Softcover, 246 pages, Toronto 2024, new
Amdo Lullaby is the first book-length study of Tibetan children in the People’s Republic of China. This ethnography examines the everyday language use of children in Amdo, Tibet (Qinghai, China). Based on an annotated corpus of over 60 hours of Amdo Tibetan children’s spontaneous language use, this book compares the language learning trajectories of rural and urban children from one extended family, in order to understand the effects of urbanization on child development. Integrating fine-grained linguistic analysis with findings from oral history interviews, Amdo Lullaby situates current cultural and linguistic changes on the Tibetan plateau in a longer term history of migration and mobility in Amdo.