Western Yugur language

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Western Yugur
yoɣïr lar
Native to China
Region Gansu
Ethnicity 7,000 Yugur (2007)[1]
Native speakers
 4,600 (2007)[1]
Turkic
Early forms
Old Uyghur language
  • Western Yugur
Old Uyghur alphabet (until 19th century)
Language codes
ISO 639-3 ybe
Glottolog west2402[4]
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Western Yugur (Western Yugur: yoɣïr lar[5] (Yugur speech) or yoɣïr śoz (Yugur word)) is the Turkic language spoken by the Yugur people. It is contrasted with Eastern Yugur, the Mongolic language spoken within the same community. Traditionally, both languages are indicated by the term "Yellow Uygur", from the endonym of the Yugur.

There are approximately 4,600 Turkic-speaking Yugurs.

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 with Uyghur.[6]

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 originated from Old Uyghur but substitute the Uyghur copulative personal suffixes.[7]

Geographic distribution

Speakers of Western Yugur reside primarily in the western part of Gansu province's Sunan Yugur Autonomous County.

Phonology

A special feature in Western Yugur is the occurrence of preaspiration, corresponding to the so-called pharyngealised or low vowels in Tuva and Tofa, and short vowels in Yakut and Turkmen. Examples of this phenomenon include /oʰtɯs/ "thirty", /jaʰʂ/ "good", and /iʰt/ "meat".

The vowel harmonical system, typical of Turkic languages, has largely collapsed. Voice as a distinguishing feature in plosives and affricates was replaced by aspiration, as in Chinese.

Consonants

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

Consonant phonemes
Labial Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Nasal m n ŋ
Plosive voiceless aspirated pʰ tʰ kʰ qʰ
plain voiceless p t k q
Affricate voiceless aspirated (t͡sʰ) ʈ͡ʂʰ t͡ɕʰ
plain voiceless t͡s ʈ͡ʂ t͡ɕ
Fricative voiceless (f) s ʂ ɕ x h
voiced z ʐ ɣ
Trill r
Approximant l j w

Vowels

West Yugur vowels

Vocabulary

Western Yugur is the only Turkic language that preserved the anticipating counting system, known from Old Turkic.

For centuries, the Western Yugur language has been in contact with Mongolic languages, Tibetan, and Chinese, and as a result has adopted a large amount of loanwords 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.[8]

Grammar

Personal markers in nouns as well as in verbs were largely lost. In the verbal system, the notion of evidentiality has been grammaticalised, seemingly under the influence of Tibetan.

Writing system

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Main article: Old Uyghur alphabet

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.[9]

History

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Main articles: Old Uyghur language and Gansu Uyghur Kingdom

Modern Uyghur and Western Yugur belong to entirely different branches of the Turkic language family, respectively the Karluk languages spoken in the Kara-Khanid Khanate[10] (such as the Xākānī language described in Mahmud al-Kashgari's Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk[11]) and the Siberian Turkic languages, which include Old Uyghur.[12][13]

The Yugur people are descended from the Gansu Uyghur Kingdom.

References

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Bibliography

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  • Chén Zōngzhèn & Léi Xuǎnchūn. 1985. Xībù Yùgùyǔ Jiānzhì [Concise grammar of Western Yugur]. Peking.
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  • Léi Xuǎnchūn (proofread by Chén Zōngzhèn). 1992. Xībù Yùgù Hàn Cídiǎn [Western 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, Martina Erica. 2000. The Western Yugur (Yellow Yugur) Language: Grammar, Texts, Vocabulary. Diss. University of Leiden. Leiden.
  • Tenishev, È. R. 1976. Stroj saryg-jugurskogo jazyka. Moscow.

External links

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Western Yugur at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Chen et al, 1985
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20120316172207/http://altaica.ru/LIBRARY/POPPE/poppe_salar.pdf
  10. ↑ Arik 2008, p. 145
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Coene 2009, p. 75
  13. ↑ Coene 2009, p. 75
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