals * Nathan W. Hill School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Several sound changes affect the development of inherited laterals in Tibetan: Conrady’s law (*ḫl > ld-), Bodman’s law (*ml- > md-), and Benedict’s law (*lʲ- > ź-). Benedict’s law occurred subsequently to both Conrady’s and Bodman’s laws. Because Conrady’s law and Bodman’s law do not interact, their relative chronology is not subject to direct exploration. Of several additional hypotheses for sound laws affecting inherited laterals which Jacques (2004) puts forward *rlʲ- > rǰ- appears promising. The three changes affecting laterals occur after Schiefner’s (*dz- > z-) and Houghton’s law (*ŋʲ- > ñ-) and before Dempsey’s law (*-eŋ > -iṅ and *ek > -ig). Key words: sound laws, laterals, Tibetan, Bodish The Tibetan verb √lud ‘pour’ has a present stem ད་ ldud and a past stem ད་ blud. 1 The past stem poses no analytic hurdles. The b- prefix is seen in the past stem of all * I would like to thank the British Academy for support during the course of this research and Guillaume Jacques for his comments on a previous draft. I dedicate this paper to my 先輩 Jakob Dempsey (1948-2010). 1 This essay uses the Library of Congress system for transliterating Tibetan with the following changes: ‘ḫ’ rather than apostrophe, ‘č’ rather than of ‘c’, and ‘ǰ’ rather than ‘j’. The Library of Congress system is used for Burmese also, with the exception that as ḥ and ʔ are used rather than ފand މ. For Chinese I provide the character followed by Baxter’s Middle Chinese (1992), an Old Chinese reconstruction taken from or compatible with the current version of Baxter & Sagart’s system (2011), and the character number in Karlgren (1957[1964]). Like in Baxter’s own recent work, for Middle Chinese I use ‘ae’ and ‘ea’ in place of his original ‘æ’ and ‘ɛ’. I do not however following him is changing ‘ɨ’ to ‘+’. All Tibetan verb forms cited herein can be confirmed in Hill (2010b). This paper employs the following abbreviations: PT (Pelliot tibétain), IOL (India Office Library), OBur. (Old Burmese), WBur. (Written Burmese), Chi. (Chinese), Mon. (Mtsho-sna Monpa, Wenlang dialect, apud Lu 1986), Tib. (Tibetan), Kur. (Kurtöp, apud Hyslop 2011), Rgy. (Rgyalrong). When Old Burmese would not differ from Written Burmese it suffices to employ Bur. (Burmese). For changes from Old Burmese to Written Burmese see Nishi (1999), Yanson (2006), and Hill (2012:66-69).