Western Yugur Language
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Western Yugur ( 'Yugur speech' or 'Yugur word'), also known as Neo-Uygur, is the
Turkic language The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...
spoken by the Yugur people. It is contrasted with Eastern Yugur, a
Mongolic language The Mongolic languages are a language family spoken by the Mongolic peoples in North Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas and in Kalmykia and Buryatia. The best-known member of this language f ...
spoken within the same community. Traditionally, both languages are indicated by the term Yellow Uygur, from the
endonym An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
of the Yugur. There are approximately 2,000 speakers of Western Yugur.


Classification

Besides similarities with Uyghuric languages, Western Yugur also shares a number of features, mainly archaisms, with several of the Northeastern Turkic languages, but it is not closer to any one of them in particular. Neither Western nor Eastern Yugur are
mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...
with the modern
Uyghur language Uyghur or Uighur (; , , or , , ), formerly known as Turki or Eastern Turki, is a Turkic languages, Turkic language with 8 to 13 million speakers (), spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western ...
spoken amongst the
Uyghurs The Uyghurs,. alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central Asia and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as the ti ...
of China's
Xinjiang Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...
autonomous region. Western Yugur also contains archaisms which are attested in neither modern Uyghuric nor Siberian, such as its anticipating counting system coinciding with Old Uyghur, and its copula ''dro'', which also originated from Old Uyghur but substitutes the Uyghur copulative personal suffixes.


Geographic distribution

Speakers of Western Yugur reside primarily in the western part of
Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...
province's
Sunan Yugur Autonomous County Sunan Yugur Autonomous County ( zh, s=肃南裕固族自治县) is an autonomous county under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Zhangye, Gansu Province, China, bordering Qinghai province to the south. It is home to the majority o ...
. They are concentrated in the Dahe and Minghua townships and the northern portion of the Huangcheng township.


Phonology

A special feature in Western Yugur is the occurrence of
preaspiration In phonetics, preaspiration (sometimes spelled pre-aspiration) is a period of voicelessness or aspiration preceding the closure of a voiceless obstruent, basically equivalent to an -like sound preceding the obstruent. In other words, when an obstr ...
, corresponding to the so-called pharyngealised low vowels in Tuvan and Tofa, and
short vowel In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many languages do not ...
s in Yakut, Turkmen, and
Khalkha Mongolian The Khalkha dialect is a dialect of central Mongolian widely spoken in Mongolia. According to some classifications, the Khalkha dialect includes Inner Mongolian varieties such as ''Shiliin gol'', ''Ulaanchab'' and ''Sönid''. As it was the basis ...
. Examples of this phenomenon include 'thirty', 'good', and 'meat'. The
vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...
system, typical of Turkic languages, has largely collapsed. However, it still exists for a-suffixes (back ''a''; front ''i''), however for stems containing last close vowels are chosen unpredictably ( 'knowing' vs. 'pushing'). Voicing as a distinguishing feature in
plosives In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
and affricates was replaced by aspiration, as in Chinese.


Consonants

West Yugur has 28 native consonants and two more (indicated in parentheses) found only in loan words.


Vowels

Western Yugur has eight vowel phonemes typical of many Turkic languages, which are . The phoneme is currently merging with , especially for speakers in the younger generation. In the table below, the IPA symbol for each vowel is given and alongside it the standard Turcological orthographic form is provided in angular brackets. 1 Zhong, 2019 uses the symbol , used by the IPA for the front low unrounded vowel, but describes it as "low back unrounded" (p. 93). The IPA symbol matching that description, low back unrounded , is used in this article for descriptions of the phoneme, while a is used in most practical orthographies of the language.


Allophony

The following allophonic realizations may occur. * is generally when morpheme-medial and when morpheme-final, especially after an obstruent. * is generally when in a word-initial syllable and in a word-final syllable, except when word-final and preceding . * is realized as when preceding by a velar or uvular stop, and as otherwise. * is realized as after uvular stops or the fricatives , as well as when preceding . When preceding or when after and before /n/, occurs as an allophone. Otherwise, typically occurs. * is realized as when preceding coda , in particular when following an aspirated stop. Word-initial is variably realized as and for certain speakers. Otherwise, generally occurs. * do not tend to vary in pronunciation and are simply realized as respectively.


Diachronic processes

Several sound changes affected Western Yugur phonology while evolving from its original Common Turkic form, the most prolific being:


Vowels

* High vowels were delabialized in non-initial syllables: CT *tütün > *tütin > WYu ''tuʰtïn'' "to smoke", CT *altun ''> *altïn > WYu'' aʰltïm ''"gold"'' * CT *u was lowered to WYu ''o'' in some words, most commonly around velars and ''r'': CT *burun > WYu ''pʰorn'' "before, front" * All high vowels were merged – as front vowels in palatal contexts, and as back otherwise: CT *üčün > WYu ''utɕin'' "with, using", CT *yïlan > WYu ''yilan'' "snake" ** This had several consequences: **# It made the Common Turkic allophonic difference between *k and *q phonemic. **# Vowel harmonic class of resulting words was thus determined lexically in Western Yugur. **# Former vowel harmonic suffixes with high vowels became invariable: CT: *-Ki/*-Kï > WYu ''-Kï'' "attributive noun suffix" * Front vowels *ä, *e, *ö were raised to *i, *ü except before *r, *l, *ŋ and (excluding *ö) *g: CT *ärän > WYu ''erin'' "man", CT *kȫk > WYu ''kük'', CT *-lar/*-lär > WYu ''-lar''/''-lir'' "plural suffix" * CT *ay is reflected as WYu ''ey''~''e'' in the initial syllable and as ''i'' otherwise. * In the initial syllable exclusively, short vowels acquire pre-aspiration of the following consonant, length distinction is otherwise lost.


Consonants

* As in most Turkic language, initial *b was assimilated to *m in words containing nasals. * Initial plosives and affricates, CT *b, *t, *k, *g, *č, are all reflected as voiceless with unpredictable aspiration: CT *temir > WYu ''temïr'', CT *bog- > WYu ''pʰoɣ-'' "to tie with a rope" * Labials are merged into *w intervocally and after liquids which later in some cases forms diphthongs or get elided: CT *yubaš > WYu ''yüwaʂ'' "calm", CT *harpa > WYu ''harwa'' "barley" * Finally and in most consonant clusters *p is preserved and *b elided. * Dental and velar voiceless plosives are preserved in most positions, with aspiration occurring almost exclusively in the initial position. * CT *g is spirantized into ''ɣ'' and CT *d into ''z''. * With some exceptions, CT *š develops into ''s'': CT *tāš > WYu ''tas'' "stone" * CT *z is preserved, except for devoicing when final in polysyllabic words: CT *otuz > WYu ''oʰtïs'' "thirty" * CT *č generally becomes WYu ''š'' in syllable codas. * CT *ñ develops into WYu ''y''; initial CT *y- is mostly preserved; CT *h- is seemingly preserved in some words but the extent to which WYu ''h-'' corresponds to it is unclear.


Vocabulary

Western Yugur has retained many words from East
Old Turkic language Old Siberian Turkic, generally known as East Old Turkic and often shortened to Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic languages, Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia. It was first discovered in inscriptions originating f ...
and is the only Turkic language that preserved the anticipating counting system, known from
Old Turkic Old Siberian Turkic, generally known as East Old Turkic and often shortened to Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia. It was first discovered in inscriptions originating from the Second Turkic Kh ...
. In this system, upper decimals are used, i.e. ''per otus'' (''per'': one, ''otus'': thirty) means "one (on the way to) thirty", is 21. For centuries, the Western Yugur language has been in contact with Mongolic languages, Tibetan, and Chinese, and as a result has adopted a large number of
loanwords A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...
from these languages, as well as grammatical features. Chinese dialects neighboring the areas where Yugur is spoken have influenced the Yugur language, giving it loanwords.


Grammar

Personal markers in
nouns In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an object or subject within a phrase, clause, or sentence.Example n ...
as well as in
verbs A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic fo ...
were largely lost. In the verbal system, the notion of
evidentiality In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational) is the particul ...
has been grammaticalised, seemingly under the influence of Tibetan.


Grammatical cases

Four kinship terms have distinct vocative forms, and used when calling out loudly: ''aqu'' (← ''aqa'' "elder brother"), ''qïzaqu'' (← ''qïzaqa'' "elder sister"), ''açu'' (← ''aça'' "father"), and ''anu'' (← ''ana'' "mother"). There are two possessive suffixes, first and second person ''-(ï)ŋ'' and third person ''-(s)ï'', but these suffixes are largely not used outside of kinship terms (''anaŋ'', ''anasï'' "mother"), similar to the concept of inalienable possessions. Four kinship nouns have irregular 1st and 2nd person forms by eliding the final vowel and using the consonantic variant: ''aqa'' → ''aqïŋ'' "elder brother".


Verbs

Western Yugur verbal system, like Salar, is characterized by contact-induced (namely, under the influence of Chinese) loss of person-number copular markers in finite verb forms, e.g. contrast the sentence “I have eaten enough” ''Men '' in Western Yugur with the Uzbek equivalent ''Men ''; the latter has a first-person marker suffix ''-(I)m'' attached to the verb while the equivalent Western Yugur sentence does not.


History

Modern Uyghur and Western Yugur belong to entirely different branches of the Turkic language family, respectively the
Karluk languages The Karluk or Qarluq languages are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family that developed from the varieties once spoken by Karluks. Many Middle Turkic works were written in these languages. The language of the Kara-Khanid Khanate was kno ...
spoken in the
Kara-Khanid Khanate The Kara-Khanid Khanate (; zh, t=喀喇汗國, p=Kālā Hánguó), also known as the Karakhanids, Qarakhanids, Ilek Khanids or the Afrasiabids (), was a Karluk Turkic khanate that ruled Central Asia from the 9th to the early 13th century. Th ...
(such as the Xākānī language described in Mahmud al-Kashgari's ''Dīwān al-Luġat al-Turk'') and the
Siberian Turkic languages The Siberian Turkic or Northeastern Common Turkic languages, are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family. The following table is based upon the classification scheme presented by Lars Johanson (1998). All languages of the branch combined have ...
, which include
Old Uyghur Old Uyghur () was a Turkic language spoken in Qocho from the 9th–14th centuries as well as in Gansu. History Old Uyghur evolved from Old Turkic, a Siberian Turkic language, after the Uyghur Khaganate broke up and remnants of it migrated ...
. The Yugur are descended from the Ganzhou Uyghur Kingdom, Qocho and the
Uyghur Khaganate The Uyghur Khaganate (also Uyghur Empire or Uighur Khaganate, self defined as Toquz-Oghuz country; , Tang-era names, with modern Hanyu Pinyin: or ) was a Turkic empire that existed for about a century between the mid 8th and 9th centuries. It ...
. Grigory Potanin recorded a glossary of Salar language, Western Yugur language, and Eastern Yugur language in his 1893 Russian language book ''The Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia''.


References


Bibliography

* * Chén Zōngzhèn & Léi Xuǎnchūn. 1985. Xībù Yùgùyǔ Jiānzhì oncise grammar of Western Yugur Peking. * * * Léi Xuǎnchūn (proofread by Chén Zōngzhèn). 1992. Xībù Yùgù Hàn Cídiǎn estern Yugur - Chinese Dictionary Chéngdu. * Malov, S. E. 1957. Jazyk zheltykh ujgurov. Slovar' i grammatika. Alma Ata. * Malov, S. E. 1967. Jazyk zheltykh ujgurov. Teksty i perevody. Moscow. * * Roos, Marti, Hans Nugteren, Zhong Jìnwén. 1999. On some Turkic proverbs of the Western and Eastern Yugur languages. ''Turkic Languages'' 3.2: 189–214. * Tenishev, È. R. 1976. Stroj saryg-jugurskogo jazyka. Moscow.


External links


Slide Shows and maps of author Eric Enno Tamm's visit to Lianhua and Hongwansi


* The Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia by Grigory Potanin (Russian) {{DEFAULTSORT:Yugur, Western, Language Agglutinative languages Uyghurs Siberian Turkic languages Languages of Gansu Severely endangered languages Endangered languages of China Endangered Turkic languages