Torgut, also spelled Torghud, is a dialect of the
Oirat language spoken in
Xinjiang, in western
Mongolia and in eastern
Kalmykia
he official languages of the Republic of Kalmykia are the Kalmyk and Russian languages./ref>
, official_lang_list= Kalmyk
, official_lang_ref=Steppe Code (Constitution) of the Republic of Kalmykia, Article 17: he official languages of the ...
(where it was the basis for
Kalmyk, the literary
standard language of that region). Thus, it has more speakers than any other variety of Oirat. It is better researched than any other Oirat variety spoken in China.
Distribution
The Torgut dialect is spoken in
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eight ...
in Eastern Kalmykia, in
Bulgan sum in
Khovd Province in Mongolia and in the
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
autonomous region of Xinjiang, mainly in three separate areas in its north-western part. Sečenbaγatur et al. give an exhaustive list of the areas of Xinjiang where Oirat (in many cases Torgut) is spoken that also includes some places in north-eastern Xinjiang: the autonomous prefectures of
Bayangol and
Bortala, the counties
Hoboksar and
Dörbiljin and the city of
Wusu in
Tacheng Prefecture
Tacheng Prefecture is located in Northern Xinjiang, People's Republic of China. It has an area of and a population of 935,600 (2017). It is a part of Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture. The prefecture level city of Karamay forms a separate enclave ...
, the counties Küriye,
Tekes and
Nilka in the
Ili Prefecture
Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture ( kk, Іле Қазақ автономиялық облысы) (also as Yili) is an autonomous prefecture for Kazakh people in Northern Xinjiang, China, one of five autonomous prefectures in Xinjiang. Yining City ...
, the prefectures
Altay,
Hamil and
Changji
Changji is a county-level city situated about west of the regional capital, Ürümqi in Northern Xinjiang, China and has about 390,000 inhabitants. It is the seat of Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture. At the northeast corner of the modern c ...
and Xinjiang's capital city,
Ürümqi
Ürümqi ( ; also spelled Ürümchi or without umlauts), formerly known as Dihua (also spelled Tihwa), is the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the far northwest of the People's Republic of China. Ürümqi developed its ...
. To some degree, this distribution can be associated with the history of the
Torgut tribe, one of the four crucial members of the clan federation "Dörben
Oirat".
Grammar
Phonology
Torgut has the
vowel phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
s that may be
short or long. When appearing in the first
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Phone (phonetics), speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered t ...
of a word, these vowels determine the
vowel harmony class, e.g.
Written Mongolian ''talbiγun'',
Khalkha-Mongolian.
, , and in a non-initial syllable are neutral vowels. /oː/, and /eː/ never appear in any but the first syllable of a word.
/ɢ/ can also have an allophone of
�
Nominal system
Most of the
plural forms of Torgut are common Mongolian, ''-mu:d'' is normal Oirat, but ''-sud'' seems to be somewhat peculiar. The
case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of related merchandise
* Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component
* Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books
* Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to ca ...
system is standard Oirat which differs from Mongolian in lacking an
allative
In grammar, the allative case (; abbreviated ; from Latin ''allāt-'', ''afferre'' "to bring to") is a type of locative grammatical case. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages that do not make finer ...
and retaining the old
comitative
In grammar, the comitative case (; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case that denotes accompaniment. In English, the preposition "with", in the sense of "in company with" or "together with", plays a substantially similar role (other uses of "with", l ...
case, that is, it is rather conservative. In contrast to
Middle Mongolian and
Southern Mongolian
Southern Mongolian or Inner Mongolian ( ') is a proposed major dialect group within the taxonomy of the Mongolian language.
Overview
It is assumed by most Inner Mongolia linguists and would be on the same level as the other three major dialect gr ...
and in agreement with
Khalkha, the
accusative case
The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...
always has ''-g'', not ''-i''. The reflexive-possessive retains ''-n'', thus ''-aan''.
The pronominal forms are not substantially different from Khalkha. The
first person singular
In linguistics, grammatical person is the grammatical distinction between deictic references to participant(s) in an event; typically the distinction is between the speaker ( first person), the addressee ( second person), and others (third pers ...
pronoun stem is ''nam-'' ~ ''nan-'', next to the standard Mongolian first person plural there is also a variant in ''ma-'', namely ''madan'', ''madnu:s'' (both
nominative), and the third person singular accusative is peculiar in that it is based on the regular stem ''yy/n-'' (proximal, distal is ''tyy/n-''), thus inflecting as ''yyg'' compared to Written Mongolian , Standard Khalkha .
Verbal system
The old voluntative ''-su:'' ~ ''-s'' is retained in Oirat, while the new voluntative ''-ja'' (at least in Xinjiang Torgut) rather tends to indicate a plural
subject. Like in all Oirat varieties, the
converb
In theoretical linguistics, a converb (abbreviated ) is a nonfinite verb form that serves to express adverbial subordination: notions like 'when', 'because', 'after' and 'while'. Other terms that have been used to refer to converbs include ''adver ...
''-xla:'' is quite common. As is common to all Oirat dialects except for
Alasha,
participles and
finite verb
Traditionally, a finite verb (from la, fīnītus, past participle of to put an end to, bound, limit) is the form "to which number and person appertain", in other words, those inflected for number and person. Verbs were originally said to be ''fin ...
al
suffixes can
inflect
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defi ...
for first and second person and for
number; in case it is present, these
inflections follow a
modal particle In linguistics, modal particles are always uninflected words, and are a type of grammatical particle. They are used to indicate how the speaker thinks that the content of the sentence relates to the participants' common knowledge or add mood to the ...
.
[Sečenbaγatur et al. 2005: 423-424] Else, the formal inventory is what would be expected from a Mongolian variety, though it is not clear to what degree the functions are the same.
References
Literature
* Birtalan, Ágnes (2003): Oirat. In: Janhunen 2003: 210-228.
* Bläsing, Uwe (2003): Kalmuck. In: Janhunen 2003: 229-247.
* Bulaγ-a (2005): ''Oyirad ayalγu-yin sudulul''. Ürümči: Sinǰiyang-un arad-un keblel-ün qoriy-a.
* Coloo, Ž. (1965): ''Zahčny aman ajalguu''. Ulaanbaatar: ŠUA.
* Coloo, Ž. (1988): ''BNMAU dah’ mongol helnij nutgijn ajalguuny tol’ bichig: ojrd ajalguu''. Ulaanbaatar: ŠUA.
*
Janhunen, Juha (ed.) (2003): ''The Mongolic languages''. London: Routledge.
* Sečenbaγatur, Qasgerel, Tuyaγ-a, B. ǰirannige, U Ying ǰe (2005): ''Mongγul kelen-ü nutuγ-un ayalγun-u sinǰilel-ün uduridqal''. Kökeqota: Öbür mongγul-un arad-un keblel-ün qoriy-a.
* Svantesson, Jan-Olof, Anna Tsendina, Anastasia Karlsson, Vivan Franzén (2005): ''The Phonology of Mongolian''. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Ubushaev, N.N. (1979). ''Fonetika torgutskogo govora kalmytskogo yazyka''. Elista: Kalmyk book publishing house.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Torgut Oirat
Agglutinative languages
Central Mongolic languages