'Eat meal' in Khams Tibetan in the Tibetosphere of Yunnan

This article deals with a geolinguistic analysis of two words, ‘meal’ and ‘eat’, and an expression ‘eat meal’ in Yunnan Tibetan (Khams). In Literary Tibetan, the verb za ‘eat’ generally takes a cognate object za ma ‘meal’. However, in Yunnan Tibetan, the phenomenon of the cognate object is not pervasive. The linguistic map for ‘meal’ shows that all the varieties use zan, with the exception of a single variety, Daan, which uses za ma. The linguistic map for ‘eat’ displays that there are two roots, za (literally ‘eat’) and ’cha’ (literally ‘chew’), exhibiting a continuous distribution: east (’cha’) and west (za). Consequently, the linguistic map for ‘eat meal’ almost follows the distribution of the word form for ‘eat’. The word form for ‘eat’ is related to the dialect classification in most cases. The word form corresponding to za is principally used in the sDerong-nJol group, whereas that corresponding to ’cha’ is principally used in the Sems-kyi-nyila and Chaphreng groups. From this perspective, it is noteworthy that the sPomtserag dialect (sDerong-nJol) uses ’cha’, and that the Melung dialect (Sems-kyi-nyila) uses za. The article gives an interpretation on the case of the sPomtserag dialect, which genetically belongs to the sDerong-nJol group but has received a strong influence from varieties of the Sems-kyi-nyila group.