Open Question
Three of the four Tibetan vowel signs carry names that the grammatical tradition glosses transparently: gi gu, zhabs kyu and greng bu can all be read against ordinary words. Na ro is the exception. Readings are offered in the grammars and they do not agree, and this pass found no basis on which to prefer one, so the atlas states the sign and declines to gloss the name.
What would resolve this A study tracing the term through the earliest Tibetan grammatical treatises and their commentaries, establishing when it first appears and whether an early commentator glosses it, rather than a further proposal built on the modern form of the words.
OpenTibetan philology and the history of the indigenous grammatical traditionDivinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition
Cross-Tradition Connections
Question On
What is not known, and what would settle it. Extended to Gi Gu: its own description supplies no reading of the name, unlike Zhabs Kyu and Greng Bu, despite the question's own why-open text grouping it with those two as transparent.
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